Film Shapes

It's an opportune time for this film to land, what with attacks on journalists filling the news cycle in recent days. The correspondent in question is Australian Peter Greste, who was arrested in Cairo at the end of 2013 while working for Al Jazeera. Potted history - the leaders of the military coup that ousted Mohamed Morsi want Al Jazeera brought to heel and so they accuse Greste and his crew of being agents for the Muslim Brotherhood, a party affiliated with Morsi. The story plays out as a dissection of the kangaroo court that tried the three men, while also couching Greste's ordeal as a possible payback for his part in the death of a colleague years before. The film, directed by Kriv Stenders, is based on Greste's book about his arrest and imprisonment, The First Casualty , and there's also a credit for Greste as a story consultant, so I think it's safe to assume everything on screen has had final approval from the man himself. It's all held together admirab...

I took a post-work trip to the Palace cinema in Perth's Raine Square for this anxiety-inducing drama at the Alliance Française French Film Festival . There have been a few of these 'snowball' films of late, where one innocuous moment gets misunderstood and events spiral from it.  In this case, a good-looking, young literature teacher, Julien (François Civil) is accused of trying to seduce a student in his class. It's clear she has misconstrued innocent looks and utterances, but the letter she writes to the deputy principal needs to be looked into. A chain of missteps begins. This is based on events from the life of the director (and co-writer with Audrey Diwan), Teddy Lussi-Modeste. It seems something similar happened to him when he was teaching in a northern Paris school, and here he scratches open a few old wounds. Assuming the lead character's (and by association, the director's) innocence, the knock-on effects are dispiriting, to say the least, and fucking f...

Conclave (or Knives Out in Vatican City ) is a cracking religio-political thriller full of meaty performances and an Oscar-winning script by Peter Straughan that winkles just enough out to leave the audience with some work to do. Straughan has some excellent work on his resume ( Frank , Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , etc), so throwing him together with director Edward Berger ( All Quiet on the Western Front ), and heavyweights like Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow, was a recipe for success.  The start is also an ending. The pope has passed away  and the high-ranking priests are gathering to grieve and plan the succession. Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, and as Dean of the College of Cardinals, it's up to him to organise the conclave, the meeting to elect the new pope.  I'll say now, one of the positives of the film is that there's not too much jargon, so it isn't completely baffling for us atheists. It actually plays a pretty straight ba...

It's been six years since Mike Leigh stepped behind the camera for the disappointing Peterloo but this film is a return to tip top form. In fact, by my reckoning, that 2018 historical record was his only career misstep. And in Naked , Secrets and Lies and Happy-Go-Lucky , he has written and directed some of the very best British films of all time. Hard Truths reunites him with one of the stars of Secrets and Lies , Marianne Jean-Baptiste. She plays Pansy, an angry, fearful misery guts who can't help but annoy her family (and members of the public) with her constant, nasty invective. At first, her moaning is quite funny until the realisation that this woman is suffering takes hold. Pansy is married to plumber Curtley (David Webber) and they have a son in his early 20s, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who doesn't say much and stays in his room playing flight simulator games. Both these guys deal with Pansy in their own way, in quiet despondency. Her only real friend is her sister,...

The Story of Souleymane was the media preview opening film of this year's Alliance Française French Film Festival . This drama of frustrations, directed by Boris Lojkine, feels like a real story, probably not too far removed from the myriad other folk trying to find a better life in Europe (or other, more economically advanced countries than their own). Souleymane is a young Guinean bloke working as a fast food courier (ala Uber Eats) in Paris, but this is more complex than it sounds. For reasons soon made clear, he has to borrow the courier account of another guy to earn his bikkies. A simple request from the courier company to upload a selfie sees Souleymane dashing to the workplace of the guy who 'owns' the account, to get the pic. Just one of the many anxiety inducing trials this poor lad goes through.  The nugget of the story is that Souleymane is a couple of days away from his residency interview. For whatever reason, it's decided that he must lie to the authorit...

Walter Salles directs this true story of Brazil's military regime and the people they 'disappeared'. It's mostly set in 1970/71 in Rio de Janeiro and focusses on the Paiva family, which consists of a fairly well-off father, mother and five kids.  The first third of the film is all set-up. We're introduced to the family, their group of friends, their housekeeper, the local beach, it's a great, leisurely paced buildup. All throughout this opening though, there's a hint of intrigue - late night phone calls to the father, Rubens (Selton Mello); people off-camera popping in to pick up things; talk of envelopes; glimpses of army trucks driving along the beach road. Foreboding embedded. The family's middle-class idyll is blown apart one day when some humourless bastards arrive at the house to escort Rubens away to 'give a deposition'. Rubens' wife, Eunice is obviously worried but shows a calm exterior, mindful of her children, especially the younger...