Grey
Gray
Charlotte Gray, dir. Gillian Armstrong. Charlotte Gray is essentially an old-fashioned wartime romantic melodrama. When Charlotte (a Scot with a flawless French accent) finds out that her boyfriend's plane has been shot down over Vichy France, she volunteers to parachute in to liaise with the resistance, ostensibly in the hope of finding out some information about his fate (actually, she's a bit bored in London, despite the bombing, and seems to be looking for adventure). She immediately becomes entangled with Communist resistance leader Julien (Billy Crudup) and his father Levade (Michael Gambon), who are sheltering two Jewish boys whose parents have been sent to the death camps.
Cate
Blanchett (the eponymous Charlotte, right) is very beautiful, and looks
very fetching in 1940s period costumes. Crudup is also very beautiful,
and does a great line in 'smouldering yet sensitive'. Gambon is not very
beautiful, but does make a satisfyingly smelly-looking French patriarch.
They're also all very good actors. The landscape of the film positively
glows with provincial French charm. Gillian Armstrong has directed two
of my favourite Australian films (High Tide and The Last Days
of Chez Nous). So why don't I like this film very much?
Does Charlotte find her absent flyboy, or does she end up with spunky,
courageous, compassionate, right-in-front-of-her Julien. Who cares? The
drama of the film is all driven by the events of the war around them,
above all the fate of the children in the Levades' care. The problem for
me is that this means that the real stakes of the film are always elsewhere
- who cares if Charlotte ends with flyboy or spyboy when entire families
are being sent to the gas chambers? I know that the idea of the wartime
melodrama is that love is meant to redeem suffering (or at least distract
you enough to make you forget about it); it just seems faintly cynical
to use that suffering to prop up a flat love story, or in Charlotte's
case, a flat love life.
- Allan James Thomas
Playing for time
L'Emploi du Temps (Time Out), dir. Laurent Canet. Hunched awkwardly
in the passenger seat of his car, Vincent (Aurélien Recoing) sleeps
by the side of the road. The shape of his bent body is echoed perfectly
by the curve of the car's steering wheel. This bleak but beautiful opening
shot sets Time Out thoughtfully on its way. Unable to admit to
his family that he has lost his job, Vincent drives and sleeps alone,
along the cold motorways of northern Europe while taking fantasy business
trips. When receiving mobile phone calls from his wife in children's playgrounds
rather than boardrooms becomes untenable, Vincent begins to invent an
elaborate alternative self of quite breathtaking proportions.
The strange beauty of this film is devastating. It is painful to watch
a man fabricate a life and then act it out with a weary self-awareness
that attracts immediate suspicion. In part the pain comes from feeling
implicated as an audience in the whole tangled web. You feel part of Vincent's
betrayals because the direction sits you physically at his side for almost
the entire film and because his lies are not simply pathetic, but are
recognisable acts of social survival.
Aurélien Recoing's performance is magnificent. His face (not unlike
Kevin Spacey, but with more contradiction) behaves like a mask in a Greek
tragedy. It expresses a black depth of emotion but never seems to move.
The other standout performance is Karin Viard's (playing Vincent's wife
Muriel). Her acting displays enormous restraint and subtlety, allowing
the character to be angry, in love, sad, disappointed and loyal - all
in the turn of a head.
While there are other crucial and beautifully drawn characters in Time
Out it is Vincent and Muriel's emotional limbo I found most compelling.
There is nothing standard in the portrait of their relationship, and we
are never humoured by any clichéd 'signs' of love. The question
is not whether they are strong enough to remain in love - clearly they
are - but whether either is strong enough to live through such a sad tangle
of deceit.
Muriel and Vincent walk across a misty, snow-covered hill, one behind
the other. Vincent turns to look at his wife but sees only whiteness.
He turns again and she is revealed in the distance; he turns again and,
again, whiteness. Everything is stripped away - no colour, no air. There
are few moments in cinema as deeply layered as this one.
- Siobhan Jackson
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