sebastian koch

Oktober November

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Sonja dressed in a little black dress

After sublime revenge thriller Revanche, Austrian writer/director Götz Spielmann falls back to earth with Oktober November, a soap, a melodrama, call it what you will, but whether you like it or not, it’s a film with a chrome-like finish. It hangs off the spectacular cheekbones of its star, Nora Waldstätten, an ice-maiden specialist giving us blasts of wintry chill in her portrayal of Sonja, a successful actor who’s headed back home where her dad is sick and her sister is conducting an illicit affair with the handsome local doctor who tends to the old man. Here, in the bosom of her family, as dad shuffles towards his final days, old tensions re-emerge, secrets … Read more

Never Look Away

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Tom Schilling paints

The Lives of Others director atones for The Tourist with an era-straddling epic about about art and love I was talking to a journalist friend of mine a couple of weeks ago, about Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s new film. He recalled interviewing the director around the time of his triumphant debut, The Lives of Others. Von Donnersmarck, he said, was almost hyperventilating with the excitement of having been approached to direct a Hollywood caper with big stars, budgets, etc. That film turned out to be The Tourist, a vanity project for Angelina Jolie and (to a lesser extent) co-star Johnny Depp, written and re-written so many times (including by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes) … Read more

Black Book

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Carice Van Houten in Black Book

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 23 May Netherlands declares independence from Spain, 1568 On this day in 1568, the battle of Heligerlee was fought and won by the rebel army of William I of Orange, against the Duke of Alba, representative of the Hapsburg ruling dynasty. It marked the beginning of the 80 Years’ War for the independence of the Protestant Netherlands from Catholic Spanish rule. Though the rebels won the battle, they lost the campaign, due to lack of funds, and the rebellion sputtered out, only to flame up again in 1572. By 1581 the Netherlands were independent, though it took until 1648 for this … Read more

Black Book

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Sebastian Koch and Carice Van Houten in Black Book

In some quarters the director Paul Verhoeven is now eternally infamous for Sharon Stone’s is she/isn’t she leg-crossing moment in Basic Instinct. But he came to prominence with a Second World War movie, Soldier Of Orange, in 1977. Black Book sees Verhoeven return to his native land, his native Dutch tongue and the 1939-45 war in an engrossing drama focusing on one young Jewish woman (played by the remarkable Carice van Houten), a member of the Dutch resistance who finds herself right at the heart of the Nazi war machine. It is a familiar genre but Verhoeven injects fresh elements into it – notably dark humour, lashings of nudity and a fuzzy delineation … Read more