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To watch or not to watch? I will tour around Amsterdam’s cinemas and answer this crucial question every Friday. Without mercy, of course. Sucky movies will be slaughtered, cinematographic pearls will be appreciated as such. Or the other way around. After all, good taste is in the eye of the beholder.
Sleeping Beauty
Don’t let the title fool you. This film has nothing to do with the well known fairy tale. Debuting director Julia Leigh made a rather dark and very uncomfortable film about student Lucy (Emily Browning) who starts to work as a ‘sleeping beauty’. Her (well paid) job? She takes a drug that makes her sleep and while she’s sleeping, men can do with her whatever they like. Everything is allowed, except penetration.
Why Lucy makes this kind of choice is not clear. But in the beginning of the film we already see her being very apathetic about sex. For example, she asks a total stranger if he would like to have a blowjob. And if two guys flip a coin about who can have sex with her, Lucy doens’t seem to care at all. Who is this girl? Unfortunately, Leigh leaves the question unanswered.
Watch this film in Cineville‘s The Movies.
La Délicatesse
I didn’t quite know what to expect. With the French you never know, they can be very dramatic from time to time. La Délicatesse could have been an arthouse tearjerker, because the beautiful Nathalie (Audrey Tautou) loses her husband at a young age.
Of course, life goes on and Nathalie gets back on her feet. But then she meets Markus, a guy from work. Markus (François Damiens) is the opposite of her husband: badly dressed, unattractive, clumsy, lonesome. Despite all of those things, Nathalie starts having feelings for him. Her handsome boss doesn’t like this, since he always had a crush on her.
La Délicatesse isn’t a tearjerker in the very least. It’s a light comedy that will warm your heart. Just one thing: the film was a bit too long. Keep this in the back of your head and it won’t bother you. Oh, one other thing: Tautou got way too skinny. It fitted her part in this film, though.
Watch this film in Cineville‘s Cinecenter. Also in Pathé (Tuschinski and City).
Le Fils de l’Autre
I saw the trailer of this film a couple of times and there was one particular thing I really didn’t get. The story is set in Israel and the West Bank. After an attack in the city of Haifa 18 years ago, two baby boys (Joseph and Yacine) are accidentally switched. Joseph isn’t an Israeli Jew at all, he is Palestinian. Yacine, who grew up in the West Bank, is the child of Israeli parents instead. Now the thing I didn’t get from the trailer: everybody speaks French. Why make a French film about this theme, if there are plenty of talented Israeli and Palestinian actors? This can only have a negative impact on the reliability of the film. I’ll watch it anyway. Simply because Le Fils de l’Autre is about the interesting matter of ‘identity’. Who are we? Our education, our upbringing or our biology?
Watch this film in Cineville‘s Rialto.
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