2010 - 11 Reviews

‘Grow Your Own’

8th April

 Richard Laxton UK 2007 100 mins. Cert PG

‘Grow Your Own’ ended the season with the sort of film that pleases Chudleigh audiences – a gentle comedy with typical British charm and a poignant edge.
It features a bunch of characters who tend their allotments, nurturing their crops and criticising their neighbours’ efforts. However, their peace is disturbed when a group of asylum seekers arrives on the scene.
The film grew from an idea to make a short video to promote & help raise funds for an extraordinary enterprise thought up by Margrit Ruegg. She is a psychotherapist and the director of the Family Refugee Support Project in Liverpool. The people she works with have had terrible experiences in their home countries, and were trying to cope with the physical and mental after-effects of those experiences in the sometimes inhospitable atmosphere of their adopted city. Under Margrit's scheme, these people were given - not drugs - but allotments.
The theory was simple. Many asylum seekers have difficulty sleeping and are vulnerable to bouts of depression and lethargy. Gardening provides structure, social contact and a drug-free path to total exhaustion. Many refugees had been very productive in their home countries, so they found the enforced idleness of asylum seeking (applicants are not allowed to do paid work) hard to take. Producing fruit and veg for the family table helped with that. Margrit wanted a 10-minute video presentation to help her raise funding.
In the end she got three very short, humane, funny documentaries which you might have seen when they were aired in Channel 4's, ‘Little Wonders’ slot. But from there the BBC picked up the project, and Richard Laxton, directed a fictionalised, feature length version with a strong cast. Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce it stars stalwarts of British drama, Philip Jackson, Alan Williams, & Eddie Marsan, and a particularly moving performance from Benedict Wong.

Honeydripper

11th March

John Sayles USA 2007 118 mins Cert PG

Despite being given an ‘A’ score by a couple of audience members, the general view of ‘Honeydripper’ was one of disappointment. Only three films since we began have scored below seventy percent, and this is one of them. It scored only one less than the March, 2008 film, ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ which had won many plaudits and awards but failed to overly impress the Chudleigh audience. Likewise, ‘Honeydripper’ had won awards, and John Sayles is an acknowledged & accomplished director, but for CFS it seemed to lack the vital ingredients that would make it a favourite.
The poverty of 1950s Alabama was obvious from the charming opening scene of two barefoot boys ‘playing’ a cardboard piano and a one string pretend guitar. The peeling paint and rough appearance of the wooden shack that is the ‘Honeydripper Lounge’, left us in no doubt that the central character, ex jazz musician, Tyrone (Danny Glover), was suffering hard times, and it was no surprise to learn that he was in debt and about to be evicted.
Trouble looms in the form of a rival bar with a juke-box. Tyrone ‘Pinetop’ Purvis, his wife & daughter are working hard but they are losing customers and attempt to draw them back by dispensing with their blues singer, Bertha Mae, and hiring a star blues guitarist from Arkansas. Tyrone’s plan is to lure in the cotton pickers as well as soldiers from the local barracks, but events conspire against him. He has to replace the guitar star with an unknown boy, and rashly hijacks a lorry load of beer destined for his rival. In the segregated South at this period it is inevitable that a bigoted, white sheriff (Stacey Keech) should appear on the scene. He bullies the cotton pickers and muscles in on what could be new success for the ‘Honeydripper’.
‘Honeydripper’ promised much, and critics and other film societies enjoyed its leisurely pace and southern charm, but there was something missing. The characters deserved more development and we would have appreciated a lot more music. Despite that, it was a pleasant evening in the company of engaging characters.

‘Seducing Dr Lewis’

11th February

 Jean-Francois Pouliot Canada 2009 104 mins Cert 15
We owe our thanks to one of our members, who wishes to remain anonymous, for sponsoring the February film.
The entertainment began with a short by David Williams, 'Outside the Box'. We have seen his work in Chudleigh before - 'Making a Difference', a documentary celebrating cakes. ‘Outside The Box’ was made as part of the Exeter Phoenix 2010 Short Film Commissions and features a man at a job interview and the various different scenarios revolving around his reaction to one of the questions. This little film is another example of the good work being produced by local talent.
‘Seducing Dr Lewis’ attracted one of our biggest audiences of the season. The director, Jean-Francois Pouliot, like many before him, comes from the world of advertising. For 15 years he won prizes and big contracts for French speaking adverts for the likes of MacDonalds. He has made short animations and was approached to make features, but found nothing to inspire him until reading Ken Scott’s screenplay for ‘Seducing Dr Lewis’. So this is his first feature film.
This French-Canadian comedy is about a small fishing village of only 125 inhabitants, that is suffering hard times. We see a long queue waiting for their welfare cheques and even the mayor (Jean-Pierre Gonthier) is tempted to move to Montreal in search of a better life. However, before leaving he attempts to attract support for a factory which would provide employment for the whole community. But he finds that before it can go ahead, he has to find a doctor willing to set up home in the village.
When Dr Lewis (David Boutin), a plastic surgeon, is stopped for speeding and found to be in possession of cocaine, he is ‘persuaded’ to come to St. Marie La Mauderne. The villagers find out that Dr Lewis is a cricket lover, so quickly teach themselves the rudiments of the game so that when he arrives he is greeted by the sight of a cricket match. And so the story proceeds, with the wily mayor thinking up a succession of ruses to ‘seduce’ the doctor to stay. The strategy gradually begins to work as he is offered his favourite food at the restaurant, a long-suffering villager is persuaded to listen to jazz with him and the local beauty is always tantalisingly seen, but keeps her distance.
With its echoes of Bill Forsythe’s ‘Local Hero’, including colourful, mischievous characters and an attractive setting, this film charmed and amused the audience.

Invictus

14th January

Starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon.

We were fortunate to have a sponsor for our January film. Quest for Zest is now an integral part of Chudleigh life, helping many to keep fit & healthy. We are grateful to them for once again showing their appreciation of what CFS does for the community, by sponsoring ‘Invictus’.
Released in 2010, ‘Invictus’ tells the story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and Nelson Mandela’s attempt to soothe tensions and unite post-apartheid South Africa through sport.
Clint Eastwood directs, after acting in movies for 55 years and directing them for 40. In the last decade, he has made ten very varied films, including Oscar winner, ‘Million Dollar Baby’, the Second World War films, ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ and ‘Letters From Iwo Jima’, and a deeply felt story of a man rethinking his values in late middle age, ‘Gran Torino’.
Though not particularly subtle, many agree that each film has been a fine piece of storytelling, covering a range of human sympathies and characters, from an aristocratic Japanese general to blue-collar, Irish-American Bostonians.
‘Invictus’, fits very much into this pattern portraying the relationship between President Mandela (Morgan Freeman) and Francois Pienaar(Matt Damon), captain of the South Africa rugby team. Freeman provides us with a Mandela that fits the world view – wise and calm, and both he and Damon do reasonably well with their accents. At one point we hear Mandela reading the poem that had sustained him in prison: ‘Invictus’ , by WE Henley that ends with the couplet: "I am the master of my fate/ I am the captain of my soul".
There have been few rugby films. Some might remember Lindsay Anderson’s ‘This Sporting Life’, which was rather grim. There was ‘Alive’, where Uruguayan rugby players eat their dead team mates when stranded in the Andes; and Roger Vadim's ‘La curée’ in which Jane Fonda seduces her rugby playing stepson. There was also, Alan Paton’s follow up to ‘Cry the Beloved Country’, ‘Too Late the Phalarop’e’, in which the tragic hero is an Afrikaner rugby star who has an illegal affair with a black girl.
But in ‘Invictus’, Eastwood makes the match sequences lively & convincing, and gives us an uplifting story. He displayed his belief in the basic decency of mankind, and rose above sentimentality for a fair number of the audience.

‘Love Actually’

10th December

Last season Chudleigh children’s clothes shop, I Saw Three Ships... sponsored ‘Chocolat’ and this year they supported CFS once again with an entertaining romance – ‘Love Actually’. Ros’s student son, Tom, made a very accomplished promo film for his mother’s business, to show before the feature and we hope we will be able to screen more of his work in the future.
To celebrate our first screening with all our own equipment, the audience was treated to complimentary mulled wine or fruit cup and mince pies to get us all in the festive mood.
‘Love Actually’ has become a Christmas favourite. Starring Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, Bill Nighy, Emma Thomson, Keira Knightley, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson and a host of stars, it portrays love in all its many forms, set against a great sound track.
Director and writer, Richard Curtis uses his very British talent for wit, irony & satire to touch us all. He is associated with so many of the best of British comedies, both on the big screen and TV. ‘Four Weddings & a Funeral’, ‘Notting Hill’, ‘Bridget Jones’, ‘Mr Bean’, Not The 9 o’clock News, ‘Blackadder’, ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ and Comic Relief to name some of his most famous work.
In ‘Love Actually’ Curtis takes us from one relationship to another as they develop, and it is a credit to his skills that we are carried along easily from scene to scene. The situations are all believable and unsentimental, except perhaps for the Prime Minister/tea lady (Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon) one, which does certainly stretch my imagination.
In ‘Love Actually’, we are given ten intertwined stories that are warm, bittersweet and hilarious. There is something for everyone to identify with and the film covers all ages and stages of love – unrequited, long-suffering, silent, contradictory, fragile, platonic, middle-aged crisis, and puppy-love. We saw Keira Knightly as the beautiful bride in the first flush of love; Emma Thomson as the betrayed, mother who sticks with her middle aged fool of a husband and Bill Nighy as an aging drug & drink raddled pop-star, still searching for love and realising it has been close to him all the time. There is enough of ‘an edge’ to each vignette to help anyone who might find this film a little too saccharine sweet to cope with, and the cast (with for me, the exception of Ms McCutcheon) all sail through with ease.
Once again the Chudleigh audience shared a sociable evening with friends & neighbours, with a glass in their hands watching a first class film.

‘The Painted Veil’

12th November.

Director, John Curran, who is also a writer and producer, directed Edward Norton, with Robert de Nero, in ‘Stone’, and due out next year he has ‘The Beautiful and the Damned’, the story of Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald. In which Leonardo di Caprio is rumoured to star. But in ‘The Painted Veil’ he gives us an old-fashioned, melodramatic epic.
Based on the W. Somerset Maughm novel of the same name, and set in the 1920s, it tells the story of Kitty (Naomi Watts), a self-absorbed young Englishwoman who is pushed by her overpowering mother into a marriage with dull bacteriologist, Walter (Edward Norton) as he is about to embark on an assignment to China.
Kitty Fane leaves a mundane existence in England for the prospect of at least a less boring life amongst the colonial set in Shanghai. Nonetheless she is beset with boredom, and quickly falls into an affair with an attractive but married vice-consul, Charlie Townsend (Liev Shreiber). She slips into emotional dependence on him, little realising in her naivety that he is a serial philanderer. When Walter finds out about her infidelity he is deeply hurt. He punishes her by ordering her to accompany him on an assignment to a cholera ravaged village where he will attempt to track the disease to its source.
And so we see the pair, with their entourage, being carried aloft on chairs through stunning scenery on the arduous journey. She, pining for her lost love as she contemplates what lies before her, and he, mourning the loss of what he thought was his loyal wife. There is no comfort for Kitty as she endures the blazing heat of the sun and the cold treatment meted out to her by the betrayed Edward.
Norton and Watts beautifully underplay their parts with subtlety and control. The gradual awakening of Kitty to the harsher realities of life amongst the Chinese peasants, is sensitively played and the development of a different understanding between the pair as the drama unfolds, engages every member of the audience.
The touching story is well served by its stars and supporting actors. Toby Jones who, appeared as Truman Capote in ‘Infamous’ gives Waddington, one of the few Englishmen in the remote village, an air of down-to-earth realism that Kitty has not met before. She is faintly shocked at the sight of his Chinese mistress in an exotic love nest. But his cynicism doesn’t deter her and as she gets to know
him he helps her to move away from her inevitable self-pity and become useful.
Diana Rigg plays an elderly nun who runs the local orphanage with very little help. It is there that Kitty begins to realise that she can do some good.
The sweeping story takes in the social mores of the 1920s, the difficulties of communication between a man and a woman, the development of medical knowledge and something of the local politics of a remote region of China. The Chudleigh audience were swept away by this excellent film and voted it one of their favourites.

11th October

‘Distraction’

Filmed & directed by Toby & Lucy de Burgh
 
In October the entertainment started with, ‘Distraction’, a short made by local brother & sister filmmakers, Toby and Lucy de Burgh who won the Exeter Phoenix Best Bursary film of 2008. Filmed locally it was inspired by overhearing a row next door, and is the story of a young man living alone who is troubled by his relationship with his girlfriend. This is depicted by scenes of flashbacks and dreams, one of which features the pair on the beach at Teignmouth.

‘The Counterfeiters’

Stefan Ruzowitzky Austria/Germany 2007 95 mins Cert 15

Following the three light-hearted films in September, last month’s screening was a complete contrast, a drama set in a concentration camp at the end of the second world–war.
‘The Counterfeiters’ is a superbly acted, Oscar winning film offering insights into human nature that are both chilling and hopeful. It depicts "The Golden Cage" inside Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where a group of prisoners work on Operation Bernhard, striving to produce counterfeit dollar bills and sterling notes for their Nazi masters, and succeeding in producing £130 million! They are motivated by clean clothes, good food, soft bedding, and weekly hot showers, and of course, the constant threat to their lives. Meanwhile their near neighbours are starved, humiliated and led to the gas chambers.
Director, Stefan Ruzowitzky benefited from having a survivor, Adolph Burger, on hand to check every draft of the script. The film is based on his book and idealist, Burger, played by August Dielh, is portrayed prominently in the film. Now ninety-one, Burger was recently in London to publicise the English edition of his memoir, ‘The Devil’s Workshop’, which describes his recollections of Operation Bernhard. He has made it his life’s work to tell his incredible story to successive generations. But in Ruzowitsky’s version, Saloman Sorowitsch, convincingly played by Karl Markovics, takes the central role.
Saloman is a Russian Jew with a reputation as a master forger. Early scenes in the film show his sleazy life before the war, using his artistic talents to produce official documents in exchange for sexual favours. Eventually he is arrested and, after ingratiating himself with the officers by painting their portraits, is sent to a Camp where his skills are harnessed to further the war effort of The Third Reich. He is set to work with a small group of prisoners, specially selected for their printing experience. They are given special treatment as long as they work on producing counterfeit notes. Saloman uses his instincts as a practiced ‘ducker & diver’, to survive and work his way through an almost impossible situation, while Burger and others struggle with their high principles as they are forced to obey their Fascist masters.
‘The Counterfeiters’ provides a reminder to younger generations of a black period in European history and is a showcase for Stefan Ruzowitsky’s talents as a director & screenwriter. He is served well by an intelligent and sensitive cast and the film well deserves its Oscar for Best Foreign Language film of 2007.

12th September

‘Mamma Mia’

Phillida Lloyd US/UK/Germany 2008 89 mins. Cert PG

Although lacking a cinematic pedigree, Phyllida Lloyd did direct the original stage show of ‘Mamma Mia’ and for the film she is given an idyllic Greek island and a big-name cast to make what for many, is their favourite musical. To others, watching Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Julie Walters, all throw themselves into the ABBA favourites is akin to torture. But the Chudleigh audience were pretty much in agreement, that ‘Mamma Mia’ is one of their favourites.
As in many musicals, the plot is thin, but who cares when we have all those ABBA hits? Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is about to get married on the Greek island where her mother (Streep) owns a rundown hotel. She needs to find which of her mother’s old boyfriends, is her father – Firth, Brosnan or Skarsgard, so she invites them all. They duly arrive, as do her mother’s old friends, played by the exuberant Christine Baranski and the garrulous Julie Walters. There are many opportunities to burst into song, and of course, they do. It’s all good fun and stunning scenery. There are a few misunderstandings, but of course all ends happily.

13th September

 ‘Up’

Pete Docter US 2009 89 mins. Cert PG

With thousands of balloons tied to his house, elderly curmudgeon, Carl lifts off to fulfill his lifetime ambition. In the early years of his marriage he and his wife plan an expedition to see the wilds of South America together. But before they can realise their dream, Carl is widowed. And so it is that he is left alone and lonely in his old age, as he comes to feel that the world is against him.
As he floats up above the city he finds that he is not alone. There is a stowaway aboard. Eight year old Russell was only trying to get an assisting the elderly badge when the house lifts off, and together they are swept away on an adventure, where they meet talking dogs, an evil villain and a rare bird named Kevin.
This year ‘Up’ had the honour of being the first animated film ever to open the Cannes Film Festival. Pixar have once again produced a family film, with movie references and humour for all ages to enjoy.

10th September

‘Moulin Rouge’

Baz Luhrmann Australia/US 2001 127mins Cert PG

Right from the very start Baz Luhrmann leaves the audience in no doubt that this is a glamorous, fantastical world veering towards the surreal. His cast serve him well and include fellow Australians, Nicole Kidman & Kylie Minogue. As in his first film, ‘Strictly Ballroom’ and his version of ‘Romeo & Juliet’ set in San Francisco, in ‘Moulin Rouge’ Luhrmann creates a world of heightened reality to enthral and entertain.
The year is 1899, and Christian, (Ewan McGregor) a penniless young English writer, has come to Paris in search of inspiration. Nowhere can he find more thrills and excitement than at the Moulin Rouge, a night club where Bohemians and artists join slumming aristocrats and the fashionably rich to be entertained by dancers and freaks. It is in this exciting and erotic atmosphere, as he pursues the Bohemian tenets of freedom, truth, beauty, and love, that he

meets, and falls instantly in love with, the seductive star courtesan, Satine (Kidman).
One of those attracted to the exciting music and Can-Can dancers is the night club’s patron, the Duke, played by Richard Roxborough in pantomime villain mode. Unfortunately for Christian, the Duke also has designs on Satine, and plots with the club’s impecunious but ambitious owner, Zidler (Jim Broadbent) to win her hand. But even with the help of their highly imaginative friends, the young lovers are pushed to their limits to find a way to stay together. The fates conspire against them and the film’s climax is a melodramatic play within a play, as a force not even love can conquer, takes its toll on Satine.
‘Moulin Rouge’ is an exuberant feast for the senses. It provides lush, colourful settings packed with intricate detail, and a succession of pop songs to aid the gaiety help the story along. I found Jim Broadbent rather creepy as he sang Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’, but Ewan McGregor proved himself more than equal to singing a touching love song. Kylie as the Absinthe Fairy was wasted – perhaps she should have played Satine and the cool (should that be, cold?) Nicole, taken the Green Fairy role.