Josh_Friesen

Far From the Madding Crowd is a wonderfully enjoyable, intelligent and crowd pleasing film that inexplicably flew under the radar this year. Carry Mulligan is terrific as always as Bathsheba Everdene, the strong female protagonist of the film, and the three suitors range from excellent to … well sadly not very good. But one bad performance aside, the film is full of things to enjoy including the gorgeous settings, costumes and cinematography. It doesn't set out to revolutionize the period piece costume drama, but to be fair, it doesn't have to. Screenwriter David Nicholls plays it safe, sticking closely to the source material. For comfortable Sunday afternoon entertainment, it really doesn't get much better.

On the surface The Duke of Burgundy is about two lesbian entomologists in a repetitive and ritualistic S&M relationship, an homage of sorts to 70's soft core euro trash. However, where those films would be voyeuristic in their depiction of such a relationship, stressing the erotic strangeness of the situation, The Duke of Burgundy cleverly does the opposite. As we are more engrossed in the world of the film, the strangeness of the two central characters begins to fade away. The world they live in contains no men, and the presence of travelling S&M saleswomen give the impression that this sexual behaviour is also the norm. The surface is stripped away to reveal a complex and nuanced metaphor for the everyday sacrifices we all make to maintain romantic relationships. If that isn't enough to sell the film, there is also a hilariously deadpan discussion about human toilets.

At the start of the film Jack (Jacob Tremblay), the five year old protagonist and from whose perspective the story is told, has spent his entire life trapped in a ten foot by ten foot room. His mother (Brie Larson) has raised him with the belief that the room they live in is the entire world. She does so to protect him from the fact that they are prisoners, held captive by a man who uses her as a sex slave. Dealing with subject matter that could easily tip over either to unbearable bleakness or cliché melodrama, director Lenny Abrahamson, writer Emma Donoghue and the two excellent actors do an incredible job at creating a film that feels both honest and empathetic. A number of intelligent decisions in presenting the material are made, including telling the story from Jack's perspective, not making the captor a 'movie villain' and choosing to deal with the fallout of the climax, which occurs in the middle of the film. The result of these decisions is one of the rawest emotional experiences of the year and further proof that Lenny Abrahamson can do no wrong (Frank and What Richard Did).