Tell No One (Ne le dis a personne)

First Hit: Tell everyone to see this very interesting and suspenseful film.

When given a suspenseful situation, I try to solve it. This happens quite often in films and I find myself trying to figure out the puzzle before the film fills in all the pieces. There have been few films that I’ve not figured out before the film provides the answers (Sixth Sense is one).

Tell No One is now in this category as well. It is a perplexing film and there are false starts everywhere.

The film begins with a brief view of a couple’s idyllic life with their family; then an afternoon swim, a scream and a beating. We move ahead eight years later and join Dr. Alexander (Alex) Beck (played by Francois Cluzet) as he continues to mourn his wife Margot (played by Marie-Josee Croze). He receives an email to view a video file on the anniversary of his wife’s death.

When he views the video file, he sees his wife coming up from a subway staircase then she looks directly at the camera. This starts a series of events which have him looking for his wife while people continue to set him up to be convicted for her death because all the pieces surrounding her death never fit.

During the film other snippets of the past are thrown at the audience supporting his undivided love for her. I especially loved the clips of them as children when they use to swim at the same pond where she died.

There are twists and turns and all the while his focus is only on his love for his wife and the belief that she is still alive.

The acting by Francois Cluzet, Kristin Scott Thomas and Philippe Lefebvre (Police Lieutenant Meynard) are well done. Direction and writing by Guillaume Canet are superb.

Overall: This is a wonderful film filled with twists and turns, beautiful romantic scenes, and clever plot manipulation.

Water Lillies (Naissance des pieuvres)

First Hit: Some of the good acting, story line, and “wow” scenes of underwater synchronized swimming kept my interest.

I’ve only seen synchronized swimming from above water and that’s what you are supposed to see, actually.

However, there was an audible gasp and “wow” in the theater when the camera went below the surface and we got to see the intense work and movement it takes to create what we see on the surface.

In fact, I would have liked more underwater scenes just because it made the juxtaposition between the made up smiling faces above the surface of the water against the intense powerful movements below the surface worth more than the price of admission. But this isn’t what this film was about.

The synchronized swimming was the background vehicle for this coming of age story about a young girl named Marie (played Pauline Acquart) who is a quiet, introspective, and coming of age in her sexuality.

She has a best friend named Anne (played by Louise Blachere) who is obsessed with a boy named Francois (played by Warren Jacquin). Anne wants to have sex with Francois but not kiss him. Her antics and actions are obsessive and fit with the age.

Marie becomes attracted to and obsessed with Floriane (played by Adele Haenel) one of the queens of the synchronized swimming team. Floriane gives the impression she is making it and having sex with lots of people but, in reality, is truly afraid of the first encounter.

Confiding in Marie, Floriane finds a friend and Marie finds love and the pain associated with it.

I thought Pauline Acquart was fantastic as Marie. She carried smoldering passion deep within her which wasn’t obvious outwardly and it was very effective. It gave her character a complexity. Louise and Adele were also strong in the characterizations of their roles.

Overall: This was a good film and I’ll always remember two things: Synchronized swimming is very physical powerful sport and that last thing most people see before they die is the ceiling.

Savage Grace

First Hit: A mediocre meandering of possibly a compelling story.

This film is about a wealthy family that meandered around Europe with little purpose.

The father, Brooks Baekeland, (played by Stephen Dillane) is an intelligent man whose Grandfather discovered plastic and therefore he’s not had to do much in life except be interesting.

Barbara Baekeland (played by Julianne Moore) is Brook’s American wife. She is a painter, a bit crass in her attitude, and a socialite whose role was to make sure they were connected to people of social standing.

Their son (played as a young boy and as a young adult by Barney Clark and Eddie Redmayne respectively) is obsessed over and treated more as a friend by his mother versus a child.

There is very little psychological digging in this drama to suggest the deep abusive sickness that permeated this family and ultimately resulted in the father having an affair with his son’s girlfriend, the mother having sex with her son, and then his killing her and later her mother both with a knife.

This film moved laboriously along with little digging and discovery. It is a cursory view of the story. I would hold the writer and director at fault for the lack of depth and cohesiveness.

Overall: Although there are moments of some good acting, in the end this is not even a video rental film.

Mongol

First Hit: I walked out of the theater thinking I would really like to know more about Genghis Khan because the story was so different from what I was taught.

This is an epic film with broad landscapes providing an incredible backdrop to the story of a boy who selects his bride at age 9 and ends up ruling a large part of the central Asian continent.

The film begins as the boy (Temudgin) and his father, who is Khan of his clan, are on their way to another clan of Mongols so that Temudgin can pick his bride.

This will be a political selection. On the way, they stop at a friend’s lower ranking clan and the boy is challenged by a young girl (Borte) to pick her for his bride. The father says no, but Temudgin convinces his father to let him practice picking a bride before they get to their destination.

His father agrees and during the practice, he makes his declaration and selects Borte to be his bride. He promises to come back in 5 years to take her away. Although disappointed, his father goes along with his willful son. On the way back home his father is killed.

One of his father’s primary confidants in his clan turns on the boy’s right to be the next Khan and deposes the Khan’s family while promising to kill him when he reaches a certain age and height. The rest of the film is about how he seeks to find his bride and do right by her and his deposed family. Along the way he is captured and tortured many times, but he always finds a way to break away.

Borte is a strong woman and demonstrates this time and time again by finding Temudgin and helping him escape. This film is about the power of their love for each other and how they always found a way to be together – again.

Directed by Sergei Bodrov, this film is nicely paced, packs some wonderful scenery in strategic spots and the battle scenes are well portrayed. My only criticism was the depiction of Jamukha, a friend and later, a rival Khan. His clean shaven face, hair style and moustache were out of place. Even the sharpest knife would have not made his smooth facial skin possible, let alone the hair style and perfectly trimmed moustache.

Overall: Very interesting film with some outstanding scenery shots, good acting, and a wonderful story.

The Happening

First Hit: This film isn’t happening.

I don’t understand how movie and film executives continue to poor money and support a filmmaker who appears to be a “one-trick-pony” or as they say in the music business “one shot wonder.”

The Sixth Sense was a great film by Shyamalan. However, every film since then has exponentially gotten worse. The premise of this tragic use of celluloid is that something is making people kill themselves.

First they say it’s terrorists, or a leak of a government experiment somewhere, but it turns out to be the plants. It is a chemical reaction or maybe the plants are pissed off at us for screwing up the world.

Regardless there is no suspense, extremely poor acting (it all feels very forced) and the dialog unbelievably ridged. (Example: When the train stops and all train crew can say is “nobody is out there” and they say this with stoic calm).

M. Night Shyamalan’s writing, direction and his usual small acting role, are forced, poorly expressed, and ill conceived. Mark Wahlberg, who can act, looks like a deer in headlights the entire film and Zooey Deschanel as Mark’s wife was even more lost.

Overall: I knew this was a really bad film 2 – 5 minutes into it. I literally was in shock that I’d have to sit through to the end. This film needed to breathe but instead it choked us into dreaded boredom.