Trust: disappointing yet worth watching

Trust, the story of a 14 year old trusting girl, Annie (Liana Liberato), groomed online by “Charlie” (Tristan Peach), a serial child-rapist, is disappointing, although well intentioned. Like filming by numbers.

However, the strength of the film lies in the different readings of what happened from hers to her father's (Clive Owen) reading, and her slow realization of how she was duped into sex. Her trust is then shattered, the resulting emotional scars threaten to tear the family apart. Another saving grace of Trust was the rather open ended finale, as it is likely that the perpetrator will escape scotch free (in spite of a trap set up by the FBI), although there was a kind of emotional closure not only for Annie, but also for the whole family.

The acting is quite good, particularly the nuanced interpretation of Annie Cameron by Liana Liberato, although in part I felt some of the performances were a bit over the top. I also felt that Trust was too long, it would have enormously benefited by a tighter editing. Not too subtle product placement was annoying.

The 15 certificate closes it to younger girls, who really should be the target audience for this too long didactic film, as the issue of internet grooming is worth raising, even now (the film is placed on Obama's America).

Trust is out on UK cinemas now.

Director: David Schwimmer

Cast: Clive Owen, Catherine Keener, Liana Liberato

Distributor: Lionsgate UK

Of Gods and Men To stay? To flee?

These were the stark options facing the Trappist monks in 1996 at their monastery in Tibhirine, in the Atlas Mountains, during the Algerian civil war. Many of them having lived in harmony in the midst of a Muslim community since the end of WW2, living from the produce of the land and trading with the locals, their peaceful way of life is abruptly disrupted by the brutal intrusion of the external world, in the shape of the murderous activities of an extremist Islamic organisation, having beheaded a group of Croatian construction workers nearby. The rebels are soon followed by an army as brutal as them, offering their protection to the monks, which they refuse on the ground that they cannot accept the help of a government that they regard as corrupt.

The monks debate the options open to them as the conflict escalates, between their personal safety and their moral duties to the local community. It is Christmas Eve when a group of fundamentalist intrude in their ceremonies, demanding medicines and a doctor. The abbot, Father Christian (Lambert Wilson), refuses their demands; but cites the Koran as a proof of their goodwill. Ali Fayattia (Farid Larbi), the rebels' leader, grants the monastery his protection in a show of respect for their integrity, an act that attracts the unwelcome attention and harassment of a hostile army onto the monastery. When Fayattia is killed, that protection vanishes, and most of the monks are kidnapped in the middle of the night, we see them marching in the snow haze up the cold mountain, before we learn of their fate.

Of Gods and Men is a fine example of the tradition of cinéma vérité, almost in the footsteps of Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers, the cinematography brilliantly conveying both the serenity of their mountainous location and their peaceful daily life routines, working on the land, preparing jars of honey to sell or barter in the local market, attending the needs and curing the diseases of the local population, participating in their rituals, yet capturing the unnerving presence of the military as the civil conflict escalates, fatally involving them. Father Christian's attempts to cast a fine line between the fundamentalist and the army for them to continue living in the midst of the community, to which they feel a moral duty to serve, had come to an end.

Xavier Beauvois casts a dissecting eye on the resulting brutality of the civil war, a consequence of the participants' humanity being put on hold for the sake of either holding, or gaining power, of their ideologies, as Father Christian brilliantly muses in his final spiritual testament.

The DVD contains interviews to relatives of the monks, and a background to both the conflict and the monks presence in Algeria.

Of Gods and Men DVD is on sale in Britain.

Director: Xavier Beauvois

Writers: Xavier Beauvois (adaptation) (dialogue), Etienne Comar (scenario)

Cast: Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin

Distributed by Artificial Eye

Kimberly: girl meets... err...4 boys

Kimberly is not a masterpiece, but not every film should be one. There is space for those movies which fill a space in our lives and in our emotions for a while. Kimberly, a well crafted story about a woman, an unexpected baby, and four would be fathers, handsomely fills it.

A romantic comedy on the usual line of girl meets boy and... something is wrong here. This paragraph should say: girl meets... four boys, and she doesn't know who is the father of the baby. “So, what's to do?” is the conundrum the quintet is embroiled. The solution? The baby ends up with four dads, after a few ups and downs, as usual in this genre. However, smiles and laughs continuously crossed my face, and a few tears too.

Four young men row on the River Delaware. However, their enthusiasm is not reflected in their skills, their constant defeats in sporting events and unwise bets ends up with embarrassing situations, until, one day, they meet Kimberly (Gabrielle Anwar), the daughter of an English champion rower. She coaches them, resulting in the team winning a race; and they coach her, resulting in a baby. Their own lives gets also sorted out. A tale of relationships that are becoming less and less unusual these days. Old Philadelphia and the river comes out particularly well, the boat race scene being particularly of their place.

It is good to see Gabrielle Anwar having made a career, whom I first saw as a teenage actress in Summer's Lease and Press gang.

A thoroughly enjoyable film.

The DVD (also containing the trailer and the usual set up options) is out for sale in Great Britain now.

Director: Frederic Golchan

Writers: Frederic Golchan (screenplay), Guy de Maupassant (short story "Mouche")

Cast: Veronica Alicino, Gabrielle Anwar, Willow Anwar, Patty Duke, Molly Ringwald

USA 1999

Kimberly (Cert Tbc) is a Network Releasing title

Running Time: 102 minutes

No.of Discs: 1

RRP: £12.99

Screen Ratio: 1.78:1

Cat No: 7953484

The Round Up: crude propaganda

Quite simply, Rose Bosch's The Round Up is no more than crude Zionist propaganda, using, and abusing, the fate of the Parisian Jewish men, women and children who were rounded up by Pétain's collaborationist government in occupied France during 1942, to be exterminated in Hitler's gas chambers.

Rose Bosch throws into it all the clichés already in vogue in Holocaust films, by now an industry in itself, such as the tear felt reunion of survivors after the war, the separation and partying of families, the hopelessness of their situation, the young lives cut short, the good French people, the bad French people, etc. Nothing new or special here. Just scriptwriter's tricks. They may be based in witnesses accounts, but still, tricks in the manner that Bosch dealt with them.

The Round Up has, however, one redeeming feature: the depiction of Jewish society in the French capital in 1942, which we have not seen much before in the big screen, when Paris had become a kind of refuge for all those Jewish families escaping from occupied Poland, mainly. The acting is also quite good, particularly from the kids.

I am really surprised that a good actor such as Jean Reno is taking part in such a crude film. It is a shame, actually, as it has some redeeming elements, such as the acting and the portrayal of the period. The cynic in me cannot stop wondering if its release was timed to counteract moves in the United Nations to establish a Palestinian state. If anti-Semitism has increased in France, and elsewhere in Europe, the reasons for this phenomena are partly a backlash against the actions of successive Israeli governments, bent in “purifying” Israel.

Other film-makers have dealt when the fate of the Jewish people in occupied Europe in a much more sensitive, and effective, way. The names of Spielberg and Kie?lowsky spring to my mind. Bosch is not one of them. If anything, this film has made a disservice to the history of the Jewish people in occupied France.

The Round Up has gone straight as a serious contender into my list of the worst films of 2011.

Director: Rose Bosch

Cast: Jean Reno, Mélanie Laurent, Gad Elmaleh, Raphaëlle Agogué, Hugo Leverdez, Joseph Weismann

Distributor: Revolver Entertainment

Last Year in Marienbad – The eroticism of the Baroque

Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad, a celebration of the eroticism of not only the Baroque, but also of the baroque. An homage to uncertainty in an age where we demand and worship absolute certainty and closure (that awful word) not only from our cinema - how boring, but also in our lives and in the public realm.

An absolutely masterly cinematography, a camera that loves to caress with its lens the exuberance of this dismal baroque hotel where the film is set, while its microphone loves the narrator's words as he describes it, a man who built a story around a woman whom he claims he met the previous year at Marienbad, in that hotel, a story which may be true, or not. A woman character which may be real, or the product of a febrile imagination – the narrator's voice gets more and more feverish as the film progresses. A narrative time that may be true, or itself being an imaginary time, as past and present merges. Where is the one? Or the other? Or are they set in a completely different time, as the mere existence of the narration hints?

A mysterious woman, a shady character, with cold and implacable eyes, setting games to his fellow guests, games that he always win, as Resnais does with his film. But does he? Or Resnais?

Last Year in Marienbad, first released in 1961, has been lauded as one of the cinematic classic masterpieces of all times. I watched it again, leisurely, last night, I have to say that it still felt as fresh and intriguing when I first saw it as a young man in the 60s.

I am not going to write any more about it, as many words have already been spent analysing and over-analysing it in uncountable books, magazines and Film Studies courses, over the years.

I will just say: Just go, lay back, and enjoy it. A very rewarding experience.

Those images! That camera! Those gardens!

Unforgettable.

Last Year in Marienbad will be released in Britain on Friday 8th July 2011 by the BFI, on the same day that, by a happy coincidence, that Jean-Luc Godard's “Film Socialisme” is.

Directed by Alain Resnais

Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff

France-Italy 1961 | 94 mins | Cert U

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