It’s brilliantly acted but poorly filmed. The overuse of shadows and light by director Joe Wright in pretty much every scene becomes wearing, and quickly feels clichéd, as does the naff music. In fact it’s quite “flat” all round.
Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily James are strong in supporting roles as Churchill's wife and secretary respectively. Oldman is superb and the film is worth seeing (once) if only for him.
In 1942, Paris is occupied by the Germans and the Jews are deported in the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup. Sarah, aged 10, hides her brother in a cupboard before fleeing with her parents, vowing to return. The implications of this promise affect many lives, rippling outward in time.
It’s highly engaging. Kristin Scott Thomas gives one of her best performances as Julia Jarmond, a journalist who begins researching Sarah’s life and finds it’s unexpectedly connected with her own.
Somehow, all the jumping around in time and geography doesn’t quite work. I wished it was a true story rather than a slightly convoluted work of fiction. And in the final third, there are some slightly silly decisions. For example, there’s an incongruous father/son scene that feels completely out of place. And the scenes of Julia with her journalist colleagues feel hammy and lack the ring of truth. All that said, there’s a touching story at the heart of this drama and the two female leads are both superb.
Growing up in Liverpool in the 1950s, Lennon (Aaron Johnson) is torn between his solid, strict, practical Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) and his flighty mother, Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), who gave him up to live with her sister.
Wisely, it keeps to the emotional drama: the story of Lennon’s musical development mostly takes place in the background. I feared that it would be a sentimental and/or simplistic account of the heartache that led to his rise to fame, but the film explores his complicated relationships with nuance and subtlety.
Paul (Daniel Auteuil) is a brain surgeon, working too hard for too many years and neglecting his wife Lucie (Kristen Scott Thomas). Then he meets a mysterious woman called Lou (Leila Bekhti), who claims to be one of his former patients but who he doesn’t recall.
Directed by Philippe Claude, this quiet domestic/psychological study slowly escalates into a sort of thriller. The performances are all strong. Paul is difficult to like, but the writing is strong enough that you are drawn into the strangeness of his predicament as he enters a sort of later-life crisis.
Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) is a New York journalist who is addicted to buying fashionable clothes. She ends up working as a finance columnist for Successful Saving magazine in a role where her lack of knowledge or pretension is welcomed as a refreshing asset. Meanwhile, she also falls in love with her boss (Hugh Dancy, as a sort of fifth-rate Hugh Grant) and tries to avoid a debt collector.
The film has many failings and it’s a bit of a muddled mess in terms of its views on consumerism. It can’t decide whether it’s a critique or a celebration. That said, it’s a little unfair that it was criticised for being tone deaf to the fall-out of the global financial crisis. Is it really the film’s job to reflect the changing economic and political landscape?
Pretty much everything about Confessions of a Shopaholic is clumsy and awkward, and in particular Rebecca’s parents – annoyingly and bizarrely portrayed by John Goodman and Joan Cusack. Kristin Scott Thomas seems out of place, too. The major plus is Isla Fisher, who has a real radiance. Each time she smiles, she lights up the whole film and transforms a mediocre scene into something full of charm and charisma.
Scarlett Johansson plays Mary Boleyn. Natalie Portman is her more famous sister Anne, the second wife of Henry VIII. The story details the two sisters and their ill-fated relationships with the king, who desperately craves a male heir.
It’s a work of fiction, adapted from a novel by Philippa Gregory, rather than a slice of history. This allows it to explore what might have happened rather than what probably happened.
There are some entertaining moments. Portman is unusually strong in her role, while Johansson is typically weak. There are also solid performances by Kristin Scott Thomas and Eddie Redmayne. What lets it down is Eric Bana as Henry VIII. For the plot to work, he needs to be charismatic and magnetic. Bana is none of these things. You cannot believe that this rather weedy figure has so much influence because he completely lacks gravitas.
Kevin Kline plays Mathias, an American who travels to Paris to claim an apartment his father has left him in his will. But he finds living there the 92-year-old Mathilde (Maggie Smith), who – because of a “viager” arrangement – is legally entitled to live there for the rest of her life while being paid a monthly fee to do so. Things become more complicated when Mathias meets her daughter Chloé (Kristin Scott Thomas) and he begins to learn more about their pasts.
There are comic moments throughout, but the film becomes more serious and poignant as it progresses. All three leads are superb and it’s striking how “real” it all seems, with the emotions and pain seeming entirely convincing. The characters grow deeper as the plot moves along.
The only aspect that I didn’t really like was the slightly clichéd “French” music on the soundtrack. But that aside, it’s pretty much flawless.
A fisheries expert (Ewan McGregor) attempts to help a Yemeni sheikh (Amr Waked) with the expensive and improbable task of introducing salmon to the Yemen desert. He’s assisted by the sheikh’s financial adviser (Emily Blunt), whose soldier boyfriend has just gone missing in action. Romance ensues. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s press secretary is keen to exploit the situation for its publicity value.
It’s an odd film. Some of the awkwardness is presumably deliberate because it’s suggested that McGregor’s character has Asperger syndrome, although that’s never really explored. Everything remains thin and surface-level.
Blunt is her usual charming self, seemingly able to do this stuff in her sleep. McGregor exhibits more versatility than usual. The sheik is saintly and one-dimensional. And Kristin Scott Thomas’s brash, pushy character, presumably designed for comic relief, is just annoying.
Overall, it doesn’t really work. The unlikely love story is nice enough but otherwise it’s just a bit weak all round.
