One & Two (12A)
Metrodome, 11.99
This Southern Gothic-tinged debut feature from cinematographer-turned-director Andrew Droz Palermo received a limited theatrical release last month and now comes fresh to DVD, though with a modicum of critical weight behind it: a world premiere slot at last year's Berlin film festival was followed by screenings at Austin's SXSW film and music festival and the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
The basic conceit is a lift from M Night Shyamalan's The Village. A married couple and their two teenage children live a 19th century agrarian existence behind a massive perimeter wall which can mask much, but not the sound of passing planes. The mother suffers seizures and the children, Eva and Zac, are able to teleport themselves short distances, a feat accomplished with a pleasing fizzing sound and a puff of smoke. Their father, revealed as a godly man in one of the film's several voiceovers, disapproves of this unsettling talent and comes up with suitably 19th century punishments, such as nailing his children to the wall. Eventually, he sets Eva adrift in a boat, points her downstream and pretends to Zac that she is dead.
The film looks gorgeous, due in no small part to the talent of young female cinematographer Autumn Cheyenne Durald, whose previous work includes music videos for Arcade Fire. Nathan Halpern's score is equally beguiling and 16-year-old Kiernan Shipka (Sally Draper from Mad Men) turns in a bewitching and stately performance as Eva, alongside Homeland's Timothee Chalamet as big brother Zac.
That sense of stillness, combined with the lens flares and “magic hour” photography have prompted one critic to liken One & Two to a superhero film shot by Terrence Malick. That's pretty close to the mark, though you could also throw in flavours of The Night Of The Hunter, Philip Ridley's cult curio The Reflecting Skin (reviewed here recently) and, in particular, the bizarre philosophical sci-fi of Shane Carruth.
Carruth, however, gives his films an intellectual ballast that One & Two just doesn't have. The title, for instance, is never explained, which isn't a sin in itself, but Palermo leaves so much else to be guessed at too that you can't help feeling his is an exercise in style over substance. That said, the style alone carries it through.
Gemma Bovery (15)
Soda Pictures, £17.99
Gemma Arterton stars as her namesake Gemma Bovery in this adaptation by French director Anne Fontaine of Posy Simmonds's acclaimed graphic novel. And if the names Arterton and Simmonds in conjunction seem familiar, it's because the former Bond girl also starred in Stephen Frears's 2010 adaptation of Simmonds's Tamara Drewe, again playing the titular heroine.
This time we're in Normandy rather than Dorset and it's Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary that Simmonds is riffing on rather than Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd. On one hand, however, little has changed: the film is still peopled by middle-class Brits of a particular type and the characters seem equally removed from real life (or real life as it is lived everywhere that doesn't have quaint markets you can wander round in diaphanous summer dresses and balconies on which to sip apple brandy).
On the other hand, this is clearly a French film with (mostly) French dialogue and one of the key ingredients is its representation of how the French and the English rub along together. Or don't as the case may be. And, though Arterton takes top billing alongside Jason Flemyng as husband Charlie, it's essentially a star vehicle for veteran French character actor Fabrice Luchini. He plays the local baker with the hangdog expression who becomes obsessed with the comparisons between Gemma Bovery and her literary namesake, Emma Bovary. It's all a little cartoonish, which is to be expected given the source material, but no less enjoyable for it.
Life (15)
Entertainment One, £19.99
When acclaimed rock photographer and video director Anton Corbijn moved into film-making, nobody was surprised at his choice of subject: Joy Division, the cult 1980s band whose singer, Ian Curtis, committed suicide. The film was called Control.
After two forays into the world of thrillers - 2010's The American and 2014's A Most Wanted Man, an adaptation of the John le Carre novel of the same name - Corbijn returns to the subject of doomed youth with Life, a dramatisation of the real-life relationship between photographer Dennis Stock (played by Robert Pattinson) and rising star James Dean (Dane DeHaan), who has just completed East Of Eden when we first meet him.
Mostly, though, this is a film about a single image: over the course of a short assignment for Life magazine, Stock photographs Dean in New York and captures one of the most iconic photographs of the actor as he mooches through the rain in Times Square, hunched over a cigarette. That moment is beautifully rendered here, and both Pattinson and DeHaan are excellent in what is otherwise a pretty low-key film. Tip: before starting, watch the interview with Corbijn in the extras package in which he explains his very personal reasons for wanting to view Dean through the prism of Stock.
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