Side Effects

Bea says: This was certainly a gripping thriller and the time in the cinema passed very quickly indeed through its twists and turns. 

The first half was very good indeed, with a good amount of tension, pace and what was shaping up to be a very good – and subtle – story. 

But then something happened – as if the producers suddenly got worried that it was too boring and decided to make it a bit more sensational.  The storyline got rather silly at that point (complete with One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest-style mental health wards, the sudden onset of completely unexpected and unlikely sexually relationships etc) and if it weren’t for the stellar cast, the film would have been entirely lost.

However everyone acted on beautifully regardless (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jude Law especially) and I had enough faith in the film to recommend it to others, with, however, the warning that the plot line did go downhill as the film progressed!  Not a bad night's entertainment however.

***

Cecil says: I’m not really sure why this film reminded me of Usual Suspects. Maybe it was the very complex plot, with lots of layers and angles you can only really work out at the end, and even then you might have to go back to the beginning of the film to see all the clues as they appeared.

I’m also not really sure why they felt the need to begin the film with a scene showing a bloodied foot dragging its way across a floor, leaving ghastly stains behind. They then go back three months, and actually rush past this scene about half way through the rest of the narrative. Was the idea to intrigue us? To shock us? To make us do exactly what I’m doing now?

If so, rather like with Usual Suspects, I’m slightly annoyed at being manipulated like that for no real reason, and would rather have had a straight chronological telling of the story.

As it is, the story is a good one, with high drama, and lots of issues Americans in particular are grappling with day-in, day-out.

What ARE the side effects of the drugs against depression (or Rheumatoid arthritis) or any of the other branded drugs being advertised night after night on mainstream US TV channels?

Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones do a great job, though it’s interesting Law is playing a doctor trained in the UK with full-on clipped British accent, whereas Zeta-Jones is playing an American psychiatrist. The other two main characters are played by Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum (don’t you just love these names where, if you didn’t know who they were, you would be hard-pressed to tell which name is male and which female?).

There are a few moments where you’d have to question the portrayal of a senior psychiatrist, as played by Jude Law. Would he really be so touchy-feely with his patients? Would he really interrupt a lunch with his wife to give one client five minutes, when it clearly wasn’t an emergency. I know they were trying to make us doubt his integrity, but you can take things a little too far to be believable.  

And I wish I could remember his quote about the British health system (as compared to the US) or exactly how they pronounced DerHam, where he is supposed to have studied...

It’s hard to say more without spoiling the plot for other viewers. It was a good film, time flew by, but it did lose marks for me in both its unnecessary complexity and its simplicity in some of the assumptions it made. Hard to see at face value how a film can do both, but go and see Side Effects for yourself and see what you think.

***

The House - Dum

Cecil says: When I saw they were showing a Czech film at the Glasgow Film Theatre the other day, I was in two minds. I love the Glasgow Film Theatre and try to go whenever I’m up that way, but I had had a few bad experiences with Czech cinema in the past: weirdly-surreal animations or stupidly-comical farce humour.

Luckily, The House was neither of these. It was actually a fairly dour, real-life drama about an old bloke who has spent decades building two houses for his two daughters. Trouble is, the house he almost finished was to go to a daughter he then disowned because she went off with a ne’er-do-well; and he has co-opted his younger daughter into helping him build the house she doesn’t really want because she has romantic visions of better things away from her small-town Czech Republic life.

It’s not a barrel of laughs, this film. But the story keeps things flowing nicely, and the characters are all quite engaging in their different ways.

The young English teacher who arrives in school and ends up having an affair with younger daughter is slightly unbelievable, or is his character just a bit over-acted? He has about as much charisma as Iain Duncan-Smith on a bad day, but I guess for a teenage girl character like Eva he can appear like a romantic way out of small-town living. When things go wrong, though, his hang-dog look just felt a bit too like a caricature, something Scooby-Doo might do.

And would he really let himself be caught in a clinch with a teenage pupil while they’re both in the staff room? I don’t know. When I was a teacher many many years ago, there was a scandal when two of the teachers were caught in flagrante in the stationery cupboard one day, so I guess these things do happen.

And it was only the odd weakness in the plot that made me think, ‘no’. On the whole, this was a good film about family break-ups, reconciliation, dreams and realities.

It might even make me look on Czech cinema more positively, too.

***

Bea says: Being a big old softy, I was somewhat concerned that this film would be rather sad when I read the synopsis prior to going (father engaged in futile business of building houses for daughters, one of whom had left to an unsuitable marriage, one of whom couldn’t wait to escape their village life in the Czech Republic).

But in fact it was charming – poignant, tender, and a very astute exploration of family life, marriage, youth and age.  

Beautifully constructed, written (and translated), and acted it left me with the warm feeling that, sometimes, good things do happen, despite all the rest.

***.5