Although visually Tim Burton’s latest cinematographic extravaganza was all it was made out to be, story-wise, our favourite adventurous director cannot be said to have taken any risks. The film is very predictable and the characters offer no surprises. Burton’s sequel that takes place thirteen years after Alice gets back form Wonderland, is far less twisted than Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and the characters lack any real improvement on the originals. All in all it was an enjoyable experience but rather more children-friendly than was to be expected. Whatever happened to the dark and macabre Burton we have grown to love over the years? In addition to this, Johnny Depp plays what has now become a standard character for him: whether it is Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka or Jack Sparrow, it feels that the actor has found a comfort zone that he is unable or unwilling to break free from.

Monsieur Eric Rohmer (1920-2010), a master of Lightness, indefatigable, one of the most celebrated French movie directors. A theorist of the art of Cinema, a sensitive director, a free player who found his own language and remained faithful to it for half a century with delicacy and talent, avoiding contradictions and U-turns, without loosing his unmistakable touch. Maybe he slipped once or twice (his Perceval), but that is only human in an admirable career that began fifty years ago with Le signe du leon (1959), a hymn to Paris.
Born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, his debut is that of a writer, when in 1946 he published Elisabeth, a novel – characterised by subtle prose – that let us forsee the style of the scripts of his future movies. The book came out with the pseudonym Gilbert Cordier. A pseudonym is often associated with shame and resentment (see Stendhal), and in this regard Monsieur Rohmer, with his double nom de plume, probably had something to reveal.
Following the first feature films, the artist begins to see his path. His adventure in the world of art-house cinema has begun. Director on the one hand and, on the other, theorist. In fact, Rohmer was Editor of the Cahiers du cinéma for some years. Those were the years of Godard, Chabrol, Rivette, Eustache, Truffaut. Years of unforgettable movies (the legend of À bout de souffle, the poetic story of Jules et Jim) when Rohmer chose his position (on the sidelines) to play an independent game. He conceives an ambitious project: cycles of movies (stories at different stages, on multiple levels) in which he intends to recount the endless facets of the human soul, the worthlessness and the complexity, the splendour and the fragility, with all the comic aspects (or tragicomic).
The first cycle is that of the Moral Tales. Six astonishing movies, of great depth, each profoundly different from the other and yet all linked in a closed circle. La boulangère de Monceau (1962), La carriére de Suzanne (1963), La collectionneuse (1967), Ma nuit chez Maud (1969), Le genou de Claire (1970)  and L’amour l’aprés-midi (1972). Each of these stories involves a moral choice, a dilemma that puzzles the protagonist, a fork in the road. It’s the serried dialogues between Jean-Louis Trintignat and Françoise Fabian (unforgettable Maud), it’s the obsession focused on the knee of the young attractive (and arrogant) Claire, it’s the thoughts of the three characters of La collectionneuse (a sort of Jules et Jim with colours borrowed from Matisse and Bonnard).
This meditation in six acts is followed by an historical pause, during which Rohmer directs La marquise von (1976, inspired by a novella by Heinrich von Kleist, a beautiful period movie characterised by masterful lighting) and Perceval le Gallois (1978, a heavy adaptation from Chretiens de Troys). These are historical and literary digressions, recaptured by Rohmer toward the end of his career in L’anglaise et le duc (2001).
Once again absorbed in everyday life, Rohmer initiates a second cycle, that of Comedies and Proverbs. If the objective is always the same (a man, a woman, their psychology), the tactic has changed: a folkloristic adage is quoted and presented in the context of a beach in Brittany or in 1980s Paris. The films in this cycle are: La femme de l’aviateur (1981), Le beau mariage (1982), Pauline à la plage (1982), Les nuits de plein de lune (1984), Le rayon vert (1986),  Reinette et Mirabelle (1987) and L’ami de mon amie (1987). All these movies enjoyed the success of critic and public, all were characterised by the Rohmer-trademark: the dialogues chasing each other and interweaving, the simple settings (often beaches, equally often the countryside, an unexpected Paris), the accomplished actors (cleverly directed but also free to improvise in order to convey more spontaneity to the memorable fast-paced dialogues).
Another cycle follows, that of the Four Seasons: Conte de printemps (1989), Conte d’hiver (1991), Conte d’été (1996) and Conte d’automne (1998). The seasons are identified with their colours – the light-blue of the skies of Normandy for Summer, the red green and brown of the vineyards for Autumn. The sensitivity is, by now, familiar: the meditations of a young man caught in his dreams and in his incertitude, two friends in their middle age enjoying themselves in a comedy of misunderstandings (serious, but with a smile). Juggling and balancing. 
There are also films outside the cycles. Those Rendez-vous à Paris, in which the structure is still typical of Rohmer. The recent L’anglaise et le duc (2001) from the memoires of Lady Grace Dalrymple Elliot, lover of the Duke of Orléans interpreted by the excellent Lucy Russell. And here Monsieur Rohmer finds one of his strengths: the unequalled taste in choosing the actors. Actors who give an astonishing performance and then disappear (from the screen, not in the memory of the public), such as Haydée Politoff, protagonist of La collectionneuse. But also legends of French cinema: Françoise Fabian (the seductive Maud) and Jean-Louis Trintignat. André Dussolier and Barbet Schroeder, Arielle Dombasle and Pascal Greggory. Some of the actors and actresses are a fetish, especially Béatrice Romand (young in Le genou de Claire, then in Le beau mariage, for which she was awarded the Coppa Volpi in Venice) and Marie Riviére (seen in La femme de l’aviateur and Le rayon vert) both united in the Autumn Tale in a memorable double interpretation. Or young promising actors, such as Melvil Poupaud in the Summer Tale.
Overall the strength of Rohmer’s cinema lays in its delicacy. The ability of recounting the fragility of a relationship, the intensity of an impulse, the complexity of a doubt. Often intertwined with the movements of the body (very observant the director, very refined the actors), the feelings are the real protagonists of the moral debates, of the comedies and the proverbs, of the seasons of life (a passionate summer, a melancholic autumn ending with a smile). A film by Rohmer can be ironic, humoristic, subtly sad, patently intimate – always, however, profoundly human.
The repetition of the themes (lastly disguised …

During the course of the 17th edition of the French Film Festival UK , alongside with a retrospective of Jacques Tati’s filmography and a homage to Jean Eustache, another iconic French personality has been honoured: Françoise Sagan. In recent years several French symbols have had their bio-pic and in fact Marion Cotillard has interpreted Edith Piaf, Audrey Tatou was Coco Chanel, while Romain Duris played Molière. So Sagan’s turn came.
Born into a well-to-do family in the Lot region, Françoise Quoirez took by storm the cultural establishment of France in 1954 with the acclaimed and controversial novel Bonjour Tristesse, published under the pseudonym Sagan (inspired by one of the characters in Marcel Proust’s Recherche, the Princesse de Sagan). International bestseller and shortly after made into a movie interpreted by David Niven, Jean Seberg and Deborah Kerr, the story is set in the nonchalant atmosphere of the French Riviera where hedonism and frivolity meet with darker thoughts in the mind of spoilt teenage Cécile. Those were the initial years of the Nouvelle Vague.
The movie Sagan, directed by Diane Kuris, covers the time span of half a century, from the stardom year 1954 until 2004, when an old, fragile and impoverished Françoise Sagan died of a lung embolism. Her life has all the elements of tragedy and romance: immediate success, the first triumph turning almost into a curse, marriages, lovers, an estranged son, drugs, alcohol, luxury, beauty, solitude. The movie opens in Honefleur, in 2004, with a reporter trying to sneak a photograph trough the wooden gate of Sagan’s mansion, le manoir du Breuil near Équemauville. An enthusiastic young girl, she was known by the nickname of charmant petit monstre (charming little monster). Androgynous in her looks, with short hair and slender figure, she lived the success of Bonjour Tristesse with a cheerful attitude, at the same time conscious and blasé. Her places (Deauville, Paris, Saint-Tropez, Honfleur), her sportcars. Following a car accident at the wheel of her Aston Martin, she was in a coma for some days. Once she recovered, she quickly married publisher Guy Schoeller. The marriage lasted only three years and two years after her divorce she married the American sculptor Robert Westhoff, with whom she had her only child, Denis. Like Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson or Paul and Jane Bowles, Françoise and Robert also had same sex relationships outside their marriage and following their separation. In fact, Sagan’s most faithful companion was Peggy Roche, ex model for Givenchy and later herself a stylist.
We follow Sagan into her descent in drug and alcohol abuse, her difficult (almost inexistent) relationship with her son, her financial problems, her respiratory accident while on a state visit to Colombia with President François Mitterand. Later Peggy Roche dies. In the last years of her life, Sagan was practically ruined and was involved in the financial scandal known as Affair Elf . It was only the support from her wealthy companion Ingrid Mechoulam (Astrid, in the movie) that allowed her to keep her mansion, where she died in 2004. A few years earlier she was asked to write her own epitaph: “Sagan, Françoise. Fit son apparition en 1954, avec un mince roman, “Bonjour tristesse”, qui fut un scandale mondial. Sa disparition, après une vie et une œuvre également agréables et bâclées, ne fut un scandale que pour elle-même” (Sagan, Francoise. Appeared in 1954 with a slender novel, “Bonjour Tristesse”, which was a worldwide scandal. Her death, after a life and a literary production both pleasant and botched, was a scandal only for herself).
Sagan is brilliantly interpreted by Sylvie Testud (also a theatre actress and a writer). A long preparation in the study of the character is evident: the voice, the gestures, the gait, the whole attitude. Instead of playing Sagan, Sylvie Testud had opted for becoming Sagan, conscious that the author and her myth are still alive in the public, especially in France, leaving little space for improvisation. Alongside Testud, the eclectic Jeanne Balibar (Ne touchez pas la hache, 17 fois Cécile Cassard, Va savoir) plays Peggy Roche, with her striking outfits and mellifluous voice.
Another character in the movie is the action of writing. The physical act of writing, the reason behind it, the urgency, its commercial aspect, the years of Existentialism. “Écrire est la seule vérification que j’ai de moi-même” (Writing is the only verification I have of myself). We see Sagan writing: in bed, surrounded by half-smoked cigarettes and half-drunk bottles of whisky; in the garden of her mansion; sitting with the typewriter on her lap. She writes. In fifty years of excesses she has also managed to publish almost fifty literary works, including novels, theatre plays, scripts, autobiographical writings.
The movie also provides an overview of fifty years of French history: the Nouvelle Vague; May 1968; the Manifesto of the 343 in which 343 women admitted of having had an abortion in 1971 including Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau and Françoise Sagan; Mitterand’s presidency. Interestingly during the movie, while Sagan, her second husband and her entourage are watching on TV the revolution in the streets of the Latin Quarter, one of the spectators comments: “This is the revolution” looking at their new way of living, just there, in that room. Less boundaries, socially and sexually.
The movie is not judgmental: neither compassionate for the suffering and the weaknesses of the writer, nor exalting her excesses. It portrays the lights and shadows of a complex character, of a woman that already at the age of 18, in the opening lines of the novel that made her Sagan, wrote: “A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else”.

Jordan Scott, daughter of Ridley (Blade runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator), has presented her confident debut movie Cracks during the course of the 53rd London Film Festival, accompanied by her father and her cast, including the stunning Eva Green. The story is set in 1930s England in an isolated all-girls boarding school. In the austere institution (the church hymns, the dark uniforms, the severe bare landscape) an unconventional teacher, Miss G (a superb Eva Green), brings a touch of glamour and emancipation. Her team of girls is faithful and adoring, until the arrival on a new student, the aristocratic Spaniard Fiamma (Maria Valverde), and the balance is irremediably flawed. 
The story is based on the 1999 novel by Sheila Kohler, but it also brings to memory the unforgettable Miss Jean Brodie and her temperament, as described by Muriel Spark in her early successful novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). The central theme is not only the complex dynamics occurring in a group of adolescents (both novels addressing a “team” of young girls) but also how each member of the group interacts with the charismatic role-model, the teacher that nobody will ever forget. Not a teacher, but the teacher, in a wider meaning of the term: a source of inspiration. Some details of Miss Brodie are memorable: taking the liberty of discussing Fascism and Cimabue instead of mathematics during class, reproaching a girl for opening a window more than fifteen centimetres because it is “vulgar”, her ambition of transforming her team of girls into “la crème de la crème”. The impact of such an alluring character on the mind of an adolescent sparks strong reactions. Imitation, jealousy, eroticism. Obsession.
In the film, Miss G is a stain of colour in the gray rigorous atmosphere of the school and its surroundings. Dressed with great taste, a cigarette often between the red lips, assured in her attitude, compelling when recounting stories set against exotic backgrounds, she is almost magnetic. Her special group of girls, the diving team, feels privileged and intimidated, each girl responding differently to such a strong personality, with attraction easily disguised as admiration. Miss G possesses an allure of mystery, which of course adds to her erotic charge. She passionately tries to inspire her girls, challenging them, instructing them against social obligations, telling them that “the most important thing in life is desire”. The movie then takes a darker turn, with Miss G revealing another side, under the armour of emancipated and glamorous young woman. The character thus gains more complexity, ultimately possessing an explosive mix of fragility, illusions, ambitions and sensuality.
In the role of Miss G, Eva Green delivers an accomplished performance. Known to the greater public as the Bond girl of Casino royale, she was the unforgettable Isabelle in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The dreamers. Daughter of French actress Marlène Jobert and a theatre actress, she also has previously worked with Ridley Scott, producer of Cracks, for the movie Kingdom of heaven. In her latest role, she incarnates with confidence the charismatic Miss G, shifting between her passionate side and her dark side. Beautiful and stylish, she flaunts elegant 1930s outfits in the improbable setting of the boarding school, playing the gramophone on the shore of the sea while encouraging the diving team to aim higher. Her most striking feature are probably the piercing blue eyes and her gaze, so rich in emotions, is reminiscent of Charlotte Rampling’s. As some of Rampling’s most popular interpretations, this character is oscillating between fragility and an almost arrogant, fascinating confidence, not intentionally provocative but naturally sensual. All this summarised in the complex gaze. While presenting the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, Eva Green said that she also found inspiration for her character by listening to songs performed by Marlene Dietrich, adding the final touch to her interpretation.  
The movie, directed with talent by Jordan Scott and with beautiful photography curated by John Mathieson, will be released in the UK in December 2009.

In 2004 Tom Ford, fashion guru and recognised as one of the most influential designers of the past two decades, said goodbye to Gucci. A few years later, after launching a luxury men’s clothing brand and, en passant, a range of fragrances and an eyewear collection, he made a stylish entrance into the world of film-making. His first feature movie, A single man, has recently been acclaimed by the press at the Venice Film Festival, where the protagonist of the movie (Colin Firth) was awarded the Coppa Volpi prize for best actor. The movie has now been screened at the Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival.
Tom Ford not only produced and directed A single man, but he was also involved in the writing process, adapting to the screen the homonymous book by Christopher Isherwood. The novel was originally published in 1964 and was dedicated to Gore Vidal, one of Isherwood’s literary friends (including WH Auden and Aldous Huxley). Recounting the story of a single day of life seen through the eyes of an ageing professor, the book is thus analogous in its setting to other illustrious examples, from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway to Ian McEwan’s Saturday. A whole life in one day, with its tragedies and simple most unbelievable events, with breathtaking details (that dress, that book, that specific word in a sentence) and ordinary actions. Tom Ford said: “I first read the book … in the early 1980s and was moved by the honesty and simplicity of the story. At that time, I was in my early twenties. Three years ago, after searching for the right project to develop as my first film, it occurred to me that I often thought of this novel and its protagonist, George. I picked it up and read it again. Now in my late forties, the book resonated with me in an entirely different way. It is a deeply spiritual story”.
The movie has a fast pace, paused with moments of contemplation. The death of a lifetime lover and companion is haunting the day, with memories and reality alternating; an encounter with a stranger; a depressed friend shares pain and lost hopes while a young student (portrayed as a pure symbol of Youth, yet sensual and himself troubled) appears on the scene. And the simple actions and objects: the bread in the freezer, a cup of coffee in the morning, a pencil-sharpener, the neighbours, dinner. Simple everyday life. Adding to the pace are the music and the rich, accomplished performances. Colin Firth is Professor Falconer, caged in his suit and his glasses, caged in the pain of a loss. It is his voice that accompanies those daily prosaic actions, like shaving – and again, Virginia Woolf – or drinking coffee, making his thoughts resonate. The catalyst, the accident, the memory of it. His partner, Jim, is played by Matthew Goode (Match point, Brideshead revisited). And then is the friend, Charlotte, as troubled and depressed: not long after her applauded performance in Savage grace, Julianne Moore again plunges into the Sixties in style, this time putting on a British accent.
Above all, the movie is visually stunning. Tom Ford clearly resorted to all his sense of composition and taste for colour and light, creating a very well crafted film. The attention for the detail: a certain way of putting on make up, a sweater, a shade of colour. Tom Ford has rather designed the movie. He offers his own version of the Sixties: usually depicted as colourful, Los Angeles in 1962 is now sleek, sexy, brown, black, beige, gray, very modern. The atmosphere is at the same time austere and sensual. And then the attention for the human body: a sweaty tennis match, eyes framed in eyeliner and close-ups, the intricate hairstyle that Julianne Moore manages to pull off. Bodies, eyes, hair that are somehow reminiscent of a TV commercial or of a poster seen on the side of a bus. Needless to remember where Tom Ford trained his eye, his taste creates a movie that is aesthetically ravishing but at the expense of spontaneity. Great performances by Colin Firth and Julianne Moore are certainly not diluted by a glossy picture in which even a bank clerk looks like Jacqueline Kennedy, but, albeit it is tragedy that pervades a single day in a man’s life, the movie is too glossy to be dramatic.

Shadows in the sun, the second feature movie from director David Rocksavage, is a moving family drama in which all members of cast are perfectly chosen and deliver touching performances. In the late Sixties, Hannah (Jean Simmons), an old woman rummaging through letters and memories of a lifetime, is assisted in her last days by a mysterious young man, Joe (Jamie Dornan). Hannah’s son, Robert (James Wilby), and two grandchildren, Kate and Sam, visit her in the idyllic and remote country-house in Norfolk where she lives, only to remain intrigued and perplexed by the presence of Joe. Indoors of books and poetry and outdoors of open skies and sand dunes alternate, in a story about continuity and the feel of memory.
The movie is very well crafted. David Rocksavage’s first feature movie, Other voices Other Rooms, was an adaptation from Truman Capote, whereas now it is possible to sense a personal, autobiographical touch. “The atmosphere of the film is inspired by my memories of summer holidays with my grandmother, but the actual story is fictional” the director revealed. As much as poignant, the movie is aesthetically pleasing, with beautiful photography directed by Milton Kam -  long shots on the Norfolk coast, indulging on the overwhelming landscape, with Joe walking along the shoreline against the clear sky.
In a balanced script, jealousy mixes with poetry (with a soft spot for Yeats). Like the sea, not too distant, words echo in Hannah’s mind. Her character, at times theatrical at times fragile and brittle, is brilliantly interpreted by Hollywood legend Jean Simmons. She was Estella in David Lean’s Great Expectations, she acted with Marlon Brando and Laurence Olivier, starring in movies that made the history of cinema, such as Spartacus and Guys and dolls. Her performance is natural and utterly elegant. On the other hand, Joe is played by Jamie Dornan, well-known model for Calvin Klein and Dior Homme and singer, whose debut came in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. He delivers a convincing performance. He has said about his character: “I like him because we don’t know so much about him, he’s really mysterious and enigmatic. That’s the lovely thing about Joe – he keeps you guessing”.
In the words of Hannah: “Joe is a free-spirit, he moves with the seasons” and he is a pivotal character in the plot. Apart from Hannah, who has built an unclear relationship with him (the viewer is left wondering: how? and when? adding to the mystery), Hannah’s son Robert, played by James Wilby (Howard’s End, Gosford Park) is clearly suspicious and, in a sense, anti-Joe while his daughter and son are attracted to him, the first being seduced by the inscrutable young man and the second looking up to the detached adventurer.
Reconcilement is on its way but the characters in the story (and the director of the movie) favour delicacy to drama. Something soft, subtle, arising from tension and unsaid things. And the gracefulness of some scenes is accompanied by an adequate musical score (Mahler, and Schumann performed by the director himself).
Shadows in  the sun is somehow reminiscent of L’heure d’été by Olivier Assayas. The household, the presence of a matriarch, the exploration of sentiments and of the difficulty to express some of those feelings. As much as L’heure d’été was extremely French – in the setting, in the fine gestures of Edith Scob – this movie has a distinct British flavour, the smell of woods and deserted beaches and a sense of careless elegance. Also, the role played by art and collecting and inheriting works of art in L’heure d’été is here played by literature and poetry, the pleasure of handing down a sentence or a verse with a special meaning, a sentimental inheritance, a precious heritage of quotations.
A movie that portrays with tact that fragile and undefined thing called human relationships, may it be a son jealous of his mother’s companion, or a young girl seduced by the adventurous free-spirit, or an old lady enamoured of literature and life who wishes to live a few more days through the dreams of a beautiful young man. As David Rocksavage has said: “I wanted Hannah’s love of life and the gift of her new friendship to shine through the pain of her illness and the simple joy she gets in hearing a poem read aloud to her. In the end, it is her personality that brings the family together and in Jean Simmon’s portrayal of Hannah I seem to hear echoes of laughter from a distant past”.
Presented at several festivals – including Dinard British Film Festival, Festival International du Film de Marrakech and the Hamptons International Film Festival – and winner of Best screenplay and Best film at WorldFest-Houston, Shadows in the sun is released today across the UK.

An imposing black man is standing in front of the mirror of a tiny bathroom coating his dark features with red foundation cream. He pulls out an eye shadow palette and starts applying green, gold and purple stripes to his eyelids. He is preparing to head out for a night turning tricks in Paris’ notorious Bois de Boulogne. Beneath his muscular boxer’s physique, a woman is struggling to get out. Judging by his high cheekbones, full lips and shapely breasts though, the battle has already been mostly won.
Mujeron, “Big Woman” in Spanish, is one of two characters in Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva’s award-winning documentary on Ecuadorian transvestite prostitutes in Paris: Transvestites Also Cry (Best documentary at HBO International Latino Film Festival 2008). The film’s other protagonist is called Romina who, with her constant preoccupation with keeping her husband happy and her dog smelling sweet, fits more neatly into our notions of how a transvestite should look and act.
As we observe Mujeron shift from his unfeminine daytime sportswear, to his corset-clad, miniskirt wearing, interpretation of an alluring female, we find ourselves questioning how one qualifies a man or a woman. Mujeron describes himself as neither: “I am a person,” he keeps on repeating “I am not a man or woman. I am a person.” Romina, the more extroverted and exuberant of the two, has her own analysis: “Transvestites, transsexuals and gays, we are the third sex,” she says, “God loves us too.”
It’s hard to refer to Mujeron as “her”. He treads a middle ground that defies definition. His understanding of what it means to be a female comes across as a grotesque caricature: Grace Jones on steroids with war paint on. Romina, on the other hand, is all woman. The way she talks, moves and behaves, all convey that she has made a transition from one side to the other.
D’Ayala Valva’s effort to neither sensationalise nor exaggerate the tragedy of his subjects’ lives is commendable. The documentary alternates between light-hearted banter to deep introspections on what it means to be an illegal immigrant, a transvestite and a prostitute at the same time. It would have been an easy topic to over-sentimentalise but d’Ayala Valva seems to have narrowly avoided this pitfall. An impressive first documentary, which leaves the viewer wondering what happens next…
Les Travestis Pleurent Aussi
Directed by: Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva
Produced by: Kanari Films
Next showing at: PINK APPLE – Zurich Gay Lesbian Film Festival Switzerland (Zurich) – May 2009
II Festival de Cine “Diversidad Afectivo Sexual” Santa Cruz, Bolivia – May 2009