Diana ain't The Duchess -by Carmody Wilson

A society beauty born into the world of wealth, privilege and the very real possibility of an arranged marriage, Georgiana Spencer was just a regular girl of the upper class in Regency England. In her lifetime the war with Napoleon raged, England lost America to Independence, Jane Austen wrote (endlessly about garrisons of soldiers but nothing of the actual conflict, God forbid,) and the fifth Duke of Devonshire went searching cradles all over England for a wife. The film version of these events, The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes as the Dueling Devonshires, is based upon Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the book by Amanda Foreman. The 5th Duchess was an interesting woman and a pioneer in the way she wore her politics and peccadilloes on her sleeve, and the film does a fine job of showing Georgiana as a woman out of her time in many respects, but what is interesting about the woman and her portrayal in the film is how she has been positioned as a Georgian Diana, Princess of Wales. This leads to some exciting possibilities.

It’s easy to see where this trend started: Georgiana was a much-loved royal by the members of the public who had to endure the humiliation of a cheating husband, and threw herself into the image-edifying activity of good public works. There were scandals, affairs, and intrigues in both Diana and Georgiana’s lives, and both contain characters of surprising strength despite habitual fragility. But the framing of the film as an eighteenth-century shadow-play of the plight of the Princess of Wales is a mistake, and unfettered by these comparisons, the film tells a much better story.

Georgiana Cavendish was certainly fascinating. Whig tongues wagged as Georgiana made great speeches in support of the opposition leader Charles James Fox, and some even went so far as to whisper that the lady was in fact conducting a torrid affair with the hirsute, debauched politician. The film shies away from these allegations, not least because Fox was a distant Spencer cousin, steering focus instead toward Georgiana’s more camera-friendly love affair with Charles Grey, the future Prime Minister (played by Dominic Cooper). Things get a little more complicated for Georgiana when she fails repeatedly to bear the anxious Duke a son, and she seeks refuge in the friendship of Lady Elizabeth Foster. Unfortunately, the Duke also seeks refuge in Lady Bess and no amount of pouting and making saucer eyes makes him return to the bony bosom of his poor wife.

Knightley’s performance is admirable, and gives The Duchess of fame a flesh-and-blood feel. Fiennes is the definite article as The Duke who expects to get what he wants and sees no reason why he shouldn’t. Fiennes as the Duke is actually a sympathetic character here, in spite of being cast too easily as the villain. He succinctly captures the emotional remoteness that his breeding and class have hammered into him, and he is no more a tyrant in the film than any other man of wealth was in his time. He struggles to care for a lively and vivaciously political show-stopper wife, and cannot accept her inability to bear him a son (which she eventually does, but things have broken down too far for any romantic reconciliation at this point, to say the least) It’s a film that gives a real feeling to the social constraints that the wealthy of both sexes were limited by but accepted. When Georgiana sacrificed a life with Grey to be the dutiful Duchess, she didn’t sob to journalists about what she had done, and when the Duke made it known that he was having an affair with Lady Bess it wasn’t through a taped conversation about desiring to be her menstrual implement.

Nevertheless, this had lead the film’s promoters to tack on the tawdry comparisons to Georgiana’s ancestor, Diana Princess of Wales, in their flogging of the Duke as an uncaring philanderer and the Duchess as a woman of the people. The tagline “There were three people in her marriage” adds to the cheapening of the subject matter but leads to fascinating possibilities within the film: what if Camilla had actually lived with Charles and Di, and gave birth to Charles’s children, like Bess Foster had? The toothy toffs would be unleashed upon the world as sons of privilege, partying wildly, receiving military commissions, eschewing education for earthy edifications…obviously no parallel reality there. Let us ruminate then on the possibility that Martin Bashir be the modern-day Richard Brinsley Sheridan, bringing the princess/duchess’s pain on marital peculiarities out for public consumption, this time through Panorama and not School for Scandal? Then James Hewitt, or latterly Dr Hasnat Khan, could be the sympathetic Charles Grey character! He’s a polo-playing heart surgeon who wrestles on reality television whilst grappling with his memories of his royal true love! This could be a dynamite film, Hollywood, are you listening? But wait, who in history, could match Paul Burrell’s special brand of sycophantic devotion? In the interests of keeping the promoter’s view of these indistinguishable heroine’s lives on a parallel track there may need to be a little historical filmic fudging-a devoted footman! Paul Burrell was a footman! The Duchess of Devonshire surely had them around! It would be so easy to put the character of, let’s call him Barkley, right there into the story! He would soothe Georgiana when she learns she has born yet another girl, whispering into her hair that “it looks like a boy, and is as beautiful as you are!” He could wave nosegays in her face when she discovers that her husband has been unfaithful, and bundle Charles Grey into a blanket in a carriage down Piccadilly when she needed male comfort of a less obsequious sort. The possibilities are endless. Diana and Georgiana’s lives were just the same! And surely if The Prince of Wales had an illegitimate child with a servant, as the Duke of Devonshire had, this child would be spirited away to some second-rate public school and given a job as the Gardening Expert in The Tattler without even a hint of nepotism! Happily Georgiana did not meet as violent an end as The Princess of Wales, but for the sake of the fantasy film we can create a breakneck carriage race down Pall Mall with the Duchess sobbing into Barkley’s shoulder about her diminishing privacy whilst Reynolds, Gillray and Rowlandson ride pell-mell alongside, sketching frantically. Gillray’s horse cuts too close to the Duchess’s carriage, and… sod it, her drunken carriage driver cranks the whole thing into a tree. Cut to a wig landing on the ground, and mass hysteria.

Clearly this train of thought thrillingly cheapens the lives of all involved, but it especially does no favours to the film, which stands on its own as a lushly imagined, emotionally restrained historical epic about an ordinary, albeit titled and wealthy, woman born into extraordinary times. The Duchess is full of politics, both personal and parliamentary, and though there is much to say about the social situation of women during Georgiana’s lifetime, the film features them without losing focus on the main prize. It was her power to inspire that had the public and the privileged so eager to know her. If all this comes down to is a paltry tie-in with a modern royal, so be it, but don’t judge the film by its poster.

Mamma Mia! - Review by Carmody Wilson

Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Screenwriter: Catherine Johnson
Running Time: 108 mins
Certificate: PG
Released: July 11th

Most musicals are plasteceine, detestable tripe-ridden journeys to a predictable ending, featuring transparent plot devices, insincere acting and alarming and unannounced bursts of idiotic song. Mamma Mia is really no different, but escapes the cheese of its predecessors sheerly by the talent and gameness of the cast, the smart direction and, naturally, the sing-out-loud music of Abba.

Set on a tiny Greek island, and abased on the stage show of the same name, Mamma Mia! tells the story of Sophie (Amanda Siefried) a young bride-to-be who invites all three of her potential fathers to her nuptials in the hopes of figuring out which one is the real deal. Meryl Streep is Donna, her rambunctious, aging hippy mother who runs a hotel on said island. All sorts of wacky reunions (complete with complex greeting rituals) take place as first Sophie’s British bridesmaids, then Donna’s American ( Christine Baranski) and British (Julie Walters) pals, and finally, the three dad candidates, an “American”, a Brit and a Swede respectively, ( Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard) arrive by boat to take their part in the musical mayhem.

The aggressive song bursts present in other musicals are actually enlivened here by the sheer dancieness of Abba’s upbeat song- smithing, and what is most grating about other musicals is quite engaging and fun in Mamma Mia! Streep sings well, her tender alto alternating between breathy on the more wistful numbers (“The Winner Takes It All”) and out and out belt-y bravado on the more robust numbers such as “Super Trouper.” But of course she can sing, she probably built the sets too. And that’s what’s surprising about this whole film is that while none of the title actors claim to be singers, everyone gamely tackles the disco-pop with spirit and panache. The only sore thumb-and it’s a big one- is Pierce Brosnan. His “American” Sam Carmichael is basically just Pierce Brosnan speaking in an accent undiscernable on either side of the Atlantic. And his singing? Well, he claims to have sung in a previous film, “Evelyn”, and Abba’s Benny Andersson has gone on record saying he thinks Brosnan’s voice is “great”, but it was a real sticking point. In the screening room there were gentle titters which eventually turned into out-and-out guffaws every time Brosnan set his steely gaze on the camera and huskily warbled out some of Abba’s more outlandish emotional projectiles. Stellan Skarsgard, incredibly, was one of the best parts of this crazily-assembled ensemble piece, and though he doesn’t really sing, captures the piratical role of the roving Swede Bill Anderson with a characteristic bohemium shrug and a gruff, earthy humour. Colin Firth pulls of his bumbling English schtick as well as usual and admitted that “Blind terror is a very bonding commodity” when tackling his singing role in the company of his fellow dads.

The complexity of the choreography and the freshness of the music add an unstoppable feel to this fun, uplifting summer film, and aside from the unexplained proliferation of British people on the island (shouldn’t they be at a foam party somewhere?) Mamma Mia! is the perfect, brainless, endlessly cheerful antidote to all the really stupid CGI flicks out there this summer. Hulk would be too busy tapping his toes to smash after seeing this one. Just hope that he turns a blind eye to the parts that Pierce Brosnan is in, and humanity is safe.

Wanted -Review by Carmody Wilson

Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Writer: Derek Haas, Michael Brandt and Chris Morgan
Rating:18
Time: 110 minutes
Release: June 27
Deep inside the mystical forests of time, (say around 1000 CE), a group of disgruntled weavers gathered together to form a fraternity of assassins. Who their targets were-perhaps evil shepherds who gave them inferior, dirty wool, or perhaps dishonest wholesalers “Did I say one hundred sheckels? I meant forty”-no one knows, but these unlucky few were chosen for termination by the mysterious workings of The Loom of Destiny. Now, in modern-day Chicago, the work continues, and the fraternity is seeking out its latest brother, the modern malcontent Wesley Gibson.

James McAvoy, as Wesley, gives the character the right amount of pissy spinelessness as he descries his dead-end job, cheating girlfriend and repressed potboiling rage at the futility of his life-everything sucks and Wesley is obviously more of a weasel than a weaver. But destiny looms large, and soon the threads of the story come together as Wesley is introduced to Fox ( Angelina Jolie looking to drop dead of malnourishment at any moment, let alone die by bullets and car accidents,) and Sloan (Morgan Freeman, wearing only a jockstrap!-kidding). Hooked into the warp and weft of the fraternity by the fact that a rogue member has killed his dad, Wesley attempts a transformation. Other members of the team-dedicated to killing, hey it pays the rent!-are Mark Warren, pretty as ever, and Common, pitch in to help with Wesley’s valmorification. Yes, the story is rubbish and a typically unbelievable action scenario involves fraternity members’ ability to “curve bullets.” Considering that most people can’t shoot straight to begin with, we could all just be members waiting to be recruited! But the film works in spite of this, not because of it. The secret weapon? Freeman’s laconic, drawling Master Weaver? Jolie’s sexy, pouting Killer Weaver? Gary Wright’s “Dreamweaver?” No, it’s director Timur Bekmambetov, better known to Russian audiences than Western ones. Bekmambetov, gave the world the Russian vampire-vortex flicks Nightwatch and Daywatch, and works the same palpitating, swirling unreality here on Wanted. The Director takes a comic-book world (based on the work by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones) and makes it into…a comic book world. The whole premise is silly and Bekmambetov realizes this, working with this knowledge and not against it.. If this were a Bruckheimer film Wesley would be played by Paul Walker and there would be more explosions, ass kicking and boring violence montages than you could shake an overdosed Don Simpson at. If a conventional director helmed this flick there would be little of the absurd, flashy and self-aware quirkiness that makes puny James McAvoy into a ball-busting beefcake. Mr Tumnus kicks ass! If this were a typical action film there’d be nothing worth writing about. But it’s the Russian Master’s boiling, bending bru-ha-ha that makes Wanted a yarn well told. No spun intended.

EIFF: Patti Smith: Dream of Life - Review by Carmody Wilson

Director: Steven Sebring
Running Time: 109 mins

Patti Smith is at least the most legendary and known of a certain type of musician. Her music is a chugging train of punk, politics and poetry, but is less Clash and more Waylon Jennings meets the Rolling Stones via Allen Ginsberg. In this documentary, a ten year product of endless filming of Smith on the road and off, Steven Sebring finds the anarchic angel of androgyny bemused by her own fame, reflective of past relationships, cautiously linked to the past and unwaveringly looking to the future. Grainy black and white images of Smith sawing away on her axe onstage whilst rhythmically pummelling the audience with her hypnotic rock roll-call are intercut with slice-of-life scenes with her family and fellow musicians. No film can fully capture the clean, guttural sensuality of Smith and her talent, but Dream of Life is about as close as you can get without getting dirty yourself.

EIFF: My Red Carpet - Carmody Wilson

As a ginger-haired person, one might be inclined to believe that everyday is a red carpet experience for me. Not so, and if it were it would certainly not resemble the star-studded extravaganza that was held at Edinburgh’s Fountainpark Cineworld on Wednesday night in honour of the world premier of The Edge of Love.

Jostling for position in the overcrowded press pens were journalists of all stripes, and in one case, some hack’s kids. Lodged bodily up against the waxen-eared, be-dandruffed, pimply journo in the front row, I briefly wondered if all of this intimacy with bedraggled humanity was worth it-and then they came. First the starlets, Kiera Knightley and Sienna Miller glided down the carpet amid desperate shouts for certain angles and much jockeying for prime interview space at the fore of the press pens. Small calamities abound as writers wrinkle up in worry that they may never find out what the two actresses are wearing-on that score, Knightley was in a white jumpsuit and black jacket, both Chanel, and Miller was in something-or-other that made her face betray she was living a rather hard life-or maybe that was just all the ciggies and breakups she’s gone through in the last six months. Anyway, the gals were grand and the demands for their attention hundredfold those of Matthew Rhys, rumoured ex of Ms Miller and leading man of the show.

All of this excitement stepped up to frenzied pace as the real leading man, a certain Sir Sean Connery strode the crimson ripple towards the cinema, leaving behind him awed journalists, breathless festival-goers and harried staff, steeped in the prestige of the star that has left them, and breathless for the chance to see him again.

Sex & The City: The Movie - Review by Carmody Wilson

Director: Michael Patrick King
Screenwriter: Michael Patrick King
Running Time: 148 mins
Certificate: 15
Release Date: 30th May

Considering the two big box-office bonfires about to burn their way through cinemas this summer, a lot is riding on the crowd’s reaction to Indiana Jones and the Badly Named George Lucas Project and that other titillating hushed awe-fest Sex and the City: The Movie. Ladies, get your panties out of a knot: Carrie and Co. deliver in this razzle-dazzle rollercoaster of sex, style and four sassy ladies.

Produced by the original HBO series producer, Darren Star, and written and directed by series stalwart Michael Patrick King, SATC: TM follows the further exploits of the no-longer-single girls Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Samantha (Kim Cattrall) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) as they try to circumnavigate old expectations with new lives. Big (Chris Noth) is here too, of course, and any fan of the series will be biting her nails and twisting her clutch to see if it all actually works out. Samantha, in La La Land, spies on her randy neighbor (yes, there’s a shot of him in a shower, yes we see all of him,) and wonders if her sex life with Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis) is as wet and wild. Miranda copes with Brooklyn, Brady, and Steve’s sexy demands very badly and ends up paying for it, and Charlotte actually gets what she wants, at long last. The characters are still shown warts and all (Charlotte doesn’t quite make it to the toilet, Miranda hasn’t cleared her brush in a while and Sarah Jessica Parker actually has one on her face,) and the intersecting story lines surprise without ever seeming contrived or predictable.

The only weak point is Samantha’s storyline seems fragmented from the rest by virtue of her only popping up at opportune moments, the better to play the “I just had to fly in” angle. Really, it’s the movie every fan of the show wanted it to be. The much-touted outfits are as quirky, brashly fashion-tastic and overblown as they were in the show, and The City shows up slyly, implacably as the chic throw that holds it all together. The only failing in SATC: TM is that I was there without my best friend to cheer, cry and squeal over the fashionista cameos with. Who else would cry out “Andre Leon Talley! Plum Sykes! Demarchelier!” with me? Certainly not the teenagers and the pensioner I shared the seats with. If you loved the show, go. If you’ve been curious about the show, go. If you’ve never heard of it, feed the cats, clear a path to the door and go. SATC: TM is a fun night out for anybody, but also a real jewel in the franchise crown. No spoilers here, dear reader, only cooing compliments for a film that manages to tie up loose ends and make it all surprisingly funny, touching, and glorious to look at. If only all series blockbusters could follow (such a fine) suit. Get that whip cracking.

Awake - Review by Carmody Wilson

Director: Joby Harold
Screenwriter: Joby Harold
Running Time: 84 mins
Certificate: 15
Out Now

I really wished I’d been asleep. Awake centres around Clay Beresford, (Hayden Christiansen), a wealthy philanthropist who has hidden his engagement to regular gal Sam (Jessica Alba) from his mother, Lilith (Lena Olin). But Clay is no ordinary millionaire –poor guy has a heart defect and is on a transplant list. Mom Lilith insists on using her swanky heart doctor, who shouts “ I write textbooks on this procedure!!” but good old Clay, who is repeatedly heard speaking to his business associates about “creating jobs”, is much more keen on his public health system doctor and personal friend, Jack Harper (Terence Howard). This turns out to be his fatal-but is it?-mistake. Clay, when rushed in for his surgery, finds that he is not subject to the soothing oblivion of the anaesthetic, but is in fact, fully awake and aware of what is happening to him. Now many may comment on the anaesthetic-like effect of Christiansen’s acting-the monotone huskiness of his emotionless voice, the promise of his eyes that is never delivered in the rest of his expressions, the overall shittiness of everything he says- and wish that they themselves were at the helm of this botched surgery and were about to fall upon young Hayden with saws, scalpels and scissors. But alas, this film is not a revenge fantasy for Star Wars, (George Lucas would have to be helplessly bound on the next gurney over,) or Factory Girl, or Jumper, or Shattered Glass, or Life as a House, but a vaguely empathetic thriller about the dangers of inappropriate trust.

Dr Jack Harper, it seems, is not so benign and friendly and may be in league with darker forces to end the life of everybody’s favourite job creator. So while Clay’s anaesthetic awareness is not intentional, it does help the beleaguered employer of hundreds figure out the plot against him. It’s all so complex and twisty! Meanwhile, back in the waiting room, anxious Lilith and fraught Sam are forced to bond as the news comes back that poor Clay’s transplant went wrong, and he is now heartless and kept alive by a pump. Lilith takes desperate action to save her son’s life, and the film drifts farther and farther into the realm of the unreal. Awake desperately pulls at all the stops with plot turns and surprise twists, but the events are too inconceivable and ridiculously overwrought to be enjoyable. The leap from wiling suspension of disbelief into “Oh no this is going to just get stupider and stupider” can be traced to the operating room when the director decided that hearing Hayden Christensen’s thoughts was not enough and we needed to see him as well, and so as Clay’s “awareness”, leaps off the table and runs amok through the hospital, shouting mutely at his tormentors. If only he were as invisible to us. There’s a point where Lilith, meeting with Clay in a strange in-between world of the not-quite-dead actually, and without irony, tells him that she has always had a strong heart, whilst puffing away on a cigarette. While she was at it she could have stabbed herself in the chest, opened her ribcage with a crowbar and poured bleach all over the organ…but that would have made the film too self-aware. It is blissfully ignorant of its own laughability and takes itself too seriously, which is its, ahem, fatal flaw. There are a lot of hearts floating around in this movie, but it’s more Straw than Tin Man.

Guilty Pleasures of the Cinematic Kind

In the first installment in the series "Guilty Pleasures", in which Montagers reveal their deepest, darkest cinematic favourites, Carmody Wilson unveils some rather embarrassing tastes. Film-wise, that is.

An instructor, marking a lovingly crafted paper I had written on my favourite films, remarked in his notes that I had “a taste for bad taste.” He wrote this in a chummy sort of way, as if the paper I had put together of what I thought to be excellent films, was a joke, and that it was okay for him, the esteemed film academic, to laugh at such a ridiculous and misguided choices. I was kissed off with a good mark, and that was that. I can just imagine his sanguine face contorting with disbelief had I submitted the following selections as serious contenders for that assignment. My own face is betraying my feelings about revealing these films and forming a grotesque death mask of grandiose horror. But no more. Here goes.

I really, really like Star Trek films. I cried my eyes out when Spock was left behind, cheered crazily when Sulu ordered “target that explosion and fire” and tore at my own shirt as Kirk raged against “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!” And I don’t love these movies ironically, either. I just really love them. I even own Star Trek VI on DVD. Christopher Plummer deigned to be in, so the least you can do is watch it. I dare you not to be more excited than you have ever been at the movies in a long time. That said, I do prefer the “old” cast films to the Next Generation, but that doesn’t mean that those aren’t damned exciting too. I like to imagine Jean -Luc Picard, fresh from his traumatic experience with the Borg, laying on a luxe sofa-bed, wan and recovering. I come to him in a diaphanous gown with nursing implements, and we look knowingly in each other’s eyes as he whispers..”make it so…”

On the other, and less pornographic, end of my shabby taste register is BritComs. Yes, those movies that are usually penned by Richard Curtis and star any number of toothsome, long in the tooth, houndstoothed loveys and darlings. This stems largely from my (now) closeted Anglophilia, but also began in earnest with a love of Hugh Grant when I was a teenager. I remember renting Four Weddings and a Funeral from Video Bob in my hometown of Assiniboia not long after it came out on VHS. I was enraptured. Here was a genuinely funny movie that tugged at my horny little heartstrings and starred a floppy-haired toff who gets the girl. Sadly this girl was the execrable Andie McDowell, who, though frightening enough for her stupid pronunciation (“wouldn’t” becomes “wood ent”, and everything else comes out sounding like your pet dog was trying to speak, but was drunk, had a swollen tongue and was deeply brain damaged from birth), has one of those horrible gummy smiles where more gum than teeth actually shows, making her every appearance more gruesome than the last. But idiotic love interest notwithstanding, I was smitten. And so I rushed back to Video Bob’s and bought, again on VHS, this other Hugh Grant film I had seen moldering in a bargain bin. Clutching my purchase, I high-tailed it home and slid it into the machine. (That sounded like an altogether different experience, but never mind.) The film, “An Awfully Big Adventure” was far from the light rom-com I’d expected. The clues it wasn’t going to be a silly comedy about British people doing silly British things were immediate: Hugh Grant’s character was gay, (deeply troubling for a 14 year-old girl in a hick town where the only use of the word really meant stupid. See also “retarded.”) Equally indicative that this wasn’t a laugh-a-minute picture was that Alan Rickman, (that funny guy from Robin Hood!) has two scenes where he slowly pumps away on top of a motionless teenager (who turns out to be his daughter), and whose body is later fished out of a river with a skyhook. Also, Hugh Grant smoked.

O the shame. I couldn’t believe that I had watched such a movie, let alone owned it. ( I like it now, incidentally,) Then the whole hooker/blowjob thing happened and my innocent love of Grant was shattered. Strangely, it didn’t put me off BritComs, and when subsequent schlock-fests Notting Hill and Love, Actually came out, I was happy as a clam, chortling away at them in the cinema. I still never tire of the countless reruns they show of these and now, almost without shame will choose them every single time over any other programming when they are on.(Confession: I, on purpose, own Love, Actually on DVD. Phew! The first step is acknowledgement. The second, ignominy and suicide.)

But now that I have exhausted and shamed myself, I am in a very dark place. I need to rush out and get some sunshine and maybe The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain and The Wrath of Khan on DVD.

Anthony Minghella, 1954-2008 by Carmody Wilson

Anthony Minghella, the Oscar-winning director of such films as The English Patient and Cold Mountain, has died. No cause of death has been revealed, but the shockwave reeling around the cinema world tells of the suddenness of his passing. Minghella had just finished shooting The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, co-written with Richard Curtis, and had two other projects on the go when he died.

It’s hard to write, so soon after a director’s death, of the lasting legacy of the work, but it’s easy to say that Anthony Minghella will be remembered as being among the greats. Not only was this writer/producer/director/music producer a man of many hats, he wore them stylishly and so well. A dab hand at his craft, whatever it was chosen to be, Minghella, surprisingly, got his start in children’s television. He wrote and directed several early episodes of the now-defunct childhood drama Grange Hill, and mirroring his great success with the harrowing, emotional, and lushly told narratives of his film career, wrote and directed much of Jim Henson’s gothic The Storyteller series.

His first film the frightfest-rom-com Truly Madly Deeply, starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman, won Minghella a Bafta for best screenplay, and would set him out on the road to critical and awards season success that would characterize his later career. The next film Minghella directed was the Matt Dillon vehicle Mr Wonderful, another romantic comedy. What’s surprising is that the director went from this fairly light-themed popcorn stuff directly into the director’s chair for one of the biggest, most sweeping romances in cinematic history, a gig that would win Minghella the industry’s most coveted awards and accolades.

When production began on The English Patient, worries were high among the literary community that Michael Ondaatje’s beloved book would be butchered by Hollywood movers and shakers, and indeed, it very nearly was. But a production overhaul was announced, Minghella stepped in, and 9 Oscars, 2 Golden Globes and 6 Baftas later, it is still regarded as one of Hollywood’s greatest achievements. Minghella’s next directing projects, The Talented Mr Ripley, which he also adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel, and American civil-war dramaCold Mountain, again saw him as a multiple award nominee.

His visual style, his ability to beautifully and effectively convey complex and emotional historical storylines, are what characterizes his work, and at the very least, Anthony Minghella has left behind an impressive, age-defying body of work for the cinematic world, and all his fans, to remember him by.

Rambo - Review by Carmody Wilson

Director: Sylvester Stallone
Screenwriter: Sylvester Stallone
Running Time: 91 mins
Certificate: 18
Released: Out Now

There will be blood. There will be decapitation. There will be disembowelment. There will be people cut in half, blown to bits, grabbed, have their necks broken, and thrown to the floor, lifeless eyes bulging. And through it all (and responsible for it all,) is Rambo.

After the carnage of the opening scenes, containing actual news footage, we surmise that we are somewhere near Burma, where the fighting is taking place. So it is almost a relief when Rambo enters the frame, but not in the way you’d think. We first see him, pastoral-like, in a lushly greened valley, searching for his quarry, and finding it hissing in the grass, expertly bagging it. Gentle strings guide us through this lovingly filmed scene. On the way home, Rambo and his companion catch a fish, (well, knife a fish until it is killed,) and hand it off to some grateful peasants as he steers his rig into dock. Then Rambo gets dark. His landed environs are a snake pit, literally, where agile men swivel and dance out of the way of hissing, spitting cobras, presumably to show their mastery over the serpents. It is here that our fallen Rambo makes his filthy lucre. Warned by his boss “we don’t need any more cobras!!!”, Rambo slumps to his snake cages, malevolently plotting...seemingly nothing. This Rambo is as blank a canvas as ever, and with Sylvester Stallone doing the writing, directing AND acting, that’s a lot of blank canvas to watch.

Approached by soppy Christian missionaries who need his boat , Rambo , maudlin, taciturn Rambo, warns croakily that “you don’t want to get involved.” But they do, he does, and with Rambo, you’ve got to know his involvement doesn’t mean backbench negotiations. And so the most awesome carnage in cinematic memory is presented, with the aforementioned butchery complemented by a truly breathtaking explosion that still has me quivering with awe many days later.

What works against Stallone is his earnestness. He really, really wants the audience to take this film seriously. As a reluctant Rambo, leaving his killings of holocaust-like proportions behind-him, Stallone conveys a man whose cinematic legend renders every encounter with him a bloodbath. So unless he expects us to forget the other Rambo movies, it’s hard not to expect a bloodbath of the first order with every appearance of the central character. Flashbacks to the original film have Rambo being reminded of his kill-y destiny, even as he fights to retain his non-existence as a snake catcher for a Thai lowlife. He is strangely validated by killing- on a mass scale, with numerous weapons, or one-on-one where he can personally feel his victim’s hot blood rolling down his arm-but not made glad by it. So in his “I don’t want to get involved but it’s my destiny” bit, Rambo isn’t even redeemed, simply saddened by the brutality of man. What Stallone doesn’t quite manage to pull of is that irony-Rambo is as much of a problem as the brutal government forces. And in spite of all this bloodletting and looking inward, Rambo can’t save himself. Or Burma.

Oscars 2008: The Roundup

The 80th Annual Academy Awards have come and gone, and Carmody Wilson has had a chance to stew over the results.

After a day of reflection upon the mantled recipients of the Academy Awards, I am obliged to say that…I feel relatively nothing about the winners, the losers, the whole lot. Daniel Day Lewis capped off a triumphant awards season run with the win for Best Actor, adding a mark of surety to the notion that we won’t be seeing him for another four years or so, and Marion Cotillard swept in and won Best Actress, causing Julie Christie to probably rue that she did come out of her semi-retirement. But Julie Christie has won an Oscar, and will appear in worthy films again, whereas, and I believe this, really I do, Marion Cotillard, winsome, talented and beautiful though she may be, is a one-off in these Hollywood awards. She’ll go on to a glittering and distinguished career in European Cinema, but will never again be recognized for her work in this big, splashy way. It’s as if Hollywood has thrown European cinema a bone, and believing it content, will starve it out and subjugate its entries in the “Best Foreign Film” category until they continue not to care.

But on to more Scottish things. And Spanish. Tilda Swinton, so cravenly androgynous and cold in most of her performances, won for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the nervous, flinty, agricultural chemicals executive in the more-ethical-than-you thriller Michael Clayton. Dressed in an angular shroud, Swinton looked pleased but disinterested in her honour, but this probably owes more to the fact that she was repeatedly asked questions afterward about her two lovers, rather than her acting oeuvre. Javier Bardem won Best Supporting Actor for big winner No Country for Old Men, which went on to win Best picture, Adapted Screenplay and Director, but cinematographer Roger Deakins, nominated for his work on that film and on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, lost out to Robert Elswit and his work on There Will Be Blood. This last award will probably be in awarded in consolation to Paul Thomas Anderson’s cinematographers for his next three films, until the director himself is deemed worthy of his own win.

Montage favourite “Once” got its piece of the pie with an award for Best Original Song, and British big hope Atonement* was robbed of other glories but awarded with Best Original Score. As I imagine Daniel Plainview would say to the pouting Joe Wright, “Take that, you boyyyyy!”

And all of this was thanks to the writers, who no longer striking, allowed people like Miley Cyrus (Who? She’s a teenaged television star and, I think it’s safe to say, only on the red carpet at the Academy Awards because she’s a Disney star, and Disney owns ABC and and and..get it?) to get all gussied up and pose for pictures. If nothing else, watching the preshow gave us all a chance to laugh at John Travolta’s expanding face and spray -on hair.

* It is a shame that an excellent, “big” film such as Atonement, touted as the next Awards-season English Patient by pundits, should come out in a year fettered liberally with excellent films. Really, an old fashioned sweeping love story had no chance against jingoistic, fire and brimstone films like There Will Be Blood and the quiet, contemplative and terrifying No Country for Old Men. It really would have felt forced, a Crash versus Brokeback Mountain kind of concession if Atonement had gone on to win one of the biggies. But it’s too bad, once again.

GFF Review: Irina Palm-by Carmody Wilson

Director: Sam Garbarski
Running Time: 103 minutes
Certificate: 15

Marianne Faithfulli s a better actor than singer. That said, she doesn’t appear to give very good handjobs. And that is what Ms Faithfull spends the majority of her time doing in the film, greasing up and jerking off until she can afford to pay for her grandson’s medical treatment. Faitfhull’s performance as Maggie is very slow and deliberate, her dilemma palpably uncomfortable as she contemplates the get-rich- quick route she has chosen to help her family get to Australia. Miki Manojlovic appears alongside as not-quite sleazy club owner Miki, who provides Maggie with friendship as well as filthy lucre, for her trouble.

A sad, troubling, but strangely light- textured film, Irina Palm makes giving hand jobs for money seem a slight headache, rather than a gruesome alternative to working in McDonald’s. Faithfull’s turn as Maggie exhibits a rare dowdiness for the performer, with shot after shot of Maggie shown stumpily tramping down to Soho in her aubergine coat and grandmother’s handbag. It’s an unaffected film, (save for the awful, spitting performance of Kevin Bishop as Maggie’s son-why wasn’t he the one giving handjobs?) with gray, listless London serving as the antidote to the pulsing, gyrating environment of the club. Maggie’s old life disintegrates as she accepts and adapts to her new life, with her friend and coworker at the club warning her stridently to “keep them separate.” Maggie’s workmanlike approach to her job leads to a new confidence, and she oddly, gets a sort of redemption from her little enterprise, in a new relationship with her daughter-in-law, the shedding of negative friends, and, presumably new skills that would make her highly desirable on the singles dating market. Still, they look like godawful handjobs.

Irina Palm isn’t some kind of empowering-through-sex film, though it isn’t a down-and-outer either. There’s nothing really tawdry here. What it is is a quiet portrait of hard deeds done in hard times by a woman who didn’t know she had it in her.

GFF Review: Crazy Love-by Carmody Wilson

Director: Dan Klores
Running Time: 92 minutes
Certificate:12A

Got an ex-boyfriend who just won’t leave you alone? What a yold. Engaged to someone new? That’s a mitzvah. Your old boyfriend hears about it and has acid thrown in your face? Oy vey. That’s the gist of the story behind director Dan Klores’ nutso documentary, Crazy Love. Only, dear reader, she married him. Not the original fiancée, but the lovelorn psycho who blinded her with his jealousy. And that‘s only half the kookiness.

Lovely Linda Riss was a Bronx beauty with a host of suitors. Burt Pugash was a homely lawyer with a career as an ambulance chaser. They meet. Roses are given. A trip in an airplane, nights out in private clubs, jewelery, all are on offer. Linda demurs and dates his guy. Burt is in love. There’s one small snag: Burt’s married. Linda flees, gets on with her life, finds new love. Burt stalks, threatens, and harasses her, finally hiring some local toughs to throw acid in her face. Linda is blinded and scarred for life. Burt goes to jail. He woos her, relentlessly writing letters. Linda travels to Europe, wears glam sunglasses and beautiful caftans. Burt gets out. They get married. Yep, that’s Crazy Love.

Done as a series of interviews with the people who know them best, the Riss-Pugash story emerges as more than bizarre, at least, in part, because of the real-life characters who share their hands in the romance. There are plenty of enormous wattles, dazzling displays of veneers so huge they almost overpower the wattles (almost) and Brooklyn accents so thick you’d think you were in a lineup in a deli somewhere. Friends of Linda’s speak out against Burt from the get-go, only to demur that he’s okay because he treats her okay now. The police officer assigned to protect Linda whilst she was in the hospital recovering from Burt’s acid attack was the one who suggested that Linda reconcile with Burt, and a lawyer friend of Pugash’s tells that he told Burt to “kill off those niggers” who had performed the dirty deed only to “discover, to my embarrassment, there was a tape recording the whole conversation!!!” Embarrassing indeed.

Crazy Love is an exercise in viewing credulity. You can never quite believe what you’re seeing and hearing, and the constant assault of “Oh my God” moments never stop, least of all when it’s revealed, late in the film, that Burt was charged with threatening and stalking another woman. But all is quickly “righted”, and Burt and Linda are left to ride off into the sunset, a sunset he has arranged with laundered money that she’ll never see because her husband threw acid in her face and blinded her.

GFF Review: An Unlikely Weapon -by Carmody Wilson

Directed by Susan Morgan Cooper
Written by Susan Morgan Cooper
Running: 96 minutes
Certificate: 15

A documentary which looks at the life and work of photographer Eddie Adams, the title could refer to his camera, his most famous photograph or Adams himself. Gaining fame as a photographer for the Associated Press, Adams was embedded with the U.S. forces in Vietnam, and charged with photographing the daily grind of destruction and carnage that characterized the American occupation. While other photographers were sent home for being “too political”, Adams stayed on, his gritty images wired around the world as a testament to the war’s brutality and the man’s ability to capture it. The big break came when Adams, as the Americans were pulling out, snapped a last-minute shot of the Chief of Police shooting a member of the Vietcong in the head. The photo set the world on fire, and Adams was credited with taking the picture that ended the war. Adams, a blunt, plain-spoken maverick given to corrupted, curse-laden philosophies, shied away from all the attention the photograph gave him.

The film is a straight-up chronicle of Adams as a professional, delving little into his past or personal life. Interviews with legendary newsmen Tom Brokaw, Morley Safer, and Peter Jennings testify to Adams’ talent as a photojournalist, if the grainy, digitized versions of his photos don’t. The quality of the storytelling is high, with interviews with the above, Adams himself, fellow photographers, and his family, but the production quality sticks out like a sore thumb. Shot on digital, with little respect for sound levels or consistent lighting, the message suffers because of the medium. With Eddie Adams as its subject, the film deserved a little more care in its construction, but bumpy images and mic spikes aside, the man and his work are fascinating and worth watching.

GFF Review: XXY by Carmody Wilson

Director: Lucia Puenzo
Screenplay: Lucia Puenzo
Runtime: 91 minutes
Spanish with subtitles
Screening: CCA 19 February, 8:30

XXY is a thoughtful, open-ended film bringing a whole lot of big issues to the table, not least among them the central issues of hermaphrodites and teenage sexual awakenings. Any teenager faced with his/her first sexual attraction has problems to work out, but Alex has more conflicts to deal with than most, as she has been born a hermaphrodite, raised as a girl, and faced with a big decision as to which gender she will adopt. Enter surgeon Ramiro, his wife, and their son Alvaro, who come to stay with Alex’s family as the decision looms. Ines Efron is fearsome and fragile as Alex, a girl of almost feral inclinations, who as her body and heart’s desire go into dangerous places, flings herself farther into the wilderness of forests and the sea. An unexpected and confusing encounter with Alvaro brings both teenagers more questions than it answers, a situation unhelped by the brooding, uncommunicative stance that each teenager’s parents’ are taking. There’s nothing big about this film, as director Lucia Puenzo, in her debut as director, treats the subject matter as the family does, as a private matter, and the result is an intimate, sad, and contemplative story very well performed.

GFF Review: Margot at the Wedding -by Carmody Wilson

Directed by Noah Baumbach
Screenplay by Noah Baumbach
Running time: 92 minutes
Screening: February 16, 6:15, Cineworld

It’s a cliché, but Noah Baumbach is all grown up. The writer/director has created a down-tempo, mature, engaging, emotional, and, of course, brainy film in Margot at the Wedding. His signature low-key humour is present ( jokes about therapy, an inappropriate sketch at the dinner table,) but mostly it’s his confessional storytelling that sticks out.

As a young filmmaker, Baumbach made gloriously ironic indie films celebrating youth, idealism, failure, and emotional retardation. Kicking and Screaming, Highball and Mr Jealousy all featured the same roving cast of characters and the clearest and strongest idea created was that they all hung out in real life and some of the storylines and withering dialogue came from late nights drinking wine, smoking joints and being deeply ironic together. These films were like lo-fi Woody Allen, with Baumbach often appearing in central roles, but there was something collegiate about them. Along came The Squid and the Whale, and suddenly the boyish, neurotic director was writing about teenagers and fortysomethings, their failed relationships, and their deeply dysfunctional world views. In Margot at the Wedding, Baumbach takes it a step further, keeping the dysfunction, but it’s somehow less comical, more disturbing. Nicol Kidman, an actress usually limited in her performances by a breathy whisper and a wooden acting style, is coaxed into reality as Margot, the hyper-critical intellectual attending her sister’s wedding with poorly hidden ulterior motives. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Baumbach’s real-life partner, is Pauline, the hippy-ish sister marrying the wrong man in a desperate ploy for happiness. Jack Black even pulls off serious acting, throwing the ham back in the fridge for a while. The on-screen relationship between the sisters is withering, confusing, terrifying and honest, as they reel from spewing foul hatred at one another to confessing to their respective children that “she’s my closest friend.” The writing is sharp, the acting is excellent, and the film as a whole is a gripping, if rather gruesome, vivisection of a defective family unit.

There Will Be Blood - Review by Carmody Wilson

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Screenwriter: Paul Thomas Anderson
Running Time: 158 mins
Certificate: 15
Released: Feb 15th

There will be blood. And there is oil. And there will be blood and oil mixed together as a man’s skull is splintered into fragments as he inspects the well and his face is assaulted by an iron bar descending heavily home. His oil-anointed child is an orphan. And as befits all men of character, conscience and careerism, Daniel Plainview steps in to take charge of both child and well.

The story is ostensibly about America’s oil boom and the men who threw their lives and fortunes on top of the spewing tower of black gold, to varying degrees of success. In microview, the film is about Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis), one of these early adaptors, and his canniness in grappling with the big companies, whilst failing totally to deal with his problems at home. The wolf at the door proves to be part of Plainview’s early fortunes, a duped elder son, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), who has ulterior motives of his own. Ultimately, neither men really succeed.

From his first moments on screen as a grunting, desperate man digging a hole to his erudite, affected, and sparkling-eyed speaking debut ten minutes later, Daniel Day Lewis, as Plainview, is riveting. His whole mouthed enunciation of words, his particular gift for affecting a voice so out-of-place among the plainspoken middle Americans he is surrounded by, is a believable gift of vocality, a stirring of jargonized speech, and a wonderment of performance. For all of its bigness and strangeness, Day Lewis attaches Plainview to it, and the character is so much more the better for the voice. Plainview’s speech is almost at odds with Day Lewis’s physical presence; it's as if a wolf and a bear were streamlined into the unwieldy form of a man and found perfect harmony there. Speaking quietly, the most confessional Plainview that the film presents, he admits, simply and transparently, “I don’t like most people.” Later in the film, during the famed “I drink your milkshake” speech, Day Lewis throws his fury to the winds and his rage and his mania, but mostly his bawling, fills the room with its full, roaring, chewing, opulence. Director Paul Thomas Anderson truly had his work cut out for him streaming Day Lewis’ power into such a terrible place.

Paul Dano, as Plainview’s foil, the evangelical Eli Sunday, by contrast, has a low, petulant monotone, effective when making solid statements and, more effective still, when not used at all. His flat face, full of benign fire, is piteous and loathsome, particularly when pitted against Day Lewis’s hawkish and handsome profile. When Sunday is thrown into panic, pain and disgrace by Plainview’s physical attack on him, his true voice rings out, screeching and scraping in its outraged pubescence, and ultimately proving no match for Plainview’s roars.

The film chugs along with a well-oiled sense of purpose, and is accompanied by anxious strings in the soundtrack, providing a fearsome humming wine in moments of high-anxiety, or plucky, staccato rhythms for moments filled with only a modicum of anxiety. Paul Thomas Anderson has produced his most mature work in this film, more emotional than Magnolia for its lack of emotions, more rage-inducing than Punch Drunk Love for all its displays of impotence and power, and more horrifying than Boogie Nights for its displays of cold depravity and whoremongering. There Will Be Blood is not a film that allows for relaxation, even at its ebb, and with Day Lewis as Plainview, bursting with hurt, hope and violence in any given scene, the horny discord provided by the soundtrack tears at the senses as he is seen to bully his way into his own misfortune. By the time the penultimate scene in the bowling alley is cruising along to its conclusion, a degraded Plainview fighting for supremacy in his own home, you are exhilarated as he towers in fury over his opponent, terrified as the assault begins, and hopelessly exhausted as Plainview is deflated and defeated by his actions.

There will be blood. There will be oil. And there should be Oscars.

The Bafta Awards: There Will Be Atonement for Old Men en Rose - by Carmody Wilson

Fresh from the credits, I can say there were few surprises at this year’s BAFTAs. But few surprises does mean one or two, and from the enthusiastic and frenzied burst of applause, it was obvious that few expected Marion Cotillard to win for Best Actress, but were more than happy that she has done so. Tilda Swinton, also a surprise win for Best Supporting actress in Michael Clayton, was visibly astonished. A more sure thing, Daniel Day Lewis was charmingly nervous and pleasantly light -hearted (joking about what his children might think, he said “if I get my picture taken with Daniel Radcliff, they’ll start taking me seriously,”) won for his performance in There Will Be Blood, and Joel Cohen, taking the big gold face for he and his brother for Best Director for No Country for Old Men, managed to make host Jonathan Ross seem a master of erudition. Javier Bardem won Best Supporting actor for the same film, and looked rather magnificent with his duck tailed hair and winner's beard.

Token British biggie Atonement took home Best Film, and a sour grapes director, Joe Wright, pouting his way through the thank yous, paused only long enough to complain that his name wasn’t mentioned with the producers’. Perhaps his attitude will be checked at the Oscars next month when his bum remains firmly in its seat through all categories. (But maybe he is getting is comeuppance now and is being tied to a director’s chair and scalded with hot tea by Richard Attenborough.) This is England deservedly won Best British Film, and Anthony Hopkins was treated to a tribute by Attenborough and was presented with a special award. The usual montage of dead people was reeled off to sappy music, with no mention of the working dead, like Orlando Bloom, who was shown unnecessarily any number of times during the ceremonies. There seemed to be plenty of Hollywood stars to sit alongside their British counterparts, but the most interesting stories will emerge tomorrow morning after the tears, the jeers, the spats and the spouses have had their chance to come out at he after parties. All spic and span, and in at under two hours. Overall, a good show that will be forgotten well in advance of Oscar.

Why I Am Angry at Daniel Day Lewis- by Carmody Wilson

That bastard had better start melting down his awards, because Daniel Day Lewis owes me money. Two weeks ago an exciting opportunity for film writing arrived in my inbox. Would I, my editor wanted to know, be interested in attending a special advanced screening of There Will Be Blood, with a live (via satellite ) interview with its brilliant and press-shy star Daniel Day Lewis? The answer was unabashedly yes. Here was my chance to prove to a new audience that my film writing wasn’t just a one off speculative article in the Saturday supplement with a real assignment dealing with an exciting new release, already glittering with awards potential. Would I be interested in writing up a review of the film and juxtaposing it with quotes form Day Lewis, as I had heard them in the company of other film journalists? Would I let Johnny Depp take me away for a naughty weekend in France? Yes. A thousand times, yes. I envisioned strange commissions from faraway editors, they, eager for a piece of the rising film writer that was me, me anxious but coolly selective, mulling over their offers of a staff position, salary, health benefits, and tickets to Cannes. Truly, here was my time to shine. And, in the meantime, the seventy five quid I’d get was very badly needed.

The first bad sign was when my editor emailed back and said that the event, initially thought to be press only, was a public one. Would I then book my own ticket and submit it as expenses? Yeah, okay, sure. Immediately, my fantasy health care was axed. I tried to stay positive. This was still a great opportunity! The public could then compare their experience of the screening and Q&A with what I had written. Essentially, really, I was going to appeal to a larger audience. If these people were anything like me, they always read about things they had already seen, if only to have their opinions confirmed. This was a good thing. Johnny Depp was back, and this time he wanted me for the whole week. I confidently dialed the press office, pre- imagining my insights and already choosing ecstatic yet carefully analytical phrases for my filmic experience at the hands of this enigmatic actor. Hoping to shirk the whole reimbursement phase of the transaction, I asked for a press ticket “for the Daniel Day Lewis event” to be told that Mr Day Lewis had cancelled due to “personal matters.”

Disaster. Poverty. Pride shanking. All of these things flashed through my whirring mind as the press agent chuckled his way through a variety of reasons for the cancellation. But it was nothing. Gone was my unique opportunity to prove myself brilliant, gone was the first film assignment I’d actually ever got, gone was my corner office, salary and benefits, gone gone gone.

The days went by in a blur of praise for There Will Be Blood. I attended a press screening under my own steam and found myself enthralled, loving Day Lewis' performance. But bitterness gnawed at my heart and poorness pissed on my wallet. I would never forgive him. He was famously elusive and unpredictable, maybe he was going through a mental breakdown in preparation for his next role, maybe somebody died and he shouting at heaven in his grief, maybe he abandoned his child and his remorse precluded any speaking engagements for the next few weeks. I comforted myself with that. Until tonight, I was almost sympathizing with Daniel Day Lewis for whatever misfortune had befallen him that he had to miss his satellite link Q&A. And then, benignly seated to watch the Baftas, I saw him. Sitting there, next to his very alive wife, smiling and clapping at some idiot who had won some damned award. Daniel Day Lewis. Interloper of intimate emergencies, faker of personal matters, happy healthy, and very much not in dire emotional distress. Outrageous. What, did he think the ticket holders of the Cameo Cinema in Edinburgh wouldn’t watch the Baftas and be outraged by his duplicity? Surely his regard for us can’t be so little? A planned personal matter. I see, Day Lewis, ‘tis nothing more than a hangover. So get out your damned wallet and give me what I’m owed.

A cinematic experiment in sentimental viewing, as recommended by a sister with vastly different tastes and emotional reactions-by Carmody Wilson

Against my better judgment, against the arbiters of good taste (the Film Critics of the world, unabashed comptrollers of opinion), and against my own (fairly) proud film viewing tradition, I have chosen to see PS I Love You. Now before my faithful readers begin sputtering their incredulity or venting their cultural spleens at me, let me explain why.

My younger sister, a tough, pragmatic, and vaguely “high maintenance” married woman who works as an administrator in Canada’s federal prison system, is also someone who has a very tender heart, high expectations for personal experiences, and a fierce love for those closest to her. This last, I’ve always assumed, includes me, her high-minded, intellectually snobby, romantic world-viewed, unemployed, unmarried elder. As such, we’ve often got together at the cinema, with the best of intentions of enjoying ourselves, and come out bickering or in stony silence, our enjoyment of the film we’ve just seen grossly incompatible with the other’s. There have been exceptions, of course, Wes Anderson flicks being a mutual favourite, but mostly, when we do manage to see the same film, we disagree.

Which brings me back to PS I Love You, the highly improbable sob-fest starring Hilary Swank as a toothy widow and Gerard Butler as her bracelet-wearing dead husband. The premise: Gerry, Butler’s character, kicks the bucket and encourages his bereaved wife to get on with living in a series of pre-arranged letters delivered to her everyday. My sister claims she “bawled” throughout, as she was able to draw certain parallels between Gertle Butty and her new husband. This seems woefully unpromising to someone who has cackled or groaned her way through the better part of this decade’s romantic comedy offerings and views the majority of women who enjoy such piffle as being soft in taste, and just maybe, in the head as well. That said, she did draw me, reluctantly, I tell you, into watching The Notebook, and I had to harrumph and cough my way through the predictable ending to hide the damned, blasted tears that sprang to my traitorous eyes.

Based on the novel by Cecilia Ahern, Ireland’s greatest writer of faux travel brochures, PS I Love You has been in cinemas for weeks, and will undoubtedly remain there for countless more. This makes it even more of a hat-and-trench coat experience for me, as it proclaims to the world that the sappy premise and tear-inducing sentiments have been known to millions of women across the country, and I, drawn by their praise of the film, will now count myself as one of them. I’d much rather find myself at Butler’s last film again. At least 300 was a laugh riot. Here is Leonidas hot with fight, slowly and carefully caressing his wife’s flank on the eve of battle. A montage of sweaty haunch-hitting follows, climaxing with Butler arching triumphantly as he plows his wife’s posterior. Yes!!! You can see how passionate their relationship is! See how he loves her! Truly, Sparta begins at home. If there is a parallel scene in PS I Love You, placed carefully by the breathless director, Butty whispering Irishly into Swank’s quivering ear as he thumps her rump, I will not be ashamed to let loose and howl. I will however, be mortified if I find myself enthralled.

Will I be able to hold my head high after this egregious filmic sin of commission? Only if I don’t enjoy watching it. And if I do, dear reader, don’t ever think you’ll know about it.