THE CHILDREN ACT - Crimbo Binge-watch #9

Celebrated theatre director Richard Eyre (the superb NOTES ON A SCANDAL) returns to our screens with his adaptation of Booker Prize winning author Ian McEwan's THE CHILDREN ACT. A stunningly good Emma Thompson plays a high court judge who has to rule on a case where parents are refusing their child a life-saving blood transfusion on account of their faith.  The ruling is made, and without spoiling it, the ramifications are emotionally intense, both for the teenager involved and for the judge.  The teenager is played by Fionn Whitehead, who starred in DUNKIRK, but has far more to do here, and is really quite impressive, holding his own against Emma Thompson in an intellectually complex role. Stanley Tucci has rather less to do in what is essentially a two-hander.  

At first I thought this was going to be a rather sterile intellectual film, and the first half hour does take place mostly in court.  But as with all McEwan there's deep passion and provocation underneath that.  The film questions the idea of faith, the rights of children, and the sacrifice of family for career. It even questions the idea of judicial intervention and apparent neutrality. I found it to be a deeply stimulating film, and in its final scenes, profoundly moving.  I have no idea why Emma Thompson didn't receive wider recognition for her part. 

THE CHILDREN ACT has a rating of R and a running time of 104 minutes. It was released in 2018.

London Film Festival Day 3 - THE OTHER MAN

THE OTHER MAN is a profoundly disappointing, frustrating attempt at a thriller powered by sexual jealousy. But instead of the emotional tension and mind games of Richard Eyre's previous directorial effort, NOTES ON A SCANDAL, we get a meandering plot, weak motivation and a denouement that is hard to swallow.

The key flaw is the poor quality of the script - penned by Eyre, based on a story by Bernhard Schlink. For the first hour the story stumbles around, often doubling back on itself, making a meal out of plot devices that should be worked through very quickly. Liam Neeson plays a decent but dull man called Peter who discovers that his wife Lisa (Laura Linney has been schtupping a schmoozy Spaniard called Ralph (Antonio Banderas). Rather than confront Ralph, Peter plays chess with him - a clunking great metaphor that the visually unimaginative Eyre makes nothing of. The wife, Lisa, remains enigmatic, and the daughter (Romola Garai) is basically redundant. The movie fails to drum up any tension (sexual or intellectual - dear god - how long does it take to realise that the password is "Lake Como"?)

And then, as the finish line nears, the writers clearly thought it was time to spice things up a bit so they dream up, well, not so much a plot twist, as a diversion into a dead end. This diversion allows Banderas to ham it up a bit and takes us into a final scene that jars completely the character motivation we have been shown in previous scenes.

THE OTHER MAN played Toronto and London 2008. It opens in the US on December 3rd.

NOTES ON A SCANDAL ultimately disappoints

NOTES ON A SCANDAL is the sort of movie that one feels out to be impressive. Directed by Richard Eyre (IRIS) and adapted for the screen by Patrick Marber (CLOSER) from a novel by Zoe Heller: it is essentially a three-hander between Dame Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy. All three give tremendous and effortless performances. The orchestral score, by Philip Glass, is one of the best I have heard in a long while. In short, the movie is positively dripping in class.

Dench plays a psychologically unhinged closet lesbian called Barbara. She insinuates herself into the life of the beautiful, bohemian, but heterosexual woman called Sheba, played by Blanchett. Blanchett is married to Nighy but is sleeping with her fifteen-year-old student. Once she stumbles upon the scandal, Barbara holds it over Sheba, emotionally blackmailing her into social intimacy. In a superb coup, Barbara moves herself into the position of sole confidante and comes perilously close to her dream of a proper live-in lover.

The movie disappointed me with its rather tired cliches: the evil, vengeful lesbian and the predatory school-teacher. It's like a cross between a Daily Mail headline and Basic Instinct. This isn't helped by the fact that Sheba's motivation for seducing the schoolboy is never really fleshed out. Told in flashback, the affair seems literally incredible. I also didn't know whether the director wanted me to sympathise with Sheba or not. Certainly, the evident youth of the boy makes it clear that Sheba is a criminal. But then again, she gets treated in all other things like a typical Hollywood heroine - to be sympathised with....

All in all, NOTES ON A SCANDAL is a slight film that tries to explore in painful detail the psychological impact of a life of enforced loneliness. Sadly the incredible rendering of the scandal undercuts the attempted psychological realism. The odd spitefully funny one-liner doesn't make up for this.

NOTES ON A SCANDAL is already on limited release in the US. It opens in the UK on Feb 2nd, in Australia, Italy and Sweden on the 16th and in Argentina, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Norway on the 23rd. It opens in Belgium, France, Span and Venezuela on March 16th.