Stoker

Stoker

The family that preys together…

Unarguably one of the most interesting and acclaimed filmmakers working in cinema today, expectations for South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s English-language debut, Stoker, have been practically stratospheric.  Working from a blisteringly hot spec script by actor Wentworth Miller (TV’s Prison Break), Park has crafted a sly, twisted, sexy, adult fairytale that’s every bit as good as you hoped it’d be, rivalling the best of his Korean films.

When India’s (Mia Waskowska) father Richard (a flashback-confined Dermot Mulroney) is killed in a horrific car accident on her 18^th birthday, her quiet, idyllic life is irrevocably changed.  A sensitive, sombre, solitary Wednesday Addams-like girl who shared a special bond with her father, India is far from pleased when her emotionally unstable mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) invites her uncle, Richard’s long-lost, globe-trotting brother, Charlie (Matthew Goode) to stay at the house for a while. 

Charming, urbane and mysterious, Uncle Charlie instantly arouses India’s suspicions but, as he ingratiates himself into her life, she finds herself strangely drawn to him.  As Charlie slowly reveals their shared nature to her and long-buried family secrets are uncovered, India becomes increasingly infatuated with him, her blossoming sexuality the catalyst that will tear the family apart.

A dreamy, erotic Southern Gothic fairytale that slyly nods to Hitchcock’s classic Shadow Of A Doubt, Stoker is a bubbling soup of lust, jealousy, murder and burgeoning sexuality that you’ll find as fascinating and discomfiting as India finds Charlie.  Psychosexual imagery permeates every frame, the film is thick with erotic tension; blood drips from the point of a pencil, the protective shell of a flawless hard-boiled egg is crushed and picked clean, a spider creeps up a teenaged girl’s stockinged leg, uncle and niece share a piano recital (specifically composed by Philip Glass) that’s just plain wrong!  If Stoker is indeed a fairytale with Evelyn as wicked stepmother and India a mix of Cinderella, Rapunzel and Alice in Wonderland, then Charlie is both Prince Charming the Big Bad Wolf, as likely to eat India right up as he is to save her.  In fact, there’s an almost Biblical slant to Park’s queasy goings on with India as Eve searching for truth, the estate a metaphorical Eden which she must outgrow and Charlie both the serpent and the apple, tempting, seducing India with knowledge.

The film is lushly, beautifully shot, Park’s precise off-kilter compositions show his usual visual flair and scenes are choreographed almost like a waltz, creating a breathless, dreamlike atmosphere that gets under your skin.  India’s world is a self-contained, insular one where people are constantly observed, usually by India herself.  It’s an incestuous hotbed that lacks only outright incest and the closer she gets to Uncle Charlie, the closer that seems to come.

As Evelyn, Nicole Kidman gives her best performance in years (possibly ever), a passive/aggressive ice queen slowly unravelling, seemingly possessed by the unquiet spirit of Joan Crawford, she’s a nervy, neurotic, fading beauty, needy and resentful of the daughter she loves but will never understand, near the film’s climax bitterly spitting at her impassive daughter: "I can't wait to watch life tear you apart."  Matthew Goode meanwhile plays Uncle Charlie with lupine menace, his lazy charm and preppy, anodyne good looks perfectly suited to the smooth monster.  The film belongs however to Mia Wasikowska.  So long the best thing in mediocre films (Restless, Lawless, Tim Burton’s norovirus-bad Alice In Wonderland), you can’t take your eyes off her, she’s a carefully contained, poised hurricane of carnal appetites, dark desires and homicidal violence.  

A moody, psychosexual horror movie that’s beautiful, bold and perversely erotic, Stoker is the movie that you wished you could have taken that 20-year-old Goth chick you dated in college to.            

David Watson

Directed by:

Park Chan-wook

Written by:

Wentworth Miller

Produced by:

Michael Costigan, Ridley Scott and Tony Scott

Starring:

Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, Dermot Mulroney, Matthew Goode, Lucas Till and Jacki Weaver

Genres:

Drama, Horror, Thriller

Language:

English

Runtime:

1 hour 38 minutes

Certificate:

18

Rating:

5/5

UK Cinema Release Date:

Friday 1^st March

Citadel

Citadel

High-rise horror

Shy, timid Tommy’s (Aneurin Barnard) life falls apart when his heavily pregnant wife is attacked in the hallway of his decaying apartment block by a gang of hooded, viciously feral children.  Traumatised by his wife’s death and suffering from agoraphobia, Tommy struggles to care for his newborn daughter alone, spends his days either hiding out indoors or attending intensive group therapy sessions designed to rebuild his confidence and allow him the semblance of a normal life.

Crippled by his own paralysing fear and still terrorised by the faceless, possibly supernatural, gang, Tommy’s life is a living hell.  But the gang have plans for him, are seemingly intent on kidnapping his infant daughter.  With the aid of a vigilante (possibly insane) priest (James Cosmo) who’s convinced the gang are actual monsters and a blind child (Jake Wilson) who may have special powers, Tommy is forced to venture into the dark heart of evil and face his fears if he wants to save his baby and himself.

Partially inspired, apparently, by a violent street attack writer/director Ciaran Foy suffered (though it also bears more than a passing resemblance to Philip Ridley’s sublime urban horror Heartless), Citadel, with its inner city decay, cowering underclass and sub-human, goblin-like hoodies preying on pregnant women and babies, is practically a Daily Mail editorial set to celluloid.  Set in a nightmarish, fairytale world that could be anywhere in the British Isles - think it’s supposed to be somewhere in Ireland but it’s obviously been shot in Glasgow with mostly English actors (barring a scenery-chewing James Cosmo) and a Welsh hero - the lack of a clear sense of place actually aids Citadel, adding to the film’s sense of desolate isolation and its sense of dislocation. 

While the politics of the film are muddy and feel a little middle class reactionary - the poor here are another species entirely and things don’t go well for the nice liberal nurse (Wunmi Mosaku) who thinks all the hoodies need is a hug - leaving a bad taste in the mouth, Foy certainly knows what he’s doing visually, building a palpable sense of atmospheric dread, a world of dark tunnels, sickly green corridors and roaming packs of shadowy, feral figures.  And lets be honest, few things are scarier than a half-glimpsed figure in the shadows at the end of the corridor before you.

As Tommy, Aneurin Barnard is a frustratingly impotent, passive protagonist.  Yes, Ciaran, we know getting mugged isn’t pleasant but you gotta get back up on the horse, son.  Could your hero maybe grow a pair at some point?  This isn’t helped by Barnard, with his mop of black curls and big soulful emo eyes looking like the kind of pretty hobbit that, if you absolutely had to do time, you’d want as your cellmate.  Cosmo meanwhile, as the vigilante priest, seems to be channeling a gakked up version of his character from Braveheart, cracking skulls, chewing the scenery and improvising explosives like he’s just graduated from the Provisional wing of the Jesuits.

Creepy and ambiguous, right up until it isn’t, Citadel is a dark, tense little horror flick that’s undeniably gripping even if all you can think the whole way through is WHY DIDN’T TOMMY AND HIS WIFE JUST GET THE SAME ELEVATOR AT THE START?  It would’ve saved the poor lad a lot of heartache and maybe made sense.

David Watson

Directed by:

Ciaran Foy

Written by:

Ciaran Foy

Produced by:

Brian Coffey and Katie Holly

Starring:

Aneurin Barnard, James Cosmo, Wunmi Mosaku, Jake Wilson and Amy Shiels

Genres:

Drama, Horror, Thriller

Language:

English

Runtime:

1 hour 25 minutes

Certificate:

18

Rating:

3/5

UK Cinema Release Date:

Friday 1^st March

Caesar Must Die (Cesare deve morire)

Caesar Must Die (Cesare deve morire)

Bard to the bone

Winner of the 2012 Golden Bear at Berlin, Caesar Must Die sees the now eighty-something Taviani Brothers slip behind bars to blur the boundaries between drama and documentary to give us a radical and poignant interpretation of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Set behind the walls of Rome’s Rebibbia Prison’s High Security Unit, Caesar Must Die is a beautiful, transcendent piece of cinema that’s at once an examination of the themes that permeate Shakespeare’s play and a study of the transformative power of art.  Having attended a reading of Dante’s The Divine Comedy performed by inmates of Rebibbia Prison’s Theatre Lab, the Tavianis approached the group’s director, Fabio Cavalli, and suggested collaborating on the group’s production of Julius Caesar.

Working with a cast made up predominately of inmates with ties to the Mafia and the Camorra (some of whom are lifers, all of whom are serving long sentences) for whom the play’s themes of friendship, loyalty, betrayal, treachery and assassination have special resonance, the Tavianis shoot, in stark black and white, the audition and intense rehearsal process as the actors work through the text to find the play before they stage it in the prison’s refurbished theatre, scenes shot in vibrant, eye-popping colour.

The film’s rogue’s gallery of actors are wonderful.  As Caesar, burly convicted drug trafficker Giovanni Arcuri brings a swaggering, thuggish sense of entitlement to the role, Antonio Frasca’s Mark Antony is a robust force of retribution his fantastic performance of Caesar’s funeral oration, alone in the prison exercise yard, perhaps the film’s most stunning scene, while Salvatore Striano (now a professional actor on the outside) is a tortured, conflicted Brutus, lifer (and author) Cosimo Rega a commanding, honourable Cassius who poignantly comments: “Since I have discovered art, this cell has turned into a prison.”

Raw and powerful, Caesar Must Die is a fascinating, thrilling collision between soul-stirring art and harsh reality.        

David Watson

Directed by:

Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani

Written by:

William Shakespeare, Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani

Produced by:

Grazia Volpi

Starring:

Cosimo Rega, Salvatore Striano, Giovanni Arcuri, Antonio Frasca, Juan Dario Bonetti and Vincenzo Gallo

Genre:

Documentary, Drama

Language:

Italian

Runtime:

1 hour 16 minutes

Certificate:

12a

Rating:

4/5

UK Cinema Release Date:

Friday 1^st March

Broken City

Broken City

Rotten Big Apple

After the dodgy shooting of a murdering rapist, disgraced Noo Yawk cop Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg) beats the rap but finds himself drummed out of the police force and goes to work as a sleazy private eye (is there any other kind?) catching adulterers in the act for chump change. 

Flash forward a couple of years and the Big Apple’s gruff, charismatic, Giuliani-esque mayor, Nick Hostetler (Russell Crowe), calls in a favour and hires Billy to tail his wife Cathleen (Catherine Zeta-Jones).  Convinced his wife is having an affair and, with the mayoral elections in less than a week and his liberal rival Jack Valliant (Barry Pepper) doing well in the polls, Hostetler wants to know where his wife’s been sleeping and who with. 

But Billy’s investigations uncover a web of corruption and murder and bring him to the attention of Hostetler’s ambitious, Machiavellian police chief Carl Fairbanks (Jeffrey Wright).  Out of his depth and unsure who to trust, Billy finds himself a pawn in a deadly behind-the-scenes electoral battle with billions of dollars and the future of the city at stake.

An old-fashioned tale of dodgy deals and double crosses, as neo-noirs go Allen Hughes’ slick, pulpy Broken City sure isn’t Chinatown but it’ll do for now.  A refreshingly murky wallow in the corrupt cesspool of big city politics with a cast of believably morally compromised characters, Hughes’ film bears something of a debt to the tight urban thrillers of Sidney Lumet, films like Serpico, Prince Of The City and Q&A, while his direction is as bold and muscular as the films (Menace II Society, From Hell, The Book Of Eli) he made with twin brother Albert.  The script by first-time screenwriter Brian Tucker is far from original, every cliché in the film noir canon is present and correct (shady cops, duplicitous dames, corrupt politicians, dodgy businessman, tarnished hero, several MacGuffins), there’s nothing particularly new or original here, but the film is nimble enough not to get bogged down and Tucker’s funny, profane dialogue sings. 

The characters are familiar but fun and the classy A-list cast are obviously having a ball.  Mark Wahlberg’s Billy is the latest in a tradition of none-too-bright, morally compromised private eye heroes in film noir that dates back to the likes of Robert Mitchum in Out Of The Past, Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly and even Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.  Hell, even Bogart’s Sam Spade wasn’t always sure what was going on.  Playing to his strengths, Wahlberg spends much of the film confused and blundering around in the dark, a pawn of more savvy players, but he’s never less than charismatic and there’s never much doubt that his wisecracking tough guy will eventually do the right thing.  Both Jeffrey Wright and Russell Crowe seem to relish their roles, Crowe’s bullish demagogue the slickest shark in the pond, Wright’s ambiguous police chief an almost Mephistophelian string-puller.  Barry Pepper (Seriously?  You called the good guy politico Jack Valliant?  Come on guys…) and Kyle Chandler are also strong, if a little bland, as Crowe’s more morally upright opponents, Zeta-Jones brings sophistication and glamour to Crowe’s errant missus but the brightest spark of the movie is Alona Tal who’s a suitably feisty noir secretary to Wahlberg’s private dick.

Like its hero, Broken City is never quite as smart as it thinks it is but it’s a dark, entertaining, twisty slice of modern noir.          

David Watson

Directed by:

Allen Hughes

Written by:

Brian Tucker

Produced by:

Randall Emmett, George Furla, Allen Hughes, Stephen Levinson, Teddy Schwarzman, Mark Wahlberg, Arnon Milchan and Remington Chase

Starring:

Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Jeffrey Wright, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Barry Pepper, Kyle Chandler, Alona Tal and Justin Chambers

Genres:

Crime, Drama, Thriller

Language:

English

Runtime:

1 hour 49 minutes

Certificate:

15

Rating:

4/5

UK Cinema Release Date:

Friday 1^st March

A Song For Marion

A Song For Marion

Bum note

Grumpy, cantankerous pensioner Arthur (Terence Stamp) cares for his terminally ill wife Marion (Vanessa Redgrave), resentfully tolerating her involvement with a local senior citizens choir, the hilariously monickered OAPZ, led by vivacious music teacher Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton) who encourages the loveable old codgers to sing contemporary pop songs.

A proud, unforgiving man, Arthur has few friends and is estranged from his son James (Christopher Eccleston), his solitary world revolving solely around Marion.  When she dies, Arthur is devastated.  Lonely, forced to reevaluate his curmudgeonly outlook on life and encouraged by the caring Elizabeth, Arthur grudgingly joins the choir and finds himself slowly drawn out of his shell.  But, with a not at all clichéd last act national choir competition looming, can Arthur reconnect with his alienated son and rebuild their broken relationship before it’s too late?  Take a wild guess…

Back in 2006, writer/director Paul Andrew Williams exploded onto the UK film scene with the ferocious social realist crime thriller London To Brighton.  A dark, violent tale of prostitution, child abuse and redemption, the film announced a bold, visionary new talent who was swiftly anointed the latest saviour of British cinema.  Everyone wondered what he would do next. 

What he did next was 2008’s gory, blood spattered comic horror The Cottage a film that essentially charts your average weekend break in Suffolk as Reece Shearsmith, Jennifer Ellison and Gollum are forced to battle rural inbreds for survival.  Everyone kinda scratched their heads, mumbled and shuffled their feet a bit because it wasn’t as good as London To Brighton and was kinda derivative and just a bit, well, inconsequential.  But, at least it was still bold. 

Williams followed The Cottage up with Cherry Tree Lane, a dark, violent but ultimately disappointing home invasion thriller about a nice middle-class couple being terrorised by some hoodies.  A comment on Broken Britain’s underclass that felt like it had been ripped from the rabid pages of the Daily Mail, the best thing about Cherry Tree Lane was the sly reference to Mary Poppins in its title, Cherry Tree Lane of course being the idealised street in the film that the Banks family live on. 

Given Williams’ track record then, you could be forgiven for expecting that his tale of Terence Stamp’s widower finding solace in his friendship with choir mistress Gemma Arterton and joining her old biddies in the big choir contest might be a darker affair.  That maybe (hopefully!) Stamp might flip and rampage through the choir with a straight razor, saving everyone a trip to Dignitas.  Or go a bit Harry Brown and take out those kids hanging around outside the community centre.  Or maybe get over his grief by brutally punting Gemma Arterton from behind after forcing her to wear his dead wife’s clothes, his face a twisted rictus of hate and rage as he roars “Tell them I’m coming,” like he does in that warehouse scene in The Limey.

Unfortunately, none of these things occur.  Though good luck getting that image of Gemma in a dead woman’s clothes out of your head.  A tedious, cynical exercise in trying to capture that Silver Surfer audience who made The Exotic Marigold Hotel such a hit, A Song For Marion couldn’t be more blatant about the audience it’s going after if it laid a trail of Werther’s Originals right up to the box office.    

The resulting film is cringeworthy and the only person to blame unfortunately is writer/director Williams.  A thumpingly obvious, feelgood, underdog story where the only way you’ll feel good is if someone took the dog out from under and shot it in the head, A Song For Marion is every bit as clichéd and predictable as you could possibly conceive.  From the first moment we see a miserable, grumpy Stamp stamping around like Victor Meldrew, we know he’ll find redemption and acceptance by embracing life and leading the choir to victory.  We know from the first scene between him and estranged son Eccleston, they’ll eventually reconcile.  We know one of the senior ladies will be a randy, aging sexpot simply to give the wonderful Anne Reid the chance to make some HRT jokes like she did on Victoria Woods’ dinnerladies.  We know despite being more Born To Be Mild than Wild that these kerrr-razy old codgers will rock the reluctant Arthur’s world.  We know they’ll sing wildly inappropriate songs like Salt-n-Pepa’s Let’s Talk About Sex because, tee hee, wrinklies talking about S-E-X is funny.  And we know they’ll dress all street like today’s yoot coz blood there’s nuttin funnier than your granddad in a backwards baseball cap and shades.  The only surprise in the film is that Eccleston and Arterton don’t end up getting together.

The performances are fine for the most part, Stamp going through the motions like a pro while Arterton and Eccleston are good but under utilised.  The old duffers are annoying and corny but it’s hardly their fault, they’re not given anything in particular to do other than sing a few pop songs and get on and off a bus.  None of them are really differentiated as characters; they’re just one amorphous grey blob of choir.  The real revelation however is Vanessa Redgrave who hasn’t been quite this bad since 1971’s Mary, Queen Of Scots where her Scots accent encouraged you to look forward to her decapitation with glee and made Dick Van Dyke’s Cockernee turn in Mary Poppins sound as authentic as Barbara Windsor’s.  It’s a horrible statement to make but she just can’t die quickly enough from cancer.  In this film obviously.

A nauseating slice of sentimentality that fails principally because you don’t care about ANY of the characters, perhaps the most depressing thing about A Song For Marion isn’t the money, time and talent Williams has wasted but that Celine Dion warbles over the credits and it feels entirely fitting.

David Watson

Directed by:

Paul Andrew Williams

Written by:

Paul Andrew Williams

Produced by:

Ken Marshall and Philip Moross

Starring:

Gemma Arterton, Christopher Eccleston, Vanessa Redgrave, Terence Stamp, Anne Reid and Calita Rainford

Genres:

Comedy, Drama

Language:

English

Runtime:

1 hour 33 minutes

Certificate:

PG

Rating:

1/5

UK Cinema Release Date:

Friday 22^nd February

Mama

Mama

Ghostly Supernanny

Expanded to feature-length from his own three-minute short of the same name by director Andrés Muschietti, Mama is the latest film to be championed by horror maestro and executive producer Guillermo del Toro.  

At the onset of the financial crisis, struggling businessman Jeffrey (Game Of Thrones’ hottie Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) snaps, killing his business partners and estranged wife before kidnapping his two young daughters, 3-year-old Victoria and 1-year-old Lilly. 

Speeding along a snowy road, Jeffrey loses control and skids off into the woods, crashing into a snowdrift.  Staggering from the wreckage of his car, Jeffrey and the children take refuge in an abandoned cabin and after building a fire, Jeffrey prepares to kill the girls and himself.  But, as he’s about to shoot the girls, a barely glimpsed figure tears Jeffrey from the cabin, breaking his neck.  That night, as the girls huddle together by the fire, the mysterious figure returns, rolling cherries across the floor to the hungry children.

Five years later, we’re still stuck in recession and the girls’ uncle, Jeffrey’s artist brother Lucas (Coster-Waldau again) is still hunting for his missing nieces, employing local hunters to search for them.  Just as his money is running out, Lucas’ search team discover the girls living ferally in the woods.  Attempting to domesticate them with the aid of psychiatrist Dr Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), Lucas and his punk/goth girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain) become increasingly disturbed by the childrens’ fascination with the imaginary friend they call “Mama.”  But Mama is far from a fantasy and as the brusque, cynical Annabel slowly bonds with the girls, Mama gets very jealous…

There’s few things scarier than a creepy kid movie.  Whether it’s that boy with the bag on his head in The Orphanage, those Aryan aliens from Village Of The Damned, that spooky little psychic kid and the dead twins from The Shining or the Antichrist himself in The Omen, kids in horror movies are just freaky.  Scuttling around on all fours, filthy, unkempt, their hair matted, jabbering in their own private language, the feral girls of Mama are so unsettling it’s almost a disappointment when they’re returned to society and all too quickly civilised making way for what is a fairly clichéd but entertaining ghost story.  Eschewing the blood, guts and gore of most modern horrors and relying instead on the occasional old-fashioned “It’s behind you!” shock and some genuinely chilling images, Mama is an atmospheric little creepfest, a modern adult fairytale complete with a scary wicked stepmother, deep dark woods and two kids in jeapordy.  It just so happens however that the wicked stepmother is a ghost.   

As caring uncle Lucas, Coster-Waldau is charming and sympathetic while the normally bland Oscar nominee Chastain is refreshingly brusque as the heroine who’s far from happy about suddenly being saddled with an instant family.  In fact, as Mama makes her deadly presence felt and Dr Dreyfuss worries that it may be evidence of a dissociative personality disorder on the part of Victoria (Megan Charpentier), Annabel’s first thought is for herself, asking: “Am I safe?” 

Inevitably however, the girls (particularly Victoria) get under Annabel’s skin, thawing her cold heart and awakening her inner maternal instincts and the film is at its best when Chastain and the two girls are warily feeling each other out.  The film belongs however to Charpentier and Isabelle Nélisse and despite the ghostly goings on and the murderous CGI spectre, the creepiest thing in the film is the bestial Nélisse, her unnerving muttered calls for “Mama,” sure to send shivers up your spine.

It may not be the most original horror flick out there but, despite an unsatisfying climax, Mama is still a dark, stylish, entertaining little rollercoaster ride that’s determined to creep you out.

David Watson

Directed by:

Andrés Muschietti

Written by:

Neil Cross, Andrés Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti

Produced by:

J. Miles Dale and Barbara Muschietti

Starring:

Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nélisse, Daniel Kash and Jane Moffat

Genre:

Horror

Language:

English

Runtime:

1 hour 40 minutes

Certificate:

15

Rating:

3/5

UK Cinema Release Date:

Friday 22^nd February

To The Wonder

To The Wonder

French birds…bit nuts, eh?

Bold.

Brave.

Beautiful.

Lyrical.

Soulful.

All terms you’ll see repeated ad infinitum in the next few weeks as critics soak their bibs with drool over Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder.  And, if you want it to be, it is all of these things.  To The Wonder is a hypnotic, sensual, lushly beautiful, spellbinding exploration of love and spirituality that unfolds with the feverish, dreamy intensity of a doomed romance. 

It’s also complete and utter tosh, an hour and 52 minutes of America’s Greatest Living Filmmakerä scratching his beard ruefully while muttering to himself in the barely audible whisper everyone uses in this film: “French birds…bit nuts, eh?”

Parisienne Marina (Olga Kurylenko) and American Mid-Westerner Neil (Ben Affleck) fall ecstatically in love in France and spend their days skipping joyfully through the park hand-in-hand with Marina’s ten-year-old daughter Tatiana (Tatiana Chiline).  After visiting Mont Saint-Michel, where Marina’s voiceover breathily informs us “We climbed the steps to the Wonder,” (apparently not the euphemism it cries out to be), Neil asks Marina and Tatiana to return to the USA with him. 

Once in the USA however the cracks start to show.  The kind of stereotypically kooky free spirit American filmmakers believe all French women to be, Marina, who’s constantly whirling like a dreamy dervish through wheat fields or dancing with mops dans le supermarché (gotta love those kooky French chicks), just doesn’t fit in with the folks back home and she and Tatiana find life tough in rural Oklahoma.  Neil meanwhile seems constantly to be working; an environmental investigator in a town that seems to rely on fracking, he’s not winning many friends in the local community even if tar is bubbling up through their patios, infecting their water and poisoning the earth.  As the relationship falters, Neil encounters and reconnects with old girlfriend Jane (Rachel McAdams), entering into a romance with her when Marina’s visa runs out and she and Tatiana are forced to return to France.

Meanwhile the town’s mournful Catholic priest, Father Quintana (Javier Bardem) looks on ineffectually while suffering his own crisis of faith, his vocation shaken by his lonely inner turmoil and existential melancholy. 

Almost a companion piece to 2011’s The Tree Of Life, which like this was also an extended exercise in Christian-inflected navel-gazing, To The Wonder is both beautiful and aggravating.  You’ll probably read a lot of reviews which will tell you how intelligent and profound it is, that it’s a deeply experimental love story, that it’s not really a movie but more of a visual tone poem. 

Horse pucky.

To The Wonder is the distilled essence of cod-profundity with all the depth of a two-hour Marc Jacobs fragrance commercial that’s likely to appeal most to teenage poets, 20-year-old film students and critics.  Look at Marina dance, she’s such a free spirited European Catholic while Neil can only watch disapproving and perplexed like a stuffy Presbyterian at a key party:  NEIL IS AMERICA!  Look at the pollution bubbling up out of the ground, how can their love took root and grow on poisoned earth?  MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY POISONS LOVE!  Look at Tatiana’s awestruck wonder at the choice and diversity on offer as she and Marina dance around the supermarket: THEY DON’T HAVE SUPERMARKETS IN FRANCE!  Admittedly, that last one is more likely to be a comment on rampant consumerism and the USA’s culture of excess but you get the point. 

The script is sophomoric.  Boy meets girl.  Boy loses girl.  Boy finds other girl.  First girl comes back.  Complications ensue.  Meanwhile local priest looks a bit sad and wonders if God loves him (possibly voicing the audience’s fears or maybe just Malick’s).  That’s really about it.  There’s nothing particularly experimental going on here, you’re not watching Last Year At Marienbad.  There’s no riddle to solve which will impart some deep, profound secret about the nature of love, life and the Universe.  It’s just a fairly conventional narrative with huge chunks of plot missing, a romantic melodrama with most of the drama cut out.  Like most Malick films, the list of those who didn’t make the final cut is longer than the list of those who did.  While he excised completely from The Thin Red Line the likes of Bill Pullman, Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Viggo Mortensen and Mickey Rourke, missing from To The Wonder are Rachel Weisz, Amanda Peet, Barry Pepper, Michael Sheen and Jessica Chastain.  And, if we’re being honest, the contributions of both Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem, not to mention that whole environmental pollution storyline, feel a little, well, truncated, as if Malick merely lost interest in them in favour of shots of Olga Kurylenko dancing with a chicken.  Or a mop. 

There’s little real dialogue (Affleck’s lucky if he gets 10 lines) and what there is, is mostly voiceover; Marina breathlessly ruminating on love in French, Father Quintana’s tortured internal theological debate in whispered Spanish.  There’s a lot of whispering in To The Wonder.  That said the portentousness of the voiceover is aided immensely by being delivered in breathy French by Kurylenko who manages to lend Malick’s high school poetry depth and meaning while the teenaged musings on God and faith benefit from Bardem’s Spanish.  There’s little one can really say about the performances, the actors feel more like movable pieces of very pretty landscape Malick can control:  Gaze into the distance.  Squint into the setting sun.  Look perplexed.  Look soulful.  Laugh.  Caper with that mop.  The male actors in particular are ill-served by Malick.  Affleck is called upon merely to look puzzled and perplexed, like someone who’s just passed gas and is wondering if they’ve accidentally soiled themselves, while Bardem’s performance is reminiscent of one of those depressed lions you see at the zoo who dimly remembers the veldt but knows he’s never going back.  Kurylenko and McAdams at least manage to hint at the performances they may have given; Kurylenko is a sensuous, vibrant presence you ache for when she’s not on screen, McAdams a vulnerable, wounded creature you ache for when she is.  It’s unfortunate that the only performer who matters is Malick.

Ultimately, for all its meditating on the nature of love and romance, the deepest question is one To The Wonder fails to ask: If you’d snagged Olga Kurylenko and were blissfully happy in Paris, why the Hell would you move to Oklahoma?  But then, given that Malick was an American living in France who married a French woman (degree of kookiness unspecified) and dragged her back to live in Oklahoma only for the relationship to break up and for him to then marry his alleged high school girlfriend, well, maybe To The Wonder is just free therapy for Malick, the cinematic equivalent of a Taylor Swift or Adele song.

And yet…

To The Wonder is undeniably, breathtakingly beautiful.  It’s gorgeous to look at.  Kurylenko is captivating.  Scenes unfold with the hallucinatory, half-remembered intensity of a fever dream that take root in your memory.  It’s quiet.  It’s a film that gives you the space and distance for reflection, something rare indeed in modern cinema.  It’s unfortunate then that, upon reflection, there’s no real satisfying emotional or intellectual substance to the film.  But damn, is it pretty! 

David Watson

Written and Directed by:

Terrence Malick

Produced by:

Nicolas Gonda and Sarah Green

Starring:

Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem & Rachel McAdams

Genre:

Arthouse Romantic Drama

Language:

English/French/Spanish/Italian

Runtime:

112 minutes

Certificate:

12a

Rating:

3/5

UK Cinema Release Date:

Friday 22^nd February