At 2000’s Cannes Film Festival, Lee Chang-Dong’s film Peppermint Candy was the talk of the Director’s Fortnight. In 2007, he assisted Jeon Do-Yeon to a Best Actress award at the same event for her role in Secret Sunshine. And last year, the writer-director picked Best Screenplay for his latest film, Poetry. Opening here on July 29th, it will be Chang-Dong’s first UK release A powerful look at an older woman’s struggle to retain both her moral compass and her sense of self – all we need say is that it’s about time.
The second feature film from Julie Bertucelli, acclaimed director of Since Otar Left, The Tree stars Award-winning actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, newcomer Morgana Davies, and is based on the much-loved Australian novel, Oh Father Who Art in the Tree by Judy Pascoe.
Dawn (Gainsbourg) and Peter live together with their children in the Australian countryside. In the middle of their garden stands the kids’ favorite playground : a massive Moreton Bay Fig tree, whose branches reach high towards the sky and roots stretch far into the ground.
One day, Peter dies of a heart attack, crashing his car into the tree trunk. Dawn is left alone with her grief and four children to raise. All of them naturally go looking for comfort under their protective tree, which becomes even more present in their lives. The young daughter, Simone (Davies), thinking that her late father whispers to her through the leaves, settles in the tree and refuses to climb down from it. But as the tree is growing unusually big – branches infiltrating the house, roots destroying the foundations, the family will need to make an excruciating decision to be able to go on with their lives…
The Tree stars actress and musician Charlotte Gainsbourg whose previous credits include Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams, Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep and Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, for which she received the Best Actress Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
The Tree will be released in cinemas 5th August 2011
There’s no denying the devastating emotional impact of Incendies; it’s a tale of war, of frustration, of grief, of revenge and of survival against all the odds. Centring on a daughter’s desire to unravel her mother’s mysterious past, it’ll stay with you long after the end credits. Just don’t take any snack that could be fashioned into an impromptu noose.
Studio Ghibli has done it again. Arrietty, inspired by the Borrowers novels of Mary Norton, is an incomparably beautiful story which effortlessly draws the viewer into a rarified world where a bay leaf makes a decent raincoat and cockroaches are the size of (shiny, aggressive and antennaed) Shetland ponies. Delicate, thoughtful and visually unmatched by almost anything we can think of, this is a very special film indeed.
Much more exciting than The Princess of Montpensier but somewhat less digestible than The Tudors, Henry of Navarre is another one of those films where men charge around on horseback/wave swords/wave swords from horseback and women take their clothes off more than is strictly necessary. If that’s your bag, it’s pretty darn fine.
Fresh from winning all four acting prizes at this year’s Japanese Academy Awards, Lee Sang-il’s masterful adaptation of the cult novel by Shuichi Yoshida is an extraordinary achievement which combines pitch-perfect performances with a profound and unsettling message. You know the overused expression ‘must-see’? That.
THE KINGDOM TV Series 1-2 is a compelling surreal drama by Lars Von Trier, with demons taking an interest in a vast Danish hospital. Quite unmissable (especially for fans of Twin Peaks) and now available in a Collector’s DVD Box Set.
Sometimes a cheeky little indie film strolls up, favours you with one of those complicated ‘street’ handshakes and changes your life for the better with its endearingly lo-fi quirks and unexpectedly powerful story. Powder, alas, is not such a film. More likely to glare at you from inside a fashionably scruffy greatcoat than offer you a rollie and a cheerful anecdote, it is the very worst sort of self-absorbed garbage.
Snipe London
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