Love Is All You Need (2012) dir, Susanne Bier

Rating: 4/5

The trailer for Love Is All You Need made me believe two things about this upcoming movie: a) That it was yet another soppy, cliched romcom, and b) That it was a British film. I was wrong, and I was wrong again. Turns out that it’s quite a moving, yet light-hearted drama, and it’s in fact a Danish film, with the majority of dialogue subtitled.

Perhaps they only used the English words in the trailer to attract people who wouldn’t usually watch world cinema. And with Pierce Brosnan starring, it wouldn’t be an unfair assumption that this was a British film, but even Brosnan speaks some Danish, and the subtitles don’t detract from the movie’s quality in the least.

We are introduced to sweet, middle-aged Ida (Trine Dyrholm), in her doctor’s office, insisting that after her recent affliction with cancer, a breast reconstruction won’t be necessary as her husband loves her for who she is. She then returns home to find the loyal darling cheating on her with Tilde from accounting. Ida is broken, but has no time to grieve, as she’s got to catch a plane to Italy for her daughter Astrid’s wedding. In her frustrated sorrow, she has a minor auto-scrape with uptight brit Philip (Brosnan), who just happens to be the father of her daughter’s groom.

After confiding in him about her disease, they fly together to his old lemon grove villa, which he’s given to the young couple; Astrid is kind and fun-loving, and Patrick is emotional but distant. Family and friends start to arrive, such as Benedikte, the far too flirtatious sister of Philip’s deceased wife, and Ida’s idiot husband Leif, along with Tilde from accounting. The presence of many people with many confused connections brings about a tangle of romances, some healthier and more truthful than others.

Of course, Ida’s charm turns the stone-cold Philip into a hopeless romantic, and they eventually have some kind of happy ending, but what surprised me was the events in between, and what kinds of endings the other characters get. Not all loose ends are tied. But there is a moving acceptance of cancer as a plot-line, rather than a mere gimmick to create sympathy for Ida, whose portrayal by Dyrholm is tender and endearing.

As a person who very seldom likes romantic movies, Love Is All You Need is enjoyable, because it is well-acted, well-written, and isn’t ridiculously generic. It has some real feeling to it.

A Late Quartet (2012) dir, Yaron Zilberman

Rating: 4/5

Without its characters, A Late Quartet has very little. Without its astonishing actors, it has no character. It is true, A Late Quartet will not appeal to everybody – it is very much based on passion for classical music – but for those audacious enough to see this movie and move past the music to the characters it presents us with, it is a very fulfilling, bittersweet portrait of human relationships and existence. Featuring one of the strongest ensembles in recent history, it tells the story of  string quartet The Fugue, who are still at the top of their game after 25 years of touring the world and playing to refined audiences, but suddenly cracks start to emerge when the unofficial leader of the troupe may not be able to play again.

The incredible Christopher Walken plays Peter, the sagely cellist 20 years senior to the rest of the group, whose recent bereavement of his wife and now shattering diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, leave him existential and unsure about the future of his beloved four-piece. Walken’s exorbitant talent for communicating many personalities and feelings through an expressionless face gives the character its vital intrigue, and provides the audience with its emotional identification with him.

Shattered by the heart-wrenching personal struggles of her lifelong father-figure, Juliette (on viola – Catherine Keener) and her second-violinist husband Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman) soon find tension simmering in their own relationship; between her sorrow over Peter’s illness, and Robert’s insatiable idea of it as an opportunity to play the solos. Meanwhile, first violinist Daniel (Mark Ivanir) is serious about everybody’s roles within the quartet and within his private instruction: Juliette and Robert’s daughter Alexandra in particular.

Throughout many profound and often somber events in the unraveling of the quartet, there are dashes of unusual humour and light-heartedness, which acts as one of several methods of realism. The situations, and the flow of events, are tangibly believable, and dialogue is performed so naturally: people talk over each other extensively when fighting, rather than taking it in turns so every word is heard, and there are appropriate pauses of hesitation and contemplation. This realistic effect gives us an almost voyeuristic feeling at times, as if we are just gazing over the characters’ shoulders.

The leading group of actors deserve total recognition for the success of this picture. It is curious that while they have all served well in comedic roles – Walken especially – with good timing and delivery, they all perform such captivating personalities and emotions and situations. This is a line-up of versatile, gifted actors who produce real on-screen chemistry with one another. Their 25 year past is worn on each of them; in their faces and their attitudes, and we never once doubt that their struggles are real.

Throughout the movie, given the opening ultimatum of Peter making this season his last and the Fugue having to find a new cellist, we are left wondering how it will end. A turnabout happy ending? A miraculous recovery from Parkinson’s? True to the entire film, the ending is realistic, graceful and to an extent, comforting. We still wonder about the unresolved disputes between the quartet, but the writers couldn’t have created a more appropriate ending. It is grand, yet grave.

In The House (2012) dir, François Ozon

Rating 4/5

There is often disregard for the deeper thoughts of teenagers; their feelings are supposedly set in stone, and everybody knows what to expect. There are ‘regular teenagers,’ and then there are the oddballs, who few take the interest to listen to. Claude (Ernst Umhauer) is an oddball; a ‘back row student,’ but amongst a class of uninterested time-wasters, he is the only one worth his teacher Germain’s (Fabrice Luchini) attention. 

Germain’s first assignment of the year, ’48 Hours In The Life Of A Teenager,’ turns out mindless drivel about cell phones and eating pizza, until he comes to Claude’s work, which details – very explicitly – his voyeuristic visits to his friend Rapha’s ‘perfect middle-class house.’ The boy’s writing is skilled, his subject is tantalizing, and Germain has to know more.

Claude continues to submit installments of his ‘project’ to his teacher, each one closing ‘To be continued,’ as he creeps himself closer into the perfect family he so envies. His behaviour is strange: he searches, spies around Rapha’s house, watches the family as they sleep, and goes to extraordinary lengths of manipulation to get what he wants. He exhibits lust over Rapha’s mother, Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner), raving over ‘the scent of a middle-class woman,’ and as his story progresses, Germain and his intuitive wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas – who speaks fluent French) begin to worry about the dangers of the boy’s obsession, and the outcome it could have for all involved.

In The House is a gripping thriller, which reminds me somewhat of Blue Velvet and Fatal Attraction, in its themes of voyeurism and frightening obsession, and of the overall quality of its plot progression. It is surprising, yet darkly believable, and of course supported by tremendous performances. Luchini’s Germain is reminiscent of Michael Caine’s Frank in Educating Rita: a man weary of his years of thankless literature teaching, with decades of emotional wear on his face, whose interest in life and work is suddenly reignited by a particularly unusual student.

Young Ernst Umbauer is tremendously fox-like in his presence, with a sly smirk always either on his lips or in his eyes. He expresses huge understanding of his topic and something of an omniscient control over Germain, and by extension, Rapha and his family. The two leading males are a very peculiar pair, but have some kind of mutual understanding, and make intriguing friends/enemies.

Creative cinematography – with dizzying fast-motion shots of the busy school, and creeping steadicam spying into the scenes – work with later surrealist sequences, in which Germain enters Claude’s fantasies as they are ‘marked,’ in making this a visually exciting movie, as well as an interesting and well acted one.

In The House is an incredible story of manipulation by a disturbed teenage boy, and how his sinister fantasies impact the lives of those who dare to get involved…and those too intriguing to not become characters in them.

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Compliance (2012) dir, Craig Zobel

Rating: 4.5/5

At one point during the showing of ‘Compliance,’ around a third of the audience walked out apparently upset or disgusted. Apparently they had come to see a movie without reading even a basic synopsis, totally ignored the BBFC warning at the beginning, and weren’t happy with the results. The subject matter of ‘Compliance’ is controversial and chilling, but I certainly knew that when I walked into the theatre.

I came across a newspaper article about the event this movie is based on the other week, and having seen the evidence, am glad to say that this is one of very few films to pull the ‘based on true events’ trick and get away with it. An introduction assures us ‘Nothing has been exaggerated,’ and this claim seems supported by the correlation of the two stories.

On a busy Friday night shift at a fast food restaurant, flustered manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) receives a phone call to the office from a man claiming to be ‘Officer Daniels,’ and dealing with a a theft allegation against Sandra’s young employee Becky (Dreama Walker). Faced with a caller who claims to have CCTV evidence and the big boss on the other line, poor Sandra agrees to co-operate with Officer Daniels until he can get police to their location.

In the bizarre ordeal that follows, Sandra and several colleagues are manipulated into subjecting Becky to horrendous abuse and sexual humiliation by the caller. The way in which this plays out sounds unbelievable: “You stripped a girl naked cos someone on the phone told you to?” an interviewer later pushes. This is perhaps the same response people who haven’t seen the movie would give to the situation. But as Sandra insists, “He always had an answer for everything.” And this guy really does. What makes this movie work as an intense thriller is the perfect screenwriting by director Craig Zobel, which not only words the story, but makes every step of Officer Daniels’ manipulation somehow believable.

The caller is always quick to remind the colleagues, “I must insist you address me as Sir. I am an Officer of the Law, you need to calm down now!” It is not just the colleagues he sweet-talks into carrying out his perverse fantasies, but he regularly talks to Becky, intimidating her into…compliance. The overall psychological affect of the caller’s abuse is what makes us believe in the reactions, and just how this crazy incident could have occurred.

Despite the content warnings, ‘Compliance’ is not an exploitation movie, and has very little in the way of nudity or on-screen abuse. Most of the humiliation is implied or not shown explicitly, and in context, it is actually a very modest portrayal of the ordeal. The point of the movie, as explained at the start, is the psychological experimentation into how people behave under the influence of an authority figure.

It is a portrait of human behaviour, and there is moving emphasis on our attitudes toward each character, Sandra in particular. Although she is the main perpetrator, Dowd’s performance and again, clever screenwriting, conjure up strange sympathy for her and her situation. She really is a victim too.

‘Compliance’ is a gripping, intense and very realistic independent crime thriller, and in the same way that Wes Craven’s ‘Last House On The Left’ (1972) was a very well-made portrayal of a gruesome story, I give it 4.5/5.