Review: The Favourite (2018)

* * * *
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone

Most movies are lucky if they feature one really great role for an actress. Yorgos Lantimos' latest, The Favourite, can boast of having three. It's a delight that is nearly unheard of. Setting its action at the court of Queen Anne (played with entertaining petulance by Olivia Colman), The Favorite is all about the dangerous game of social dominance and power, of how leverage can be useful only insofar as someone knows how to use it properly, of how one might not even realize that they were gambling until they see how badly they've overplayed their hand. It's a dark comedy about two ruthless women, one of whom tells the other, "We'll make a killer of you yet" and lives to regret it when she sees just how good the other is at the game. It's fantastic.

Review: Disobedience (2018)

* * *
Director: Sebastian Lelio
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, Alessandro Nivola

The promotional materials for Disobedience heavily emphasize the relationship between the characters played by Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. While that relationship is most certainly a key element of the story, it isn't really what the film is about, but I suppose it's easier to sell a tale of forbidden love than it is a story about people living in a strict religious community being faced with the choice of adhering to the limiting confines of the religions teachings or being expelled entirely. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Naomi Alderman and directed by Sebastian Lelio (whose A Fantastic Woman won this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar), Disobedience is a carefully observed film about the struggle between the desire to be and the desire to belong and features great performances by its two Rachels.

Review: My Cousin Rachel (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: Roger Michell
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Sam Claflin

Did she or didn't she? That's the question at the heart of My Cousin Rachel, an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel of the same name. An ambiguous story about a woman who may, but may not, be a fortune hunter of such ruthless determination that even murder is not beyond her, My Cousin Rachel seems like a film that's bound to divide. Fascinating and frustrating in almost equal measure, largely as a result of the airless quality of Roger Michell's direction, it's not a movie that will win over anyone who isn't already inclined to enjoy a handsome period piece. However, if you're a fan of Rachel Weisz (and why wouldn't you be? She's one of the contemporary greats), then this is a must-see because she's truly wonderful here, alternately delightful and sinister, a woman who could conceivably be the vile temptress her reputation suggests or an innocent wrongly accused.

Review: The Lobster (2016)

* * * *
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz

Having seen Yorgos Lanthimos' Oscar nominated 2009 film Dogtooth, and having a general idea of what this film is about, I was prepared for The Lobster to be weird. I don't think anything could really have prepared me for how sublimely bonkers it actually is. I'm not sure anything I could say about it could properly express just how bizarre and funny it is. Allow me to say this: the premise, in which the characters live in a world that demands that all adults be romantically paired and where anyone who finds themselves single must find a new partner within 45 days or be surgically transformed into an animal, turns out to be the most normal thing about it.

Review: The Deep Blue Sea (2012)

* * * 1/2 Director: Terence Davies
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston

Despite the fact that not much else was playing at the time, I had avoided The Deep Blue Sea when it was in theaters because a cursory look at its plot made it sound similar to The End of the Affair, the 1999 film starring Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes, which managed to be approximately a million years long despite having a runtime of only 120 minutes. Appearances can be deceiving, however, because The Deep Blue Sea is really very little like that film and is in fact a deeply engrossing drama anchored by one of the finest performances I've seen all year. It's also gorgeously photographed, which leaves me kicking myself for having missed the chance to see it on the big screen. Lesson learned.

Review: The Lovely Bones (2009)

* * 1/2
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Saorise Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz

With the crash and burn that was one-time hopeful Amelia's release now a distant memory, it seems that The Lovely Bones has officially usurped the title of Awards Season Punching Bag. There has to be one every year. Is it deserving of the amount of vitriol it seems to have inspired? No, but in a sense I can understand where all that is coming from because it's such a mixed bag of a film. Parts of it are absolutely glorious and others just don't work at all - I can't remember the last time I left a film feeling so divided about it.

The Lovely Bones tells the story of Susie Salmon (Saorise Ronan), who at 14 is raped and murdered. The film works its way up to that event, first taking time to establish the relationships that will be severed and damaged by her loss. Although there are some underlying tensions in her family - her parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) love each other but have grown apart, and Susie is in the midst of that particularly dramatic stage of adolescence defined largely by awkwardness and unprovoked hostility (I remember it well) - it's a close knit group and, in a general way, happy.

One evening Susie walks home alone and is lured into a trap by Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci), one of her neighbors, and never seen again. Her father becomes obsessed with tracking down various leads, some of which he's invented; her mother deals with it by not dealing with it at all; her grandmother (Susan Sarandon) tries to breathe life back into the household; and her sister Lindsay (Rose McIver) becomes increasingly suspicious about Mr. Harvey's behavior. Meanwhile, from a place in between heaven and earth, Susie watches over them and in some instances tries to guide them towards the truth about her murder.

I should preface this by saying that I've never read The Lovely Bones, but from what I understand it's more an exploration of how the Salmon family deals with their grief rather than a thriller about bringing a killer to justice, which is what the film version is more than anything else. In certain respects it works as a thriller - the scene in which Lindsay breaks into Harvey's house is particularly taut and effective - but, at the same time, it shifts the story's focus, taking it away from the victim and giving it to the killer. I think that that's the primary reason why the scenes in the in-between place fail to resonate as deeply as they should. Of course, there's also the fact that the afterlife is made to look like a glossy, candy colored, CGI explosion, but I think that this visual aesthetic could have worked if the story was constructed differently. One of my favourite scenes actually takes place in that CGI paradise as Susie watches a series of ships in bottles (like the ones she used to make with her father) crash against each other and the rocks of the shore. However, as beautifully realized as the imagery in the scene is, it's ultimately not very meaningful because by reducing Susie to a glorified secondary character, the film leaves itself with nothing to anchor the story.

The film is at its strongest in the build up to Susie's death, as it focuses on the dynamics of the Salmon family. When it moves away from this and, essentially, splits into two narratives - Susie is heaven, the family and her killer on earth - it ceases to be cohesive and instead becomes a series of set pieces. Some of these pieces do work, but others fail and the lack of any real grounding in the story results in something that's kind of soulless - ironic, given the premise.

In the end, I think that The Lovely Bones is a noble failure. The performances are strong (Tucci seems to be getting the most notice but I thought Wahlberg was really great as well) and the film itself is occassionally brilliant, but Jackson's vision of this story is too muddled. Too often it feels false and hollow - Susie's version of heaven might be accurate to her, but Jackson certainly didn't make me believe in it - and just doesn't connect with the audience.

Review: Brothers Bloom (2009)

* * *
Director: Rian Johnson
Starring: Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi

The Brothers Bloom, Rian Johnson’s follow-up to 2005’s Brick, is kind of a difficult film to assess because it is equal parts enjoyable and frustratingly over-plotted. It’s like a sketch on Saturday Night Live that’s really good and funny but then just doesn’t how or when to stop and so fizzles itself out. That being said, while its weaknesses keep it from being a really great movie, its strengths are enough to qualify it as a good movie. Besides, anything that starts with a voice-over by Ricky Jay can’t be all bad.

The Brothers Bloom, so named for reasons that escape me since Bloom doesn’t seem to be their surname but rather the name of the younger brother, are orphans who spend their childhood shuffled from one foster family to another and pull cons in the various small towns they find themselves in. As adults they are played by Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody, who don’t particularly look like they could be brothers but have a believable sibling rapport nevertheless. Stephen (Ruffalo) is the mastermind and his cons seem to be less about swindling money than about trying to make Bloom (Brody) happy. But Bloom is not happy and wants to escape the con artist life, prompting Stephen to come up with a plan for one last big score to end their career.

The plot involves Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz), a wealthy eccentric whose entire childhood was spent inside her family’s cavernous mansion and whose social skills are, as a result, somewhat lacking. Bloom charms her (and is, of course, charmed by her) and entices her to join him, Stephen, and Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi) on a journey to Greece by boat, which then turns into a journey by train to Prague in a fake plot to get a rare book through the mysterious Belgian (Robbie Coltrane). The fake plot is funded by Penelope, whose money disappears with the Belgian, all according to Stephen’s plan. What Stephen didn’t count on was that after losing the money, Penelope would still want to get the book because she’s just so caught up in the idea of being a smuggler. I’ll leave the description of the plot at that since there are so many twists and turns that come afterwards.

While watching the film, I couldn’t help but think to myself that if this were a TV show, I’d watch it every week because I just like the characters so much. Stephen and Bloom, despite their occupation, are nice enough guys, Bloom as the sensitive and vulnerable one who ultimately just follows along with whatever his brother wants, and Stephen as the protective older brother whose real goal is to make Bloom happy. Although their plots involve vast sums of cash, Stephen seems less interested in the money than in the mechanics of plotting to get it and in creating the story that acts as the set-up, which I suppose shouldn’t be a surprise given that the brothers are named for characters created by James Joyce (Stephen Dadalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Leopold Bloom in Ulysses). Another literary reference is made later when Penelope points out, after learning that the Belgian’s name is Melville, that their boat is called Fidele, the same as the boat in Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man. I like that moment a lot because it shows that a) Penelope isn’t an idiot despite the fact that she’s the mark, and b) Stephen is sometimes too clever for his own good.

Weisz for me is the standout of the actors as she manages to make Penelope more than just the sum of her eccentricities. I’m firmly of the belief that she knew all along that she was being scammed but went anyway because it seemed like fun and, besides, she could lose a few million without ever missing it. Her rapport with Bloom, Stephen, and especially Bang Bang – who is silent save for three words and a karaoke performance near the end – is delightful, perhaps because her own enthusiasm is contagious. She allows Penelope to be intensely vulnerable but still quite strong – stronger, certainly, than the brothers suspected.

As for the film’s weaknesses, it’s all in the way that Johnson over-stacks the deck in terms of plot. He introduces so many threads that in tying them up at the end he creates a conclusion that is less than satisfactory and also exhausts your patience as a viewer. I really, deeply dislike the ending of this film, though I found it to be enjoyable enough for the most part to recommend it.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Constant Gardener (2005)

Director: Fernando Meirelles
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz

Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener is a brilliantly structured and executed thriller, and a critical commentary on the behaviour of the rest of the world towards the problems in Africa. This is a haunting story that unfolds with a powerful sense of urgency as the protagonist, Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) races against time to discover and expose the truth before those who wish to keep it hidden catch up with him.

The story begins with Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz) leaving on a trip from which she will never return. Justin learns of her death and must identify her burned and mutilated corpse. The circumstances of her murder – and her relationship with Arnold Bluhm (Hubert Koundé), who was also killed – are shrouded in mystery. Justin is aware, in the vaguest of ways, that she’s been looking into a pharmaceutical company testing an experimental drug in Kenya. He also suspects that she’s been having an affair with Arnold. The way the film is structured, how it jumps back and forth in time and limits its own point-of-view to how much Justin knows at any given time, keeps the audience guessing about Tessa’s relationship with Arnold. When Justin is at his most suspicious, we’re given scenes which lead us to conclude that they must be lovers. Later, when more light is shed on things that Justin had previously only half-understood, we know that she was faithful. The way that the film plays with the question of is-she-or-isn’t-she is part of what makes it so compelling. We want her to be innocent because we want it for Justin, who suspects that maybe she didn’t love him after all, but continues to adore her just the same.

In a flashback, we see their relationship begin at a press conference. She’s a reporter and he’s a government official whose gentleness seems disconnected from her monolithic view of the government as one heartless, soulless entity. He attempts to politely answer her questions with regard to the war in Iraq as she hijacks the conference with an angry invective against a war she considers illegal. It’s love at first fight. Not long after, Justin is assigned a diplomatic position in Kenya and Tessa asks him to take her with him. They marry and their new life begins, but quickly begins to fall apart under the weight of his suspicions about her fidelity, and her need to keep secret her research into the practices of the pharmaceutical company.

What Tessa and Arnold discover is that the company is testing new drugs on the poorer people in Kenya, forcing them to participate in the study by threatening to deny them access to drugs that they actually need. Travelling to a remote region, they also discover that the “aide” being provided by drug companies is coming in the form of expired pills that are useless beyond the way that they provide the appearance that something is being done. Discovering these facts are part of Justin’s quest, which takes him out of Kenya to Germany, back to Britain and finally back to Kenya where he meets his fate but does so, at least, knowing that Tessa loved him and knowing that the truth will come out and their deaths won’t be in vain.

Meirelles imbues the film with a sense of immediacy by shooting in the realist style of a documentary, much like his previous masterpiece City of God. Also in keeping with his style in City of God is the way that he doesn’t shy from showing the poverty in which people live. In fact, not only does he not avoid showing it, he practically dares you not to look at it and to try to ignore the fact that in the 21st century people live in a way so far removed from those of us in the “developed” world that we can’t even begin to imagine it. The power of the film isn’t solely in the way that Justin is hunted down or even in its commentary on the way the Western world exploits developing nations. Its power lies mainly in its condemnation of the feigned position of powerlessness adopted by the world’s richest nations towards its poorest. “We can’t involve ourselves in their lives, Tessa… There are millions of people, they all need help. It’s what the agencies are here for,” Justin tells her in regards to her request that they help a woman and her two children. “But these are three people that we can help right now,” Tessa replies. In that exchange lies the ultimate message of the film, that in a world that grows smaller everyday it’s not all right to reason that the problems have nothing to do with you and that you have no business doing anything about them. It’s not okay to just leave it to “the agencies” if you have the power and the opportunity to do something yourself.

Weisz won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for this film, and quite deservedly so, but this is really Fiennes’ show. He skirts the edge with this role where one false note would have made the character seem like a wimpy cuckold. What we get instead is a man attempting to navigate a complex set of emotions, who doesn’t quite know how to deal with the memory of his wife, and whose life is in a violent state of flux. This is a wonderful, compelling performance – perhaps the best of Fiennes’ career – in one of the most moving and compelling films of the last decade.