Blue is the Warmest Colour (18)
Blue is the Warmest Colour (18)
Dir: Abdellatif Kechiche
With: Adele Exarchopoulos, Lea Seydoux
Runtime: 180 minutes
AT three hours, Abdellatif Kechiche's Palme d'Or-winning drama about first love should feel about as long as a bad marriage, but it is a measure of the performances, and his skill as a storyteller, that one barely notices the time passing. Adele Exarchopolous plays Adele, a French teenager growing close to a boy in her class. Secure in her assumptions, she is not prepared for the love at first sight that hits her on seeing the blue-haired Emma (Lea Seydoux) across a crowded square.
The passion arrives naturally, it's the rest of a serious love affair that often leaves her feeling out of her depth. While the prolonged sex scenes between two women have led to all kinds of sound, fury and lurid media coverage, Adele and Emma's sexuality is made to seem immaterial: this could be any two people in their first serious love affair. Exarchopolous and Seydoux are dazzling, turning in wise beyond their years performances, with the former in particular revealed as another natural born star of French cinema.
Flu (15)
Dir: Sung-su Kim
With: Jang Hyuk, Park Min-ha
Runtime: 122 minutes
ARRIVING just in time for the sniffles season is this overlong but enjoyably deranged disaster movie from South Korea. Billing itself as "not based on real life events", which makes a refreshing change, Flu begins with migrants making their way to Korea. Before you can say pack a handkerchief, bird flu has broken out and is spreading from human to human at an alarming rate. With no cure in sight, panic erupts into anarchy and the government, advised by men in suits from the West, must decide what to do. All the while, a rescue worker tries his best to protect a doctor and her young daughter. Can love survive amid the projectile vomiting? A mega hit in its homeland, Flu bears comparison with Steven Soderbergh's Contagion in its sly, subversive look at the fragility of society, but it has a wacky charm and inventiveness all of its own, even if it does overstay its welcome.
Cineworld Glasgow Renfrew Street and Aberdeen Union Square.
Parkland (15)
Dir: Peter Landesman
With: Zac Efron, Paul Giamatti
THE industry that has grown up around the assassination of JFK has been working overtime to mark tomorrow's 50th anniversary.
Peter Landesman's drama comes at the story from the angle of those working in the Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where the US president was pronounced dead, as well as bringing in the experiences of other witnesses such as Abraham Zapruder, he of the famous amateur footage. Landesman does well initially to bring a sense of immediacy to the story, and a strong cast, including Paul Giamatti as Zapruder, and Zac Efron, as a young doctor, adds to the interest.
Even with these advantages, however, no new light is shed on the already comprehensively covered events.
Vivan Las Antipodas! (U)
Dir: Victor Kossakovsky
DOCUMENTARY maker Victor Kossakovsky is fascinated by antipodes, described in the introduction as "people or places diametrically opposed to one another on the Earth's surface."
Armed with his cameras and a keen sense of the breadth and absurdity of life, he connects individuals in Russia and Chile, Argentina and China, Botswana and Hawaii and Spain and New Zealand.
All human life is here, some a shade more interesting than others, with the quietly hilarious toll booth attendants in Entre Rios, Argentina, emerging as the film's stars.
The real movie stealers, however, are the awesome landscapes, all shot in magnificent fashion by Kossakovsky.
Filmhouse, Edinburgh, November 22-28
Ernest and Celestine (U)
Dirs: Benjamin Renner, Vincent Patar, Stephane Aubier
Voices: Pauline Brunner, Lambert Wilson
Runtime: 77 minutes
ERNEST is a gruff old bear, Celestine is a gentle mouse, and society decrees that neither the two shall meet, or if they do meet they shall not be friends. This animated charmer, based on the children's books by Belgian writer-illustrator Gabrielle Vincent, shows what happens when the old order is shaken up. Beautifully illustrated and with a winning sense of humour, Ernest and Celestine has a style and sensibility all of its own and should prove a hit with all the family. If you are going with very small film fans, do bear in mind - excuse the ursine pun - that it is in French with subtitles.
Glasgow Film Theatre, November 23, 11.30am
The Family (15)
Dir: Luc Besson
With: Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer
Runtime: 111 minutes
LUC Besson's Mafia comedy features a couple of A-listers in Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, but this is one Z-list of a picture. Fred and Maggie Blake (De Niro and Pfeiffer) have been moved to a village in France with their son and daughter under an FBI witness protection programme. If that stretches credulity, what comes next will test your patience to breaking point. No Italian-American or Mafia cliche is left unturned as the Blakes bring their particular brand of mayhem to Europe. Violent, nasty, monumentally stupid, The Family plays like the worst sort of French comedy clunker. That's bad enough, but wait till you see how a certain movie classic enters the fray. All concerned should enter cinema's witless protection programme forthwith.
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