Film Shapes

Director/co-writer Anne Fontaine ( Coco Before Chanel , Gemma Bovery ) shines a light on the role of the police in modern France with her new film, Night Shift . It starts promisingly, showing the same situations in the same day from the perspective of the three central characters (similar to the money exchange sequence from Tarantino’s Jackie Brown ). This format teases out the personalities of each officer, revealing a tad more about them as the timeline repeats; one character appears out of focus in the background but is front and centre on the next pass, another is completely off screen except for his voice and is later shown at an adjoining table. Sadly, this style is only maintained for the first act, the rest of the film reverting to a traditional narrative for the titular night shift duty. The three leads, Virginie (Virginie Efira), Aristide (Omar Sy) and Erik (Grégory Gadebois) volunteer to escort an illegal immigrant from a Parisian detention centre to Charles de Gaulle airpo...

Mandibles is the latest film from French musician turned filmmaker, Quentin Dupieux (aka Mr. Oizo). It’s an odd film, veering between lovably surreal farce and nihilistic idiocy. The premise has our protagonists, Manu (Grégoire Ludig) and Jean-Gab (David Marsais), stumbling upon a grotesquely large fly in the boot of a car they’ve stolen. This scuppers the completion of a possibly dodgy job they’re on but these two will not be disheartened. Jean-Gab suggests training the huge fly, which he names Dominique, and putting it to work for them as a kind of thief drone – one that “doesn’t need batteries”. The action takes place in a less than idyllic South of France where Manu and Jean-Gab lurch almost involuntarily from one ludicrous situation to another, all the while giving each other a nerdy hand-shake called ‘The Toro’. After some initial criminal tomfoolery, Manu is mistaken for someone else and invited to a country villa by some young women. Offer accepted, they take advantage of th...

I was a little hesitant about The Father before going in. It looked austere, worthy, SERIOUS! These adjectives can often equate to dullness so I was chuffed to find that looks were pretty deceiving in this case. This is a tricksy little gem of a film. Sure, it has all those aspects mentioned above but it's handled more like a thriller to be unboxed, uncrinkled, smoothed out. Anthony Hopkins plays Anthony (bravely retaining the name), the father of the title, whose daughter, Anne, played by Olivia Colman, is struggling to deal with his creeping dementia. This manifests in Anthony falling out with carers, even accusing them of stealing and generally being a rude prick to everybody. The genius of the story is the way it presents Anthony's mental disintegration from his perspective. Without going into detail, the audience is riding along with the father as he attempts to make sense of all the comings and goings in his flat. This unknowing perspective is unsettling and not a little...

A bit late to this but I'm glad I decided to check it out. The Dry is a simmering, dusty mystery set in the drought-stricken Australian scrub. It's directed by Robert Connolly and co-written by Connolly and Harry Cripps, adapted from a novel by Jane Harper. Eric Bana plays Aaron Falk, a Melbourne-based federal police officer, who is urged by the parents of his old mate, Luke, to return to his hometown for said mate's funeral. Without going into the rabbit's hole, suffice to say, Aaron isn't entirely welcome in the town of Kiewarra (fictional, though Ballarat is mentioned as nearby). The crime leading to the death of Aaron's friend may or may not be linked to another crime 20 years before, which drove Aaron and his dad to abandon the town, but digging around for facts proves difficult. As one character says, "When you've been lying about something for so long, it becomes second nature." The way the film winkles out the details of both crimes is mas...

There are some films that you know you're probably going to like five minutes after the opening shot. And then there are those that slot into the opposite camp. Much like French Exit . This is a comedy drama that's very light on comedy, and whatever drama there is happens in a baffling, nonsensical way. Patrick deWitt adapted this from his own novel and, though he won me over with his script for The Sisters Brothers , he quickly lost me with this one. The film is nominally about a high class New Yorker, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, and her boring son, Lucas Hedges, who one day find themselves insolvent. Oh-so-whimsically a plan is hatched to move to Paris and after selling most of their belongings, off they sail. And I mean sail, the dickheads taking a cruise liner rather than flying. That's the kind of film it is. Oh, and there's a fucking cat wandering around, serving no noticeable purpose until later in the film, when things really go to pot. Pfeiffer is pretty good,...