Steve

Les Barbouzes

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The spies assembled

It’s called The Great Spy Chase in English, which captures the caper/shenanigans nature of this French film whose original title is Les Barbouzes. “Barbe” is the French word for beard (hence barber in English), which is what spies in ye olden times were supposed to hide behind, hence the French slang term for them – barbouzes. That all cleared up here we are in 1964 two years on from James Bond’s first screen outing in Dr No and one year on from The Pink Panther, which is closer in spirit to this comedy of bumbling ineptitude – about a French spy on a mission to return a dead arms dealer’s body to his … Read more

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

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Marcel the shell

When Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp first started work on the short Marcel the Shell with Shoes On they were an item. By the time this feature-length fourth iteration of Marcel’s adventures arrived on the screens in 2021 they were not. Why the film has themes of break-up, heartbreak and the power of relationships is anyone’s guess – insert your own speculative gloss here. It doesn’t need a backstory of personal woe to make it in the harsh everyday world. It’s the perfectly charming, sweet, sad story of – borrowing Wikipedia’s unbeatable description – “an anthropomorphic seashell outfitted with a single googly eye and a pair of miniature shoes”. Slate voices one-inch-high … Read more

The Legend of Paul and Paula

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Paul and Paula with hippie flowers in their hair

Anyone for The Legend of Paul and Paula, Angela Merkel’s favourite film? At least that’s what the German chancellor (as she was at the time) told an audience at a 2013 screening. Coming out in 1973 when Merkel was 18, it caught the young Merkel at an impressionable age. But she wasn’t alone. The Legend of Paul and Paula is also the most popular film in the entirety of the existence of the German Democratic Republic, where Merkel grew up behind the Iron Curtain. Hugely controversial, it wouldn’t have made it onto the screen at all without the personal blessing of Erich Honecker, East Germany’s boss at the time. Only two years into … Read more

Everything Went Fine aka Tout S’est Bien Passé

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Emmanuèle and father André

A film about a daughter helping her father to kill himself doesn’t sound like appointment viewing – unless you work at Dignitas (or some other physician-assisted-suicide organisation) – but in the hands of director François Ozon it is just that. There’s an “all human life is here” aspect to Everything Went Fine (Tout S’est Bien Passé originally) – it’s compassionate, dignified, funny at times, poignant and also triumphant. In a thumbnail, the film focuses on the relationship between a daughter (Sophie Marceau) and her father (André Dussollier) after he, in his mid 80s, has a stroke. He recovers a bit but he’s a shadow of his former self, paralysed down one side, mouth … Read more

The Fallen Idol

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Phillipe and Baines

Of the three films that writer Graham Greene and director Carol Reed made together, The Fallen Idol is the one that languishes at the back of the stage while The Third Man and Our Man in Havana soak up the applause. That’s probably fair, all things considered, but that doesn’t mean this 1948 movie should be written off. It’s a highly intricate puzzle of interlocking parts with a plot about people trying to do the right thing, then failing, then trying to do the wrong thing, and then failing at that too. But the main driver is a young lad, Phillipe, the chatty and precocious diplomat’s son whose parents are so often absent … Read more

You Can Live Forever

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Jaime and Marike kiss

A magnetic Anwen O’Driscoll re-purposes much of the Kristen Stewart style and look to play a grumpy teenage lesbian who becomes fixated on a devout Jehovah’s Witness in smalltown 1990s America. Who’s going to convert who? Or whom, if you’re feeling fancy, which You Can Live Forever never is, nor preachy or finger-waggy. It’s not even unfair to Jehovah’s Witnesses – well, not much – a sitting target for films like this, which are all about self-expression and freedom for young women where the Witnesses are all about the patriarchy and control. Specifics, though, specifics. Black-clad hoodie-wearing Jaime (O’Driscoll) has been sent by her mother to stay with her aunt and uncle in … Read more

Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future

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Shurik and Ivan the Terrible in 1970s USSR

In science fact as well as science fiction the Soviet Union often got there first. First into space, first to the Moon, Mars and Venus, all mighty achievements by an empire whose successes have all subsequently been overshadowed by the regime’s ultimate failure. So how about Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future? Did it really boldly go in 1973 where Marty McFly and the Doc wouldn’t venture until 12 years later? No, is the short answer. The longer one is that this film had a different title originally – Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession (or Ivan Vasilievich Menyaet Professiyu in the original Russian) – and it was its US distributors who renamed it, in an … Read more

One Fine Morning aka Un Beau Matin

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Clément, daughter Linn and Sandra lean over a gate

The latest report on Mia Hansen-Løve’s mission to keep alive a style of intimate, undemonstrative French cinema, One Fine Morning (Un Beau Matin) stars a highly impressive Léa Seydoux in a role that’s a world away from 007 glamour. Hansen-Løve is the daughter of philosophy professors and so in Seydoux’s Sandra Kienzler there’s every temptation to read-across from reality to fiction, particularly if you know that a) Hansen-Løve often draws from her own life, and b) she wrote the screenplay while her father was dying from Benson’s syndrome, a degenerative disease, which is exactly what Sandra’s father, a philosophy professor, is suffering from here. The film opens with Sandra (a shorn, dressed-down Seydoux) … Read more

Blast of Silence

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Frank points the gun at the camera

Allen Baron. You’ve probably never heard of him. But he willed into being 1961’s Blast of Silence, a remarkable late noir – or early neo-noir, depending on which end of the telescope you’re looking through – which he wrote, directed and also took the leading role in when his original star, buddy Peter Falk, bailed out on him. Understandably. Falk was being offered a paying gig in the movie Murder, Inc. and Baron’s no-budget film looked like it might never get finished. There isn’t much of a story but there’s enough. A hitman (Baron) arrives in New York, is given the name of the target, then sources a gun to do the job. … Read more

The Mermaid

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Lin Yun as mermaid Shan

So, Stephen Chow, the martial-arts practitioner/actor/writer/director/producer best known outside Asia for two brilliant films, 2001’s Shaolin Soccer and 2004’s Kung Fu Hustle, hasn’t troubled western waters too much ever since. Take The Mermaid, the all-time highest-grossing movie in Chinese history barely got seen when it was released in the UK (where I live) and it didn’t fare any better in the USA. What western distributors have against a proven moneyspinner I don’t know, but Chow’s previous film, Journey to the West, also the highest-grossing movie in Chinese history when it was released in 2013, suffered a similar fate. But back to The Mermaid, a fun, fast and familiar piece of Chow excess laced … Read more