The Good German

Bea says:

We nearly didn't make it to this film due to freak rainstorm just as we were about to leave; when we arrived the opening credits were rolling. I had vaguely read a few reviews of this film previously - but couldn't remember much except that it was sort of film noir. I only remembered that George Clooney was in it when I saw him on screen, although frankly he's always left me cold. The plot was somewhat predictable - Clooney plays an American reporter who was posted to Berlin prior to WW2 during which time he had a passionate affair with Blanchett's character, after the war he returns to Berlin to find her. He does find her and uncovers a secret about her life. However there are no great surprises, and the ending is a rip off of Casablanca, with seemingly no irony. Clooney is passable but wooden - Cate Blanchett steals the show as Lena. I did enjoy the cinematography, the light and shade of black and white film on a big screen, and I also enjoyed the rare treat of being told the story of a woman's experience of war. It could've been much, much better than it was.

Cecil says:
The Good German was disappointing. Not only was the ending Casablanca Mark II, but the whole film was trying to create a Casablanca feel and failing to do so. If anyone has seen von Trier's Europa, the idea of black and white to portray end-of-the-war Berlin is also borrowed - nice footage of Churchill, Stalin & co outside crumbling Berlin buildings, but I kept wondering if we were not going to see George Clooney doing a Woody Allen in Zelig and appearing alongside Joe or Winston at the Potsdam talks. It all seemed so second-hand and, dare I say it, formulaic...

And why oh why do so many American thriller/murder/spy films have such complicated storylines (verging on the Usual Suspects) constantly out to surprise us with yet another twist - it just isn't necessary if you have a damn good story and a gripping dialogue. To be quite honest, I was bored and found myself shuffling around in the not very good seats at the Beckenham Odeon (I'm being unfair on Beckenham Odeon, though, because they do have one magnificent art-deco room which is a delight to sit in - they just didn't show The Good German in it!).

Marks out of five? ** from Cecil
**.5 from Bea

Les Lip - l'imagination au pouvoir

Cecil says:

I have to declare an interest: I studied this industrial dispute for my undergraduate degree at Sussex Uni when I lived not far from Besancon in eastern France in the 1970s. So the archive footage and the present-day interviews with people who had been involved seemed fantastic to me (I'm not sure how Bea felt about sitting through 2 hours of largely face to camera interviews in French!)

In a nutshell, Lip was an old family watch-making firm which sold out to a big Swiss conglomerate in 1973; when the new owners tried to close the factory, the workers took over and for a few years it was a great success-story of the left in France. The film takes us back through the early years of the dispute and talks to the main participants (workers, management and government of the day) about how they view the whole conflict 33 years on.

What I didn't know before seeing this film: that when Jacques Chirac became Prime Minister in 1975, he nationalised Renault (!!) but then immediately cancelled the contract Renault had with Lip. As this was the main source of orders for Lip by 1975, the factory closed. The manager of the day says in the film that, in the wake of the oil crisis of 1973, the new government knew that other companies like Lip would also be getting into trouble, and if workers elsewhere saw that a take-over could succeed, they might follow suit. Lip could not be allowed to work, he says...

Sitting here in 2007, it is easy both to marvel at the creativity of the workers (in hiding their stash of watches - and money) and to cringe at the oh-so-typical battles on the left over what is the right path to follow in any dispute.

The film stops in 1975 when the factory has once again closed, but those of us who followed the dispute know that there was a follow-up: the workers then created a co-operative, which continued to make and sell L.I.P watches (they weren't allowed to call them Lip anymore). I bought one of their watches in 1979 and then lost it on the Sydney underground in 1986 (yes, somewhere out there is a lucky Aussie who has a beautiful watch they probably have no idea of the historical significance of).

On our way out of the cinema in Paris, Bea and I stopped to chat to a couple of the other cinema-goers about the film. One of them had been involved himself back in the 1970s and when I told him the story of my watch, he told me he would write to the strike organiser and see if he could track down a new watch for me. The very next day, this man emailed me with his draft letter to Charles Piaget and we await the response with excitement...

Bea says:

Yes it was difficult for me, as I have very little French, to follow this film, particularly as there were a lot of face-to-camera talking head shots. I did enjoy the archive footage of the factory and the strikes, however, and as one of the French cinemagoers said to me afterwards "You can see the emotion of those involved, even if you can't understand the words".

10 Canoes

Bea says...
Yet another film that seems to have escaped all notice here in London. Cecil and I saw it in Paris on our recent Movie Marathon there ( 3 films in 24 hours). Despite being made in partnership with the South Australian Film Corporation and Adelaide Festival I'd never heard of it - and although I don't spend a whole lot of time in Adelaide these days I thought I had my finger on the pulse enough to know when a new South Australian film was knocking about. Guess it goes to show I don't.
10 Canoes is narrated by David Gulpilil, well known to Australian people of my age for roles in films like "Storm Boy", and well known to the world for a part in "Crocodile Dundee". I wish I knew more about how this film came to be made (I'd be glad of any enlightenment) as it felt like something Gulpilil may have taken a lead in creating.
A story within a story, the 10 Canoes refer to a group of traditional Aboriginal men who are making canoes and hunting magpie geese and eggs, and during this event, taking place over a number of days, an older man tells a younger man an ancient story of longing, law, and getting the thing you most desire.
Beautiful cinematography and the strong narration of Gulpilil make this film an excursion into another world entirely. Time slows down in both stories. Many chuckles were heard in the cinema when the younger man complained "all I've learnt so far is that you take a long time to tell a story!"
***1/2

Cecil says...
I never thought I'd go to a film in Paris where half the spoken word is in an Aboriginal language so I was darting to the French subtitles to follow what was going on. David Gulpilil's voice (in English, as he narrates the story) is mesmerising - I could listen to his stories for hours, however long they are and however slowly they get to their point! Interesting switch from colour to black & white as the stories switched from the present to the time long-since past. Interesting also to look at the cinema audience in Paris: a total of 13 people, apart from us and a teenage boy, all over 60 - not sure whether this says something about Parisians and their taste for cinema from far-off places telling ancient stories or whether all the young people saw it when it first came out....
***

Netto

Cecil says...
Social realism from East Berlin, focusing on a man in his 30s struggling in the 'new' Germany since the wall came down, and his son, a 15 year-old who suddenly reappears in his father's life after a couple of years' estrangement. Kind of Wim Wenders meet Lars von Trier style. Good story-line as the son teaches his father how to get on in life, while being cringingly hopeless himself in matters of love (scenes with the prospective girlfriend in the park, in the flat, in the attic bring back awful memories of nervous moments with girls so many teenage boys must go through). East Berlin man's ex-wife is a sweetie but she's gone off with Bernd, the flashy Westerner with money, job and fast car. What does the ending mean? God knows, but it's a good film...
***
Bea says...
Cecil wondered if this film would be too much about the lives of men to interest me, but it did. And it made me want to go out and buy the back catalogue of Peter Tersching, East Berlin's answer to Johnny Cash (apparently).
***1/2

Irina Palm

Bea says...
Seen in Strasbourg, France, neither Cecil or myself had ever heard of this film, despite it being set in the UK, with a mainly UK cast. Marianne Faithful plays the lead role of Irina Palm, alias Maggie, a middle aged, widowed housewife who raises the money for a life-saving operation for her grandson by getting a job as a "hostess" in a Soho nightclub. Despite this rather cliched plot, Maggie's transformation from someone "not the least bit interesting", who "doesn't do anything", to someone famed in certain circles for the softness of her hands and her "delicate touch" - someone who does indeed "do something" - is very engaging. The dialogue is well crafted and understated, and well supported by the frugality of the sets and cinematography, leaving the simpleness of the story to shine.
****

Cecil says...
Do men really queue up for these services? I mean, I have never ever seen a queue outside one of those joints in Soho. And how do they make so much money when the men are putting a coin (ie max £2) into a slot for the services rendered? Anyway, apart from these reality checks, a gripping film (!!) and definitely recommended if it ever hits UK cinemas - or go to France and see it now...
****