Change Your Image
phenders-81401
Reviews
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022)
A Fatuous Fable
Fresh from her performance as Princess Margaret in The Crown, Lesley Manville plays another spirited woman in Mrs Harris Goes to Paris as she pursues her Cockney conquest of haute couture. Unfortunately, she is the victim of a silly, almost cringe-worthy plot. After learning of her husband's death, Ada Harris heads off to Paris the way the Clampetts head off to Beverley--for a life of conspicuous consumption. Flush with some fast cash, she is hellbent on buying a pricey Christian Dior gown like the one she saw while snooping in her wealthy employer's closet. While many evidently see her materialistic pursuit as charming, she is in fact covetous, at one point preening and simpering before a kindly, bereaved marquis. The movie would better serve as a satire on the frivolous 50s than the fond and innocent retrospective that it pretends to be.
All the Light We Cannot See (2023)
All the films we could not finish
I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on its relationship to the film, but I surmise that the book must be better than the film because, frankly, the film was predictable and unconvincing, full of stereotypes and simple black-and white characterization. Whenever a Nazi appears, you can rest assured he will be screaming endlessly in someone's face later in the scene. Of course, it's easy (and convenient) to see the dialectic between good and evil when Nazis and their victims are brought together, but a little more subtlety, more nuance, would have been nice. I really thought it had promise after seeing the first 15 minutes, but it pales beside another recent Netflix film, The Bombardment. That film will stay with you for the right reasons. P. S. I did finish All the Light, but it wasn't easy.
Lykke-Per (2018)
Gaps and an unsympathetic character
Trying to condense a bildungsroman-type narrative into a two and one-half hour film is admittedly challenging. The result is gaps in the narrative, which means that the viewer loses track of the trajectory. The main character is built along the lines of a traditional tragic hero, whose tragic flaw could simply be passed off as the usual hubris. Yet he is more than simply a proud and self-absorbed Lear or Hamlet. It is more complex (and perhaps more inexplicable) than this, for he doesn't hesitate wooing the daughter of a rich Jew in Copenhagen to advance his career, yet in what perhaps could be called the climax of action, his pride resurfaces in undisguised form (details left unspecific here because it would be a spoiler).
Anne (2017)
Relentlessly PC
I can't imagine people who loved the old version liking the watered down versions of beloved characters like Rachel Lynde, Marilla and even Anne herself. It's not necessarily the acting that's to blame--Geraldine James is certainly an accomplished actor. It's just so pointedly PC for its own good, distorting situations and historical contexts way out of proportion. It's 1908 the way that the producers and director in the second decade of the 21st century would like it to have been with good and decency miraculously prevailing over evil and prejudice. Some of the episodes, especially in the second season, are positively cringeworthy. Every time I see Rachel Lynde in a scene, I imagine it being played by Patricia Hamilton. As for Anne, there's not much evolution. She will be in a scene that appears to point to a growing maturity only to be followed by another scene with her flailing away in a temper, pigtails flying.
Persuasion (2022)
Austen Fans Beware
This should come with a warning to Austen fans and serious connoisseurs who don't take her fiction lightly--as the makers of this film obviously do. The characters (especially Anne) are nothing like the appealingly realistic (and subtle) characters in the book. The device of having Anne speak directly to us is flawed. In her social interactions, this Anne is extroverted to the point of obnoxiousness, and the attempts at humor fall flat--just as Anne does at one point in the story after she apparently relieves herself behind a tree while listening to a conversation between Wentworth and Louisa. Slapstick Austen, no thanks!