La Mala Educación (Bad Education)
dir. Pedro Almodóvar
Almodóvar's new film is a twisty, multi-layered thriller that comes as a surprising stylistic shift following his more emotional (but unique) dramas, Talk To Her and All About My Mother. We jump through time as well as in and out of reality, including a Catholic Church in the 60s and a film-within the-film focusing on the transsexual singer 'Zahara'. For the first hour or so, you feel you've got a handle on what's going on, who's who and what's real--but Almodóvar still has plenty of rugs to pull from under you, plenty of narrative twists to uncover. Bad Education works as a terrific film noir thriller, but retains the director's own personal idiosyncracies and wonderful visual style.


As both Zahara and Ignacio (the author of 'The Visit', the story of abuse visited upon children by Catholic priests at the school he attended), Gael García Bernal gives a fabulous, remarkable, multi-sided performance. As the film progresses, Almodóvar reveals more and more about his character's past, transforming the audience's view of him dramatically each time. Bernal holds fast through all this--he's near flawless and utterly convincing, wearing a wig or not. If viewed as a film noir, Bernal makes for a perfect femme fatale at the centre of it all. He's ably supported--Fele Martínez is very good as the director reliving his childhood memories by making the film of 'The Visit', and Javier Cámara, so wonderful as the lead in Talk To Her, puts in a hilarious cameo role as a drag-queen friend of Zahara's. But this is Bernal's movie, and he carries it with such ease and assurance that I cannot wait to see what performances he'll produce in the future.


Interestingly and refreshingly, Almodóvar does not treat the subject of the treatment of the children at the school as a simple heavy-handed condemnation, but takes a far more interesting (if unsettling) angle. Father Manolo, the central priest character, is treated with near sympathy, or at least a kind of understanding for his position. The sexualisation of the boys, via several different sequences of them swimming, playing sports and exercising, is disturbing but certainly very different, giving the audience a perspective usually not afforded them. There are plenty of other great visuals in the film--Almodóvar's use of jarring and attention-grabbing colors and costumes (especially in the 'film' sections) helps add to the heightened sense of reality. The visualy mosaic structure of much of the film, from the chaotic title sequence to the final shot of Enrique leaning against his squared garage door, compliments the fragmented but interlinked style of the story. Alberto Iglesias' Herrmann-esque score, one of his best, is perfect for the Hitchcockian mood.


Bad Education is a film that really has to be seen, to fully appreciate the scope of Almodóvar's story and the wonderful style it's infected with. The first half or so is near-perfect, wonderfully constructed and involving, but it does peter off a little in the latter half, as the unfolding twists slightly deteriorate some of the characters and the momentum dies away. I left fully satisfied nonetheless, and further analysis and discussion revealed more and more for me. Suspenseful, gripping and hypnotic.

**** 1/2

The Twilight Samurai
dir. Yoji Yamada
All the samurai movies I've ever seen (and I must admit, I'm no expert--limited mostly to Kurosawa classics and big-budget Hollywood dramas) portray the warriors as iconic, powerful, legendary characters that are preceeded by their own vast mythos. The Twilight Samurai shatters this image with the character of 'Twilight' Seibei Iguchi, a petty samurai who does little more than keep stock of food provisions at a fort. Seibei, who could almost be the lead character of a Nick Hornby novel, is a struggling single father with two young daughters, a senile mother and a wife lost to consumption. He's nervous and stammery around his childhood sweetheart Tomoe, almost ashamed of his skill at swordfighting and deep in money trouble. The fact that his job is a samurai and he walks around with a katana tied to his waist seems almost incidental for most of the film--a refreshing and interesting portrait. The Twilight Samurai follows Seibei through various difficulties he faces, including dealing with Tomoe's drunken ex-husband, considering proposals of marriage and finally, his clan ordering him to kill a wayward samurai who refuses to commit suicide. In this final showdown, Seibei meets a man whose life reflects his own, and whose sad state of affairs and dismissal of the strict samurai codes provides a vision of a possible future.


As Seibei, Hiroyuki Sanada (who hammed up in a much more traditional samurai role in Edward Zwick's overblown The Last Samurai) is wonderfully controlled and subtle, letting slip glimpses of powerful emotion and feeling at just the right times. It is a complete and real characterisation, easily one of the best performances of the year so far. The supporting cast do very well alongside him, there's not a single misfire among them. Yamada tells the story traditionally (with a voice-over from one of Seibei's daughters occasionally filling us in) but it's never too sentimental or mawkish--preferring even the most emotional moments to be conducted in a quiet and measured fashion. The slow pace means the film does drag a little, but it's still an involving drama with a great central character that provides a welcome counterpoint to the samurai myth.
****

Troy
dir. Wolfgang Petersen
First things first--let's get the whining about Homer's epic text being mutilated for the film out of the way. Troy may be many things, but it certainly isn't poetic. Stuff's been swapped around, characters fiddled with, etc. etc. Taking all that into account, I went into Troy expecting just a grand, traditional ancient war movie with plenty of marquee idols and British thespians that I could enjoy. But it didn't even work as that. The film is grand and great-looking (I expected no less considering its gazillion-dollar budget) but it's hampered by a diabolically bad screenplay from David Benioff, who I expected far better from after the excellent 25th Hour. It is then further compounded by near-total failure by the fantastic cast to perform even adaquately, the confused and muddled handling of the action scenes and the NEVER-ENDING length.


Perhaps I'm being a little harsh. To be honest, the main fault is the dialouge the poor cast is forced to speak--clunky, repetitive, derivative trash that offends its Homeric origins. Some of the actors rise above this to be watchable enough. Eric Bana (although he's helped with having the most sympathetic character in the film) continues his track record of having a wonderful screen presence in all of his films, and his sections are easily the best. Sean Bean, too, is pretty great as Odysseus, and I could go for an Odyssey film with him (as long as Petersen and Benioff aren't involved). Peter O'Toole mostly sleepwalks, but his wonderful face and voice mean he's always interesting to watch. The rest of the cast have a lot to answer for. As Achilles, Brad Pitt looks the part (he looks GREAT) but he gives a total one-note performance, lending no depth at all to his role. Orlando Bloom, an actor who's been barely getting by on his looks so far, is resoundingly awful as Paris, his every second onscreen dragging the film even further into the mud. The rest of the players are all totally wasted, with all the great supporting roles of the story turned into one-dimensional, one-expression caricatures. Brian Cox and Brendan Gleeson snarl and say "my brother" a lot, Julie Christie looks wistful and seems to be reading off of an autocue and Saffron Burrows and Rose Byrne seem to have had their personalities sucked out and replaced with polystyrene. Amazingly, Diane Kruger isn't as bad as I thought she'd be--but she's still pretty bad.


Despite being bored senseless by the dialogue scenes, I was at least expecting some decent action. But for the first two hours, all of the battle scenes are actually quite poorly done--blurred hacking obscured by bad editing and camerawork. For the final siege, it does pick up, and Achilles and Hector's duel in the sand is pretty good. But nothing in the film has the gripping power or excitement of the far superior Gladiator, an obvious inspiration (all the way down to the incredibly irritating wailing-woman voice on the score). The ending is fine but everything is quite hastily wrapped up (they never even bother explaining the reason for Achilles' weak heel). Overall, had the script been totally overhauled, some of the parts recast, and about an hour removed, Troy might have approached something resembling real quality. Sadly, though, it's just an oily campfest that swings from being enormously dull to mildly entertaining. In fact, with badly performed one-dimensional characters, terrible dialogue, lots of sweaty sex scenes and fighting, Troy might work as a daytime soap opera. Maybe then, it wouldn't be so inexcusable.

* 1/2