(BAFTA) Style Sunday.

Poor Julianne Moore has been so snubbed all awards season long that it made sense she showed red carpets what they were missing out on for ignoring her. After her faux pas at the Golden Globes she makes it up with this wonderful Tom Ford design. The deco inspired front and the giant bow in the back make her look like the heir to Ava Gardner.

Thandie Newton is a BAFTA staple and with reason: she's such a beautiful, beautiful woman (also she won a BAFTA for Crash) she's a vision in this stunning Monique Lhuillier. The color and structure more than compliment Thandie's natural beauty.

What the hell is it with big fantasy starlets and not smiling? (I'm looking at you Kristin Stewart) Emma Watson seems to follow the emo example and in the process takes away some points from her gorgeously detailed Valentino dress.

Hailee Steinfeld, bless her heart.

When she was nominated for an award in the old continent she must've assumed she needed to dress like Queen Elizabeth and went with this matronly Miu Miu ensemble that not only ages her terribly but also makes her Mattie Ross from True Grit seem absolutely glamorous.

Well hello Miss Bening! Annette has rarely looked as sexy and free spirited as she does in this simple Marchesa dress. Good riddance to her usual black and may she wow us at the Oscars!

The amazing Noomi Rapace, rocked the droll red carpet in this beaded Givenchy Couture gown. Taking such risks for an awards show rarely pay off this well and in this curve hugging golden creation pulls it off.

Noomi's the antithesis of her iconic Lisbeth Salander and boy do I like it!

Did you guys see the BAFTAs? Who was your fave dressed? Fave win?

Mother and Child **

Director: Rodrigo García
Cast: Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Kerry Washington
Samuel L. Jackson, David Morse, Shareeka Epps, Amy Brenneman
Marc Blucas, Jimmy Smits, Cherry Jones, Elpidia Carrillo
S. Epatha Merkerson, David Ramsey

There is something about Rodrigo García's vision of women that feels both spot-on and terribly, terribly cliché.
At times his characters achieve an intense melancholy and feel so lived-in that it's completely annoying how seconds later he forces them to deliver elaborate dialogues that make them sound like they've just arrived from Peyton Place.
In this case his screenplay centers on the relationships between mothers and children. We have Karen (Bening) a middle aged woman whose life was marked by the fact she gave up her daughter for adoption almost forty years before. This has made her cold and so afraid of people that she doesn't know how to respond to the attentions she receives from a new coworker (Smits).
Elizabeth (Watts), the daughter, is a successful attorney who uses sex as an asset and the fact that she was abandoned as an excuse to have no attachments. "I don't have expectations to fulfill" she tells her new boss (Jackson) before she begins an affair with him.
Then there's Lucy (Washington) a woman contemplating adoption given she can't have children of her own. This complicates her marriage since her husband (Ramsey) is reluctant to raising a stranger.
The film unfolds like something González Iñárritu would've made as we see how the three parallel stories eventually converge into one massive, tear-your-heart-out conclusion.
What fails in Mother and Child is that because of García's need to be poetic (usually highlighted by his elaborate camera moves and unrealistic dialogues) we never really think there's an emotional peak coming our way.
We are usually left wondering what will be the climax and this doesn't mean there's some sort of mystery going on, it's just that the director sometimes even forgets some of the stories he's telling.
There's a massive disconnect in Lucy's story especially as we see the other two women move forward in time and she's stuck in the same episode (that or either a freakishly long pregnancy from a mother to be played with charming confidence by Epps).
The movie is saved because of the performers. Bening provides beautifully nuanced work and it's a wonder to see her because the plot first tries to turn her into Charlotte Vale from Now, Voyager yet the actress finds a way to move past this extremely melodramatic mood and by the movie's end she has bloomed into a full blown human being.
Bening is stuck with some preposterous scenes where she writes letters to the daughter she has never met, any other actress would've turned these moments into exaggerated postcard moments, Bening though seems to know there's an awful amount of silliness to them and performs them like a duty, which gives her character a natural quality impossible to judge.
Watts is good but the film under uses her and turns her too much into a femme fatale (Elizabeth would've been played by Glenn Close in the 80's).
The film's revelation is actually Washington who is able to do so much with so little. Her character disappears for rather long amounts of time and we find ourselves wondering what is happening to her, more than anyone else in the film.
The manner in which she completely gives into Lucy is remarkable. She is able to embody sexuality, despair and intense warmth without recurring to cheap dramatic tricks. In a particular scene as she wonders how to deal with a baby's needs she screams "who the fuck does she think she is?" and this is perhaps the only moment in the entire film where we fully grasp what it's like to be a mother.
The pain, confusion and relentless patience that comes with motherhood isn't really easy to convey or to understand and Washington does this with effortless grace.
Mother and Child often feels rushed, despite García's languorous directing and it's fair to think that it might've worked better in serial form where we could've gotten to know these women more and understand some of their rash decisions.
Cinematic form turns it into an obnoxious condensed soap opera that never does justice to the larger themes it wants to study.

The Kids Are All Right ***

Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Cast: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo
Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson

The Kids Are All Right is a sweet little movie about the power of family; each of its quirky twists and turns are precisely studied to deliver an old fashioned adult tale with the spirit of an indie.
Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as Nic and Jules, a lesbian couple who have been together for years and have two children: Joni (Wasikowska) and Laser (Hutcherson).
When Joni turns eighteen she decides it's time to meet their biological father and without much effort finds sperm donor Paul (Ruffalo) who's also Laser's father.
From here the movie follows a summer where Joni prepares to leave for college and Paul becomes an important part of their family.
The film could've easily been about Joni's search and concentrated on her misadventures trying to find this man; however, director Lisa Cholodenko (who co-wrote the screenplay with Stuart Blumberg) is more interested in studying what happens to these people when someone from the outside comes and disrupts their structure.
Structured in a series of situations and events in which we see them together, the film flows smoothly. We see the kids having lunch with Paul, Paul meeting the moms, the kids hanging out with their friends etc. At first the film seems aimless but soon we realize that Cholodenko never really meant to tell a self-contained story. This is a slice of life. These characters' lives are supposed to continue after we leave the theater.
Truth be told this wouldn't be as easy to achieve without the film's terrific cast. Bening gives a beautifully layered performance as the controlling Nic. She's the breadwinner, trying to provide for her family and the actress taps into a restrained melancholy that makes her performance haunting.
The best thing about watching her (and this also goes for the rest of the cast) is how liberated she seems. There is not a single moment in her performance where we catch her acting, Cholodenko seems to have a thing for closeups and Bening's face makes a perfect canvas to deliver all kinds of emotions. Her performance feels truly naked because of the way the actress allows us to get so close that we can count her wrinkles but still she puts resistance for us to get into her soul.
Moore is absolutely brilliant as the free spirited Jules. Watching her with Bening is witnessing pure chemistry. The film sometimes tries too hard to portray them as a perfect equation of opposites attracting and in one of the film's funniest scenes Nic says that while she wants her kids to send out thank you cards, Jules probably would be OK with them sending out good vibes.
In the hands of lesser actresses this sort of relationship would catch fire or just freeze, with Bening and Moore it feels almost familiar.
Some of the best scenes in the film are where we see them at their most intimate, sharing their pet names for each other or just watching TV, they make you feel at home.
This perfectly embodies what the movie usually gets so right and it's the way in which it moves past silly preconceptions about "gay cinema" or groundbreaking territory. Cholodenko usually avoids this feeling of "message movie" and we are left wondering how does she capture the awkwardness of being in a family?
Ruffalo is also great, if he had been trying to become the male sex symbol during the past decade, this movie should get him there. His Paul is a manchild of sorts trying to keep up his business and realizing that it might just be time for him to settle down.
The way in which he tries to be both father and friend to the children is funny and also achy. There are glimpses of regret and sorrow in his performance that we're able to catch when he's not being cool or having sex with women.
Ironically, despite his great work, the film doesn't really feel comfortable when he's around. The Kids Are All Right might've been a flawless movie if it had concentrated more on just the family. This rupture feels too much like a cute episode concocted just for the sake of getting some indie cred (making it fit into the "alternative" families subgenre) but as we learn in the end all that really mattered was what was home all along.

Just Because.