Unsung Performances: Melanie Laurent, Inglorious Basterds

Melanie Laurent's performance in Inglorious Basterds occupies that ambiguous place between "lead" and "supporting" that so often causes frustration at Oscar time. Given that her Shoshanna Dreyfus is the heart of the film, the character around whom the rest of the narrative is built, it feels natural to consider her the lead character. On the other hand, her somewhat limited screen time means that you might justifiably consider it a supporting performance. She was campaigned (properly, I think) as lead but given how tight last year's lead actress race was and how open the supporting category, this would have been one instance when I would have been quite happy to see a bit of category jockeying.

As Shoshanna, Laurent is tasked with grounding Inglorious Basterds, acting as a counterbalance to Brad Pitt's delightfully hammy Lt. Aldo Raine and Christoph Waltz's charmingly psychotic Col. Hans Landa. Those two characters, though well-played, are larger than life and just a little over-the-top. By contrast, Shoshanna is a much more human and identifiable character. The mission that Raine and his Basterds are carrying out drives much of the narrative, but Shoshanna is the story's true hero figure, the one whose success we root for hardest.

As I said at the top, her screen time here is fairly limited but when she does appear, it makes an incredible impact. There are a couple of key scenes that really demonstrate Laurent's skill as an actress: the first is the dining room scene in which Shoshanna comes face-to-face with Landa, the man who slaughtered her family but allowed her to escape. There is a sense that Landa is toying with her (credit for the success of this scene is obviously shared with the magnificent Waltz) but Shoshanna maintains her composure... right up until the second after Landa walks away. Her quick, intense collapse - a mixture of relief and fear - feels very real and mirrors the emotions of the audience watching her.

The other key scenes takes place towards the end and unfold concurrently. One is her pre-recorded speech to the gathered Nazi bigwigs when she declares herself "the face of Jewish vengeance." It's bittersweet because of course we know that her plan to exact revenge will also cost her her life, but Laurent sells that speech so thoroughly that you really can't think of it as anything but an absolute triumph. Meanwhile, up in the projection room, Shoshanna has to deal with an unwanted guest, making it necessary for Laurent to make a quick transition from playing Shoshanna to playing Shoshanna adopting a persona, flirting and seducing in order to distract Zoller and then take him out. When she dies in the process (killed by Zoller rather than in the explosion, as she'd planned), it provides the film with its emotional highpoint.

As Shoshanna, Laurent provides Inglorious Basterds with an emotional center that helps elevate it beyond cartoony violence and slick dialogue (not that those aren't enjoyable, just that those alone don't make a movie great). Laurent's performance is nuanced and incredibly skilled, making Shoshanna a character who resonates despite her minimal screen time.

Review: Morning Glory (2010)

* * *
Director: Roger Michell
Starring: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton

The trailer for Morning Glory really didn't do it any favours. I believe my exact thought after seeing it for the first time was, "Not even with a gun to my head;" it just made it seem very generic and instantly forgettable. However, when I saw that it had gained a number of glowing reviews (including one from Stephanie Zacharek, who never likes anything), I decided to give it a shot. I'm glad that I did because I liked it quite a bit and I hope that other people give it a chance, too - after all, this may very well be your only opportunity to hear Diane Keaton duet with 50 Cent on "Candy Shop."

Rachel McAdams stars as Becky, the perpetually sunny producer of a basic cable news show who loses her job and then gets an opportunity to try her hand as Executive Producer of Daybreak, the lowest rated morning news show on network tv. After quickly establishing herself amongst the staff at Daybreak by firing the male co-host, she sets out to replace him with her hero, Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), a grumpy but legendary newscaster currently under contract with the network but not working. She manages to get him on the show thanks to a loophole in his contract, but things get off to a rocky start. His prickly demeanor puts him at odds with Colleen Peck (Keaton), the female co-host, and his refusal to do anything but hard news makes Becky's job twice as difficult as it might otherwise be. Even worse, the show is on the verge of cancellation unless the ratings get a considerable boost.

All of that would probably provide enough story for a feature film (and, if that was the whole story, the film might actually be better, more focused), but there's also a romantic subplot shoehorned in. Shortly after landing her job Becky gets involved with Adam (Patrick Wilson), a producer at another show on the network. The attraction is instant but actually having a relationship proves to be difficult since Becky's job is not only her first priority but an all-consuming obsession.

Morning Glory is a film that survives largely on charm. Its construction is shoddy, relying on a few well-worn cliches and a surprising number of montages of McAdams walking or running as an upbeat song plays in the background in order to give the impression that the story is being pushed forward. Further, the romantic plot is problematic in that it's neither well-developed nor particularly compelling, and McAdams and Wilson don't have much in the way of chemistry. What ultimately saves the film is that McAdams is so great and has fantastic chemistry with everyone else, especially Ford. The story is much more concerned with Becky's relationship with Mike than her relationship with Adam - so much so that the big "break up" and "reconciliation" scenes that mark the story's crisis and resolution are between the former rather than the latter.

McAdams, as I said, is great and so is Ford. The film really plays to his strengths and a lot of the biggest laughs come simply from his reactions to the goings on around him. Keaton doesn't get a ton to do here but at least she gets to take a break from the hyper-neurotic character she's been stuck playing for pretty much the last decade. All in all, there's more good to the film than bad and though it's incredibly lightweight, it's still very enjoyable.

Friday's Top 5... World War I Movies

#5: The African Queen
A great movie for which Bogart won a much deserved Best Actor Oscar and one of those rare WWI set films that ends on a note of triumph rather than desolation. The making of the film proved to be just as adventurous as its plot and inspired a book by Katherine Hepburn and Clint Eastwood's 1990 film White Hunter, Black Heart.


#4: Paths of Glory
A ferociously angry film about the casual willingness of military higher-ups to sacrifice enlisted men, both for glory and for the purpose of saving face. Kirk Douglas delivers a great performance and director Stanley Kubrick is at the top of his game.


#3: All Quiet On The Western Front
A moving film beautifully adapted from the classic novel by Erich Maria Remarque. It's set for a remake in 2012, but the original set the bar pretty damn high.


#2: Grand Illusion
Jean Renoir's film is not just about war, it is also about how the war would help usher in massive social changes (both good and bad), marking the end of one way of life and the beginning of another.


#1: Lawrence of Arabia
Few films have ever had the scope and sweep of David Lean's epic about soldier, writer and eccentric T.E. Lawrence. The grandeur of this film is still utterly staggering and it remains one of the greatest films ever made.

Canadian Film Review: Silk (2007)

* *
Director: Francois Girard
Starring: Michael Pitt, Keira Knightley

You win some, you lose some. Just two weeks ago I raved by Francois Girard's The Red Violin and now I'm writing, let's say, less enthusiastically about his follow-up, 2007's Silk. An airless period piece that travels from France to Japan and back again, it's a beautiful looking film that fails to live up to the potential of all the talent involved.

Set in the 19th Century, Silk follows Herve (Michael Pitt), a French military officer who longs to leave his position in order to marry Helene (Keira Knightley) and start a family. He's given such an opportunity by Baldabiou (Alfred Molina), an entrepreneur who has entered into the silk business and wants to hire Herve to go to Africa and obtain healthy silk worm eggs after European eggs become plagued by pébrine. Unfortunately the eggs from Africa are similarly affected and so Baldabiou sends Herve on a dangerous mission to Japan, where disease has never been known in silk worms, and which is entirely off-limits to foreigners. Herve is smuggled into Japan, makes the trade in a remote village, and finds himself intrigued by the concubine of the baron Jubei (Koji Yakusho). When he returns to France he marries Helene and the village enters into a period of great prosperity thanks to the eggs he's brought back.

Some time later he returns to Japan for more eggs and becomes more deeply enthralled with the concubine, who sends him home with a note she's written to him. He goes to Paris to have the note translated into English by a Japanese-born Madam, who advises him to forget its contents and live a happy life with his wife. His desire is too strong, however, and he returns to Japan despite the danger presented by the Meiji Restoration. The village where he bought the eggs has been razed, its occupants have fled. He returns to France heartbroken and his futile journey brings financial ruin to the village. Eventually he begins to recover from his experiences and even comes up with a way to keep the villagers employed, but the mysteries of his sojourns to Japan continue to haunt him.

To start with the good stuff, the cinematography by Alain Dostie is gorgeous, particularly in the scenes which takes place in Japan and during Herve's long journeys to get there. This is an exquisitely photographed film but, unfortunately, not a particularly good one. It's stiff and overly formal and, for a film about tortured love, oddly passionless. The emotions at play are so muted that they barely register, which makes it difficult to care about Herve's plight or the great revelation he comes to at the film's end.

As far as the acting goes, only Molina really emerges from this unscathed, finding a way to bring some vitality to his role. Neither Pitt nor Knightley - both of whom I generally like - are at the top of their game here. As the conflicted hero Pitt does little more than whisper and gaze longingly into the distance in order to convey Herve's profound sense of loss and Knightley (usually so good in period pieces) just seems adrift in her admittedly thankless role. It's disappointing to see so many talented people work together and come up so short, but Silk just doesn't quite measure up.

Review: Infernal Affairs (2002)

* * *
Director: Andrew Lau, Alan Mak
Starring: Tony Leung, Andy Lau

I finally saw it! Infernal Affairs is a film that's been on my "to see" list for... uh, ever and now I've finally seen it. And now for some sacrilege: I liked the American remake better. Perhaps given the prestige of The Departed that's not so horrible, but given how fiercely I tend to dislike the idea of English-language remakes of foreign films, it feels a little strange to admit. Anyway...

As with The Departed, Infernal Affairs is about two men. One is Lau (Andy Lau), a police officer who is really a mole for a gangster named Sam (Eric Tsang Chi-Wai). The other is Yan (Tony Leung), a cop working undercover to take down Sam's gang from the inside. Yan has been undercover for 10 years, so long that there remains only one person in the department - Superintendent Wong (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang) - who knows his true identity; so long that sometimes he feels more like a criminal than a cop.

Sam knows that there is a spy in his organization and the police come to realize that there is one within their ranks as well. In a fortuitous turn of events, Lau is promoted to Interal Affairs and given the task of finding the double agent. The promotion, along with the continued pressure from Sam to find the rat, makes him increasingly desperate to end his double life. As the war between the police and the gang escalates, he gets his chance to choose a side - but only if he can keep Yan from discovering the truth and blowing his cover.

Many plot points, and indeed scenes, were carried over when Infernal Affairs was adapted as The Departed, though the two films are ultimately fairly different. The original doesn't have quite the same level of urgency that Scorsese gave the remake and it occasionally slips into melodrama (mostly due to the score whenever there's a death scene/flashback montage), but there are things that I think Infernal Affairs actually does better. One of those things is that it doesn't feature a shared love interest for the two protagonists, opting instead for a love interest for each. On the one hand this means that there isn't really room for a major female role in the story (this one being about an hour shorter than the remake), but on the other hand I found it a little too coincidental that the two characters in The Departed, in addition to all the other ways their lives were intersecting, would also find themselves involved with the same woman.

The film also does a wonderful job at building tension for the scenes of cat-and-mouse where Yan and Lau try to carry out their official duties while at the same time trying to keep their unofficial bosses apprised of what's going on. As the two divided men, Leung and Lau are excellent, their layered and very well-tuned performances help give the film a feeling of robustness despite its lean running time. All in all, Infernal Affairs is a solid and engrossing film, I just didn't find that it reached the transcendence of The Departed.