★★★★★

Having heard it described as ‘the perfect film’, I went in to Wes Anderson’s new movie, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ with undeniably high expectations. I was not disappointed. The film tells the story of Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes), a concierge at the magnificent Grand Budapest Hotel. Through his association with one of the elderly guests (the splendid Tilda Swinton), is drawn into a story of murder, family feuding and fine art, with the result that he and his devoted lobby boy Zero resort to series of increasingly madcap capers across the borders of Europe to ensure his safety.

It is an unbelievably precise film, in all its facets. As usual, Anderson’s film-making highlights rather than minimises the artifice inherent in all films. Rather than creating something and positing it as natural, Anderson carefully constructs shots in which every piece of furniture is arranged at a perfect right angle, in which the scenery, the architecture, the decoration is made up of endless squares and rectangles. Frames are composed with precise symmetry and there are countless shots of men walking right down the centre of exactly square corridors. But unlike in some of his previous films, here Anderson never gets too caught up in his own cleverness: it always exists to add to both the comedy and the drama, rather than detract from it.

Furthermore these features function thematically as well as stylistically, for among other things, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ is about storytelling, about creating universes. There are frames, within frames, within frames, as a young girl visits a memorial to an author, who introduces via video a memory of his younger self, who meets a man at the hotel, who eventually gets down to the business of telling Gustave’s story. Each frame is shot in a different aspect ratio, an interesting touch, and one which carries the implication of the changing perspective, even changing universe, that accompanies the change in narrator. Anderson even implies that the hero, M. Gustave himself, is a creator of universes, just as are those who tell his story. We are told that “His world had vanished before he even entered it” and he is shown this world up for his guests, arranging flowers, furniture, and amorous encounters all with the same dedication, just as one might imagine Anderson might have set up each frame of the film. It is an extremely self-reflexive work, and therein lies at least part of its power of enchantment.

Fiennes delivers a performance which demonstrates previously untapped comedic potential, a far cry from the brooding, tortured characters of his resume, and yet no less accomplished. His characterisation is delicate, without ever becoming fussy, detailed without losing emotional depth. The honesty that both he and Tony Revolori bring to the relationship between Gustave and Zero is the solid foundation upon which all Anderson’s whimsy can be safely placed. Also commendable are William Defoe’s unnerving and ferocious villain, Saoirse Ronan’s enchanting turn as a baker’s assistant, and an understated performance by Jude Law. It’s an impressive cast, and the acting here pulls no punches.

Perhaps most importantly the film is undeniably hilarious. It is a perfectly pitched comedy, that had me chuckling more than anything else I’ve seen recently, and yet was still suspenseful, and edged with both darkness and loss. The film conveys nostalgia without kitsch, mainly because of the success, in his role in one of the framing narratives, of F. Murray Abraham in connecting that nostalgia to a very sincere sense of personal sadness and grief. It was undoubtedly a tour de force, and if you miss it then I am absolutely certain that you will be missing out.

Just a postscript though: it is perhaps worth looking at the poster for this film, if you do you’ll notice that it’s rows and rows of pictures of the rather extraordinary cast. Out of the seventeen faces, only three are women.  

★★★☆☆
Three Stars

‘Under the Skin’ is a difficult film to review. It goes against so many cinematic norms that you begin to wonder whether it’s really appropriate to judge the film by any of the normal standards. Generally you tend to judge art films by how well they capture or evoke some aspect of what (in very high flown terms) it means to be human. Well, ‘Under the Skin’ seems to invert that whole notion; it is a film about what it means not to be human. On every level the film seems calculated to deny any kind of humanising impulse, to make the viewing experience truly ‘alien’.

The film begins with several minutes of mysterious concentric circles moving ominously to a strange backing track, you guess they are planets aligning or parts of a machine slotting into place; only to discover that you have in fact been watching the formation of an eye. It’s a neat synecdoche for what the film does as a whole, make deeply strange the seemingly ordinary and human. Throughout the rest of the film we are forced to some extent to see our world through the eyes of Scarlet Johansson’s alien.

The film was shot on the streets of Glasgow with specially made, hidden cameras; many of the shots look like something out of a BBC News segment and many of her interactions are with ordinary Glaswegians, unaware at the time that they are being filmed. Yet, the way it is all cut together and structured gives a very strange perspective to this ‘hyper-realist’ footage. There is nothing in the way of a plot for the viewer to grab onto, no sense that her actions are leading up to anything. We just watch her drive aimlessly around Glasgow in her white van, flirting with random men and occasionally managing to bring them back to her lair and convert them into food.

She meets so many men, and each disappears from the screen within such a short period of time, that we are denied real insight and the chance of empathy. This has a dehumanising effect, we begin to see these ordinary people in the same detached manner as the alien. Their deaths don’t seem especially tragic because the film has strenuously avoided extending our sympathies. The alien is herself an enigma, with Johansson conveying a real sense of something unfathomable hiding just under the skin. We just watch on, intrigued but coldly distanced, unable to empathise with what is going on in front of us; a case of ‘Verfremdungseffekt/Alienation’ if ever there was one. Towards the end the film moves into more empathetic terrain with scenes involving Johansson contemplating her naked body in the mirror or choosing not to kill a deformed man she seems to show kindness to. Still, any insight remains oblique in the extreme, and it is clear by the end that we have gained as little understanding of this alien as she has of humanity.

Presumably you’re reading this review to find out whether this is a film you’re going to enjoy watching. To be honest, I’m not sure ‘enjoy’ is the right word to describe the experience of watching this film. It was definitely very interesting, but it is also such a deliberately alienating experience that emotionally it feels rather muted. Certainly anyone just looking for the “tits n’ terror” that the setup seems to promise will be pretty disappointed, the seduction scenes are purposefully mechanical and unerotic while throughout there is very little in the way of suspense.

Still, it is a hugely innovative work made in a time of deep rooted conservatism and stasis in the film industry. It represents a fully formed and ambitious artistic statement, and I think ultimately deserves your support. There is a hauntingly austere beauty to it, the likes of which I’ve never seen before. Many of its images will stay with you for days.

★★★★★

Marie has not seen her husband Ahmed for four years. At the airport, on the other side of a glass wall, she smiles and waves at him with a bandaged hand. At first he does not see her, and in the moments that follow, we perceive feelings of trepidation behind her smiling mask. She checks herself, and begins to wave with the other hand. It is difficult to tell what both of them really feel upon seeing each other after so long, and Ahmed struggles as they try to communicate through the glass, smiling guardedly at each other. 

This is, as we discover, only the first of the difficulties these characters will have in trying to communicate. Ahmed moved to Iran after he and his wife separated, and Marie has now asked him to come to Paris in order to finalise their divorce. Marie is currently in a relationship with Samir, a dry-cleaner working nearby, and he and his young son Fouad have moved in with Marie and her children – Lucie (who has recently started causing problems for her mother) and her younger sister Léa. Marie has failed to tell Ahmed this, and has not booked Ahmed a hotel, instead insisting that he stay with them, so that he can talk to Lucie and try to find out what is wrong with her. We discover that Marie asked him to come once before to Paris in order to settle the divorce, a journey which he cancelled. Ahmed, in turn, feels awkward about having to share a room with another man’s son, and about the changes that are in the process of being made in the house where he used to live with Marie (the characters literally have to mind how they step, for fear of disturbing the paint). These details are only preliminary, and may not, you might think, be very important to the development of the plot. And yet they are established so carefully, so early in the film, to set up a delicate atmosphere of emotional tension, providing the basis for the drama that slowly ensues. 

I find it frightening to think how long it would have taken for Asghar Farhadi’s films to reach a UK audience had he not won the Golden Bear in 2011 for ‘A Separation’. Only now are his previous films being released. ‘About Elly’ was arrived in UK cinemas, … years after its international premiere, and ‘Fireworks Wednesday’ has only very recently followed it; there are still more to come. At a time when even some of the best films subjugate their characters and plots to predictable formulas, Farhadi’s films are a marvel. 

Lesser directors handling this sort of material would throw in the towel relatively early on, falling back on formulaic sentiment and easy catharsis in order to manipulate the audience’s emotions. Farhadi cares too much about his characters for that kind of cop-out, and this is perhaps why I am convinced that he is incapable of making a terrible film. All of his films are technically accomplished, and yet the cinematography never draws attention to itself. Even the weather in this film is usually overcast – punctuated by sudden downpours (providing obvious analogies with the development of the plot itself). Farhadi combines the technical ability of Hitchcock with the close observation and cultural awareness of the Japanese masters, Ozu and Mizoguchi. It is a unique hybrid. 

They are all slow-burning character pieces, establishing characters and their relationships very carefully, before something terrible occurs and the tensions within those relationships rear their ugly heads with renewed force. ‘The Past’ may very well be Farhadi’s most sophisticated creation, particularly in terms of writing. It differs from his previous work insofar as the monumental event which so much of the tension ostensibly revolves around happened (you guessed it) in the past. The audience, importantly, never see it. The major undercurrents of tension, therefore, have already been in play long before the film begins, and it is Ahmed’s arrival for what should be a perfunctory signing of papers which causes these tensions to come to the surface. 

I say it is important that the past event in question is never seen. Truth and guilt are major themes in all of Farhadi’s work, and the complexities surrounding these themes arise from subjective distortions of the truth. The emotions of his characters are buried, and only come to light peace-meal throughout his films – and even then, we can never be completely sure of them. This kind of film-making requires a strong cast – you may see films of Farhadi’s that are worse comparatively than others, but you will never see a badly-acted film with his name attached. The three leads here – Bérénice Bejo, Tahar Rahim and Ali Mosaffa – all put in brilliantly restrained performances; when their tempers flare, the result is gut-wrenching. Bejo in particular puts in her finest performance to date, deservedly winning Best Actress at Cannes last year. The children are equally mesmeric – Elyes Aguis often steals the show as Fouad, a conflicted and vulnerable young boy. 

At the end of his films, little is resolved. What truths the characters know are revealed, but Farhadi is wise about truth and morality. Truth can only be taken so far before we begin to hit murky grey areas. His characters get themselves into complicated moral entanglements, and Farhadi does not judge or try to help them – he observes, and then leaves it up to us to make sense of where we stand. One of the difficulties his characters face in this film lies in trying to deduce what a person felt at a specific moment in their past, as their guilt festers well into the present. The final scene may hint at an answer to some of our questions, but what it will mean for the characters remains ambiguous.