A review of the triple Academy Award nominated film “The Lost Daughter”

February 26th, 2022 by Roger Darlington

This psychological drama is based on a novel by a woman (the pseudonymous Elena Ferrante); it is both written and directed by a woman (the debut role for actor Maggie Gyllenhaal); and the three leading roles are taken by women (Olivia Coleman, Jessie Buckley and Dakota Johnson). It deals with an incredibly sensitive subject: the notion that parenting does not come naturally to everyone, even a woman. And there is a suggestion that how we parent is shaped by how we ourselves were parented.

The central character is Leda, a middle-aged literature professor on a working holiday on a Greek island, who is played by Coleman in the present and by Buckley in flash-backs, both of whom give wonderful performances of a woman in anguish. I think this would be classified as an art house film and key features of this style of moviemaking are slowness and opacity. So the pace is languid, which seems to suit the sea-side setting, and, while it is clear that Leda is damaged, we never learn why this is the case.

A seminal incident in the film is the loss of a child (hence the title) and her doll and I cannot help recalling that the final work in Ferrante’s four-part collection of Neapolitan novels is entitled “The Story Of The Lost Child” and that the beginning and the end of the quartet’s text involves respectively the losing and returning of two dolls.

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A review of “The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman

February 25th, 2022 by Roger Darlington

I know that crime is an immensely popular literary genre but I generally avoid it. However, I made an exception for Osman’s first book because it has been such an incredible success and I wanted to be part of the zeitgeist. By the time I read the novel, it had achieved sales of over a million, been the subject of a film deal, and announced to be the first of a series of four.

The eponymous organisation consists of four characters in their mid or late 70s (only a little older than me!): Elizabeth an ex-intelligence officer (apparently); Ron who was once a trade union leader; Joyce, a former nurse; and Ibrahim who used to be a psychiatrist. They are all residents of an upmarket retirement village called Coopers Chase and they meet each Thursday in the Jigsaw Room to review cold murder cases until one day they encounter a new murder in their locality.

It has to be said that this is a very readable work, facilitated by the 377 pages being divided into no less than 115 short chapters. The language is plain, the characterisation is weak, and the plotting is very contrived but, unlike other crime novels, the approach is gentle and the style is humorous (is this how crime novels are supposed to be?).

I don’t want to spoil it for you (well, why not?) but, by the end, the bodies are piling up – some murders, some suicides, some historical, some recent – so fast that I found it all rather ridiculous.

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Word of the day: irredentism

February 23rd, 2022 by Roger Darlington

Irredentism is a political and popular movement whose members claim (usually on behalf of their nation) and seek to occupy, territory which they consider “lost” (or “unredeemed”), based on history or legend.

The term comes from Italians seeking ‘lost’ parts of Italy occupied by the then Austria- Hungarian Empire.

Vladimir Putin is a modern-day irredentist.

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A review of the 2017 film “Tulip Fever”

February 20th, 2022 by Roger Darlington

Set in Amsterdam during the 17th century ‘tulip mania’, this is a romantic drama involving interconnecting relationships that looks splendid but suffers from excessive plotting.

A lot of talent went into the production of this film: it is based on a novel by Deborah Moggach and the script was co-written by her and Tom Stoppard; it has an ensemble cast including Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz, Judi Dench and Tom Hollander; and, although it was shot entirely in Britain, the sets and costumes create an authentic sense of time and place.

However, the work was beset with problems: both production and release were much delayed; once out, it lost a lot of money; and it was tainted by being one of the last products of The Weinstein Company.

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Does the Earth need its own flag?

February 19th, 2022 by Roger Darlington

Sounds like a good idea to me. But what would it look like?

You’ll find one possible design in this short piece.

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A review of the 2019 film “Last Christmas”

February 18th, 2022 by Roger Darlington

This is a Christmas rom-com with lots of singing by the late George Michael – hence the title – with the main roles being an elf in a Santa shop who has issues (the cute and talented Emilia Clarke) and her mysterious saviour on a bike rather than a horse (affable but bland Henry Golding). Emma Thompson co-wrote, co-produced and stars (as an eccentric Croatian mother).

It has to be one of the most sentimental films that I’ve seen – but I guess that you would have to be without a heart not to enjoy it at some level. It was recommended to me by a couple of women friends, because it is set in central London locations close to where I live, and I enjoyed spotting the familiar sights, but it is not really funny enough and I found the central proposition rather corny. Sorry, guys.

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A review of the new book “Bond Behind The Iron Curtain” by James Fleming

February 16th, 2022 by Roger Darlington

In October 1962, I was 14 when I went to see the new film “Dr No” which introduced me to James Bond aka special agent 007. For the next 60 years, I went to see each new Bond movie as it was released in a franchise which has now reached 25 outings for MI6’s top spy. Meanwhile, in my teenage years, I read all 14 of the Bond novels written by Ian Fleming.

It’s hard to believe now just how frenzied the media was for Bondmania. In the same month that the first Bond film was released, the world experienced the Cuban missile crisis which was about as hot as the Cold War became and Bondmania was very much a Western phenomenon with the films and books banned behind the Iron Curtain. And yet …

A nephew of Ian Fleming has now written a short but fascinating work which reveals that the Communist world was aware of the Bond phenomenon. Somehow, some months before the “Dr No” movie was released, a review of the film appeared in the Russian publication “Isvestiya” and Ian Fleming was so amused by this that he almost persuaded the publisher of his books to carry a translation of the review on the dust jacket of his next Bond book.

Although “Bond Behind the Iron Curtain” carries James Fleming’s name as the author, the majority of the 125 pages are not written by him but are translations of works from the mid 1960s in Russian, Czech and Polish.

The longest and most impressive of these foreign pieces is an excellent translation of a critical but erudite article by Maya Turovskaya that was published in the distinguished literary journal “Novy Mir” in 1966 which was arguably the height of the Bondmania.

Turovskaya had seen the first four Bond movies – “Dr No”, “From Russia With Love”, “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball” – and read the books on which these films were based and she wrote an incisive article that dissected the Bond phenomenon and placed it in a wide-ranging cultural context of the crime genre. Turovskaya saw enthusiasts for Bond as seeking “all that they lack in their dull and mediocre lives” and damned such enthusiasm as “compensation for the bourgeois inferiority complex” and “a form of narcotics for the senses”.

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A review of the 2019 film “21 Bridges”

February 13th, 2022 by Roger Darlington

The critics were quite hard on this movie but I found it entertaining enough. The plot centres on a New York Police Department detective on the hunt for two cop killers who persuades the authorities to close all the bridges from Manhattan for the night in order to track down the villains. Of course, there are complications along the way in an action-packed hour and a half or so.

What, I guess, elevates the film is the casting of Chadwick Boseman as the principled crusader. This was the last of Boseman’s work to be released before he died from cancer and reminds us what a really talented actor he was. Support roles are filled by Sienna Miller and J.K. Simmons adding to the film’s watchability.

In fact, while there are 21 connections in and out of Manhattan, only 17 of these are actually bridges, the remaining four being tunnels. Also, although there are some fine aerial shots of Manhattan, the film was shot on the streets of Philadelphia.

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A review of the new Spanish film “Parallel Mothers”

February 11th, 2022 by Roger Darlington

I’ve seen a number of art house films recently which characteristically were very slow and very opaque. So it was a not-so-guilty pleasure to view “Parallel Mothers” which moves at pace and has a clear narrative. Of course, I would have expected nothing less from the Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar both wrote and directed this wonderful movie.

For the eight time, Almodóvar cast his favourite actor, the beautiful and ever so talented Penélope Cruz. She plays the lead role of Janis, a middle-aged woman who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant and befriends a teenager Ana (the ingénue Milena Smit) who is having her baby in the same hospital at the same time.

It is a moving tale of love and loss, at both a very personal level of two first-time mothers facing emotional challenge and at a societal level of a country coming to terms with the horrors of a civil war still raw and recent. Except for the final sequences, the dialogue is constant so there are a lot of sub-titles but the viewer still needs to savour Almodóvar’s trademark use of vibrant colour.

This is a gay director who loves working with women and giving them strong roles and there is only one significant male character (Israel Elejalde), but he is kindly and has a significant part in both the personal and the political levels of the story.

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