Mysterious Kin.

Head over to Popmatters and read my review for the truly magnificent Incéndies which sadly reminded me that time and time again, Oscar concentrates on rewarding the sappiest, least intellectual cinema...

Country Strong *

Director: Shana Feste

Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Garrett Hedlund, Leighton Meester

Tim McGraw, Marshall Chapman

Calling a bad movie "the devil's work" is one of the easiest, most economic quips one can use to describe a cinematic work's lacking qualities. Yet the levels of mediocrity and plain incoherence in Country Strong are such, that perhaps not even the devil would be willing to take credit for it.

The movie feels essentially as if you grabbed Nashville, squeezed all the poignancy and humanity out of it, and reworked it as a parody of Dynasty.

The story is so filled with stereotypes and thinly shaped characters that at no moment are you unaware that you're watching a movie, and a very bad one at it.

Paltrow stars as alcoholic country singer Kelly Canter, who checks out of rehab early and sets out on a cross country tour. Why would someone sign an artist straight out of rehab, for what seems like a multi million dollar tour? Who knows? The film seems to be content as long as there's a nice musical intermission to make us forget our troubles (and those of the characters).

Joining Kelly in her journey are two rising stars: bad boy Beau Hutton (Hedlund) and beauty queen Chiles Stanton (Meester), yes, that's what they're called...

All of them are such thinly disguised stereotypes that sometimes you wonder what's the point of the entire film.
We know that Kelly will be jealous of Chiles because she's younger and because she gets all the boys' attention. We know that Beau will be a sexual symbol who exudes masculinity and punches people to get his points across.

What we never really know though, is why are they even in the company of Kelly. All along we're supposed to think of her as a superstar and her supporting characters aren't even famous in their hometowns.

Director Feste seems to have forgotten that movies need more than cute concepts, beautiful artists and self contempt to actually work.
Her characters are so shallow that not only do you wonder how are we supposed to believe they are artists, we start by wondering how do they even stand up from the screenplay.

For all of its propensity to disappoint, the one thing Country Strong gets right is the music, Paltrow may never seem non-New England-ish enough to convince us she's the yee-haw ready Canter but she belts out the tunes like a pro.

Even GOOP dissenters might agree that what she lacks in conviction in this movie, she more than makes up with her Dixie Chick-ness...and that's perhaps all that can be rescued from a movie that's not even sure it wants to help itself.

A Serbian Film **

Director: Srdjan Spasojevic

Cast: Srđan Todorović, Sergej Trifunović, Jelena Gavrilović

Slobodan Beštić, Katarina Žutić

A Serbian Film can be applauded for its ambition but questioned for its execution. Director Spasojevic decided that the best way to embody his opinions on the state of his country, was to deliver them in the same way he perceives them: through unnecessary violence and almost hedonistic pessimism.

Todorović stars as Miloš, a semi retired porn star who was once considered "an artist of fuck", but gave up the industry to be with his family.

When the film begins, his young son (Luka Mijatović) pops in one of papa's classics in the VCR and watches in awe as his father screws the hell out of a big breasted woman. Conflicted by what he's just seen, he asks his mother (Gavrilović) what it all means, to which she replies "they're cartoons for grownups".

Not coincidentally, this very expression encompasses what the rest of the film feels like. Miloš receives an offer from an eccentric producer named Vukmir (Trifunović) to star in one last film. Something that will redefine pornography and place it as art.

Seduced by the paycheck, Miloš accepts and unknowingly becomes part of a snuff film where masked men have sex with corpses, children and beaten women.

Soon enough we get it, yes, the Serbian government is "fucking" its people in all sorts of atrociously inhuman ways but the filmmaker's attempt to symbolize this comes off looking as nothing more than silly exploitation.

For every horrifying scene and "shocking" twist, we are robbed of an actual statement being made. The director fails in linking these images of violence with a larger feeling and to make matters worse, none of the violence in the movie is truly outrageous.

Some might find them disgusting by default (especially scenes of pedophilia) but much more effective work has been done in the genre without recurring to the obviousness of a bloodied phallus to revolt audiences.

In fact this is the reason why the movie fails to deliver any sort of message; why should people be outraged when the filmmakers show such little care for their craft?
Perhaps Spasojevic's intentions got lost within the excitement he found by staging these scenes of torture. In fact, some of these moments are so meticulously done, that you wonder why didn't he set out to make a straightforward horror movie.

His seeming heartlessness would've done wonders to refresh the stale faux horror of something like Saw, but come short of fulfilling the director's obvious need to say something "important"about his country.

Despite all of the mentions of war orphans, Hague councils and stabs at violent military intervention, the film still comes off looking as rather childish and self indulgent.

It's never as shocking as it wants to be and it even lacks the self awareness to be subversive comedy. The hilarity of lines like "I want both of your heads to be clear and hard", uttered by the fantastic Trifunović, get lost in an amalgam of quick cuts, silly technical flourishes and a cliché ridden structure that tries to be Memento by way of Hostel.

Yet still the director's intentions, beginning with the very fact that he named his movie "A Serbian Film" to suggest it's socially and politically conscious portraiture, manage to linger in your mind and set off discussions that will last until the next gore-fest arrives.

White Material ***

Director: Claire Denis

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Isaach de Bankolé

Nicholas Duvauchelle, Christopher Lambert, Michel Subor

Claire Denis doesn't care if you get her movies. This is the reason why they often arrive surrounded by a mass of critical acclaim and audience indifference. These movies aren't made for everyone and Denis more than anyone else seems to know it.

Why then, you might ask, is she making movies?

Completely ignoring the fact that films are regarded by some as spectacles and entertainment, Denis seems to look at them like public exorcisms. This is what she thinks, this is what she sees and you can see it with her if you want.

She's one of the few working directors who always comes up with bewitching images: whether it be through her fixation on the animalistic beauty of the male body, intimate closeups of her actresses or sparse landscapes that contain more beauty precisely because they lack decoration.

She does all this in White Material, a haunting story that takes place in an unnamed African country where civil war has broken, dividing the country into three major segments: the militia, the rebels and the white colonialists still living in the country.

Among these colonialists is Maria (Huppert), a farmer who runs her ex-husband's (Lambert) coffee plantation and struggles to find workers to look after the land.

Why is she running her ex-husband's plantation? This is one of those, very European, things that just "are".

Joining Maria for the ride are her ex-husband's ill father (Subor), and her son Manuel (Duvauchelle) who spends the day sleeping and is what his mother calls "a disappointment". It's Manuel who in fact, takes the film's most altering change when, after a symbolic castration at the hand of two children, decides to take matters into his own hands by arming himself with a rifle, shaving his head and setting out to seek his own version of justice.

This change, from someone we'd known as inert, is one of the ways in which Denis suggests the shocking power of political insanity.

The movie remains rather distant from this perspective; Denis is never one to tell her audiences what to think or even what she's thinking.

If there are any political implications in the film they come from the very notion that as human beings in a society, we are expected to take part in political processes, whether we like them or not.

She also avoids making any declarations on black-white dynamics in colonized countries. In fact, more often than not we find ourselves wondering what is Maria still doing in a country where she's not wanted.

We are told that her plantation has stopped making a profit, yet throughout the film, Maria fights to keep it alive. Is this perhaps a symbol of Imperialist countries resisting the idea of change?

If so, then we have to wonder what lies behind this notion of owning land that was never meant to be yours. Speaking from a very shallow perspective, Maria probably inherited the rights to this land, but it probably was taken away from locals in an unjust manner generations before (the movie doesn't bother telling us the time period either).

Therefore what we see with Maria's character goes beyond the romantic notions proclaimed in films like Out of Africa, where political change is nothing but a peripheral detail in the perpetuation of Western values.

The tenacious Huppert possesses Maria in the opposite way in which her character owns the land. She makes her every move, her every thought and her every action completely her own. We wonder why is she doing the things she does and what benefit does she think she'll find in resisting change and risking her life. Huppert makes us understand that Maria has made her decision; her motives are completely her own and she doesn't need to justify them to us.

Is her character capricious? Perhaps. We get a glimpse of this when Manuel goes on his mission and she lies to her ex-husband by telling him the young man is home.

We also see her hiding a goat's severed head, sent to her as a warning. Why does she insist on keeping this farm?

When the movie begins we see her finding her way back to the plantation with fierce conviction and even desperation. She is warned by soldiers and rebels that she has nothing to do back there.

We later learn that these events actually take place later in the story and needless to say so, they don't really make a difference. Denis creates characters who are who they are and never really go through awkward epiphanies. Even Manuel, who suffers the most drastic change, goes beyond representing ridiculous notions of "waking up" (we first meet him sleeping and after leaving the bed he never goes back).

It's as of all these characters have seeds planted deep within them that we never saw being planted and therefore the harvesting makes no obvious sense to us.

We never know what would await Maria back in France, we're just witnesses to her firmness in staying where she thinks she belongs, regardless of the consequences.

And then there's the constant presence of a radio that spreads its ideas with cynical relentlessness. To some these messages become venom that encourage violence (in fact it's fascinating to realize that the only time when the radio is off is immediately after a scene of unexpected violence) but to some others, the ideas that come out of this machine are nothing but messages of hope.

Subtly, Denis reminds us of the power of the media in times of global crisis. She refrains from saying if this influence is positive or detrimental and instead chooses just to let us see and then make our own conclusions.

This is cinema of the highest form: the one that refuses to dilute and sugarcoat its ideas but resorts to aesthetic precision in order to convey the fact that art hasn't lost its ability take us to a higher echelon.

Undertow ***½

Director: Javier Fuentes-León

Cast: Cristian Mercado, Manolo Cardona, Tatiana Astengo

Recent films that feature homosexual characters usually rely on their sexual orientation to weave tales about morality, "finding yourself" and more often than not, seem determined to impose a set of utopic values appropriate for our liberal era.

The truth however is; that homosexuality isn't as accepted as artists pretend they like to think. Even when they find universality in gay stories, when audiences go home from the theater, they will still think they saw a "gay movie".

This is why Undertow is such a refreshing, if unapologetically heartbreaking, realistic take on the stigma society imposes on people who are different.

Set in a small Peruvian fishing town, the film centers on the life of Miguel (Mercado), a regular fisherman who spends the day out at sea, heads back into town to drink with the guys and has a pregnant wife (Astengo) at home.

The difference is he's also having an affair with Santiago (Cardona), a rich photographer who's ostracized in the village because of his artistic tendencies, his foreignness and his sexual orientation.
The film first seems like it will follow a familiar path: how long can the men keep their secret? Yet there's a twist halfway through the running time that takes this from being a predictably preachy account, into a metaphysical exploration of what constitutes love.

On his screen debut, director Fuentes-León comes up with a sensitive story that richly embeds South America's own magical realism with a larger subject.
Since the film is about two men having a love affair, it's silly to think that the "gay factor" won't come into the equation. So what Fuentes-León does is even more impressive; he delivers their story with such a matter-of-fact-ness, that the audience has no time to ask themselves the typical questions.

When the movie begins they are together; we never know how it came to happen (no ridiculous or awkward "first kiss" scenes) which makes accepting it much less of a struggle and more of a fact.
In this way the film, perhaps out of self convenience, saves itself scenes where we'd seen Santiago become a tempter, or Miguel struggle with his macho feelings before giving in. Their affair, in fact, seems completely natural and even logical.

Miguel gets out of Santiago everything he can't have in the village: smart conversation, artistic flairs and perhaps even a less conservative take on sex.
We learn that Santiago conversely, gets innocent love back from Miguel, the one he seems to have never found in the big city.
This is why, before being anything else, Undertow is a poetic love story, and as the middle act twist takes its toll on the characters, we see it turn into a beautiful exploration of not only love, but gender politics and even the nature of memories.
Mercado gives a tender performance that takes us through the motions of acceptance with a delicate violence. His scenes with Santiago are joyous. Watch how instead of succumbing to clichés about the way gay men act together, the film just lets them be.
Because Miguel is from a small town he isn't aware of the preconceptions that come with being gay, he's not aware of the labels (this is represented beautifully in a further scene where his wife sees him watching a soap opera, takes the remote from him and puts on a soccer match).

Therefore, his idea of fun with Santiago is mostly his idea of fun with his friends: they drink until they pass out, play games, talk about their families but they also have sex.
As Santiago asks of Miguel to commit to him (he's willing to take whatever he offers) we see Mercado infuse his character with sadness and even denial.
How can he leave his wife to have a life with a man?

Cardona equally turns out a beautifully complex performance, more astonishing because in a way he becomes a symbol.
With his character, Fuentes-León goes beyond exploring homosexuality in Latin America, in fact it's as if he didn't even care about this matter.
Instead he focuses on seeing how people who have to live under taboo find ways to grasp onto their love in whatever way possible.
It's terribly heartbreaking, but this allows the movie to remain within a realistic universe which, then paired with the film's magic realistic sensibilities, creates a truly powerful emotional punch.
Undertow sadly can't overcome some of the expected turns one would expect from a film about forbidden love (mainly, when will the people find out?) but when it happens, it uncovers new layers that open up the film's overall impact.
Mainly here, it deals with unique cultural practices and asks itself what can be considered as sin in Catholicism.

Does Santiago stand a chance in, literal, hell, because of his sexual orientation? Is Miguel more of a sinner because of his affair or the person he's having it with?
These questions torment the characters and allow the director to play with the supernatural, in a way that the entire film becomes a melancholic attempt to capture the way in which love keeps on living even when the person you loved isn't there anymore.

The amount of sadness and heartbreak contained in each of the film's scenes might prove stronger than anything that can be made about the nature of the love we're being shown.

Fuentes-León leads, but never manipulates, us towards a catharsis that might as well remind audiences of times when they felt the same.

The film sometimes falls into seemingly facile twists (a candle's story might make some roll their eyes) but overall remains grounded in a reality that hurts and the memories which might become the only salvation.

Catfish ***½

Director: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman

Boy meets underage girl, underage girl has a sister, boy falls for sister, boy loses girl, girl has bizarre secret (all of it happens through Facebook). That pretty much sums up the plot of Catfish; a creepy documentary that explores love in the times of social networks and the strange line that divides truth and fiction.
The film centers on the love life of Nev Schulman, a New York based video artist, who meets a fan of his work through the internet. Said fan is Abby, a little girl who also happens to be a child prodigy, making art that sells for thousands in her native town of Ishpeming, Michigan.

Abby begins sharing her work with Nev and soon he's friends with her entire family, including her mother Angela and oldest sister Megan.

Because Abby is too young to be in touch with a grownup, her mother and sister take over her conversations with Nev. Soon the young man discovers that Megan is a talented songwriter. They begin flirting, then sexting and before soon they're calling each other "babe". Then something happens and Nev (along with filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost) decides to go to the core of the situation.
The young filmmakers do a superb job of editing their footage in such a way, that the story becomes a Hitchcockian psycho-sexual mystery (minus the preposterousness of those Shia LaBeouf movies which attempted to evoke the master).
In Catfish what we get instead is a disturbing, often heartbreaking, examination of how people strive to find connections in a world that makes them believe distance is only an illusion.
More than the eventual plot twist which unchains a series of shaking revelations, we wonder why is Nev so willing to believe in love from afar?
It's "easier" to understand Megan's plea; living in a distant town she might not have had the opportunity to bond with people who light that spark in her, yet Nev, an artist living in New York City finds himself in the same predicament.

This isn't a cautionary tale about the perils of social networks, this is a tale about taking risks to find love and as such it transcends the barriers of technology.

Short Takes: "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" and "Another Year".

The word is thrown around lightly nowadays but few people in the entertainment industry can be considered "survivors". Joan Rivers would be one of these people and as this clever documentary shows us, she's not just the loud mouthed, plastic surgery freak who disses red carpet dresses...she's the loud mouthed, plastic surgery freak who has survived forty years in the business and is still around.

A multi-talented performer, Rivers confesses she's only happy when she's onstage after she had revealed previously she never really wanted to do comedy and it's this kind of revelation which makes the movie such a refreshing entertainment.

As with any so called non fiction film you are left wondering what's "real" and what's staged yet the truth is that regardless of this issue, the film is superb entertainment. It makes you laugh, can move you to tears and sometimes even borders on something similar to enlightenment.

Fans of Joan will probably be thrilled to see her during her most intimate moments, people who don't know about her will leave the theater exhilarated and wanting to YouTube the hell out of her (even she does this in one scene showing her need to be up to date in technological advancements) and those who dislike her probably won't be converted but as a story about growing old this documentary can't hide its wisdom, even if it's usually covered in glitter.

After the strangely optimistic Happy-Go-Lucky it would've been easy to assume that Mike Leigh's next movie would possess the same sort of joie de vivre he seemed to have just discovered; however Another Year is instead an elegiac look at coming to terms with the deep dissatisfaction and regrets some might face as they become old.

The film, which is divided into four chapters (one for each season) shows us with situations peripheral to Tom (Broadbent) and Gerri (Sheen), a married couple who have to deal with their friends, their son (Maltman) and themselves.

The film consists of vignettes where we see these people interact and we begin to get to know them in a way. The movie is one of those where "nothing happens" and it becomes more of an intimate character study as we see how people around Tom and Gerry seem to be unhappy, while they appear to be rather content with their lives. We often see these people in private situations yet Leigh allows us to feel invited, his technical work is never intrusive.

Sheen and Broadbent both share very sweet personalities that make it easy for us to understand why the people around them, and the movie, have chosen them as a sort of moral center.

Perhaps the most interesting character around them is their friend Mary (Manville), an insecure divorced woman who fears aging without a partner.

Several scenes concentrate on Mary and her restless appeals to find someone to be with. Whether it's with Tom and Gerri or their son Joe, Mary seems terrified of being left on her own. She is played with fearlessness by Manville who doesn't seem to mind how obnoxious and pathetic Mary can become. Several scenes have her portraying some of the worst things about humans, yet Manville is so committed to her character and so devoid of any vanity that you can't help but feel, or at least try to feel for Mary.

Her last scene is a thing of heartbreaking beauty and makes everything that preceded it shine under a different light. Leigh's ability to take us from one emotion to another and in the process transform his movie from depressing to poignant, make this movie a truly bittersweet experience.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work ***

Another Year ***

Somewhere ***½

Director: Sofia Coppola

Cast: Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning

Chris Pontius, Michelle Monaghan, Simona Ventura

The Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood has become an institution that houses legend that range from the tragic (John Belushi's death), the iconic (James Dean auditioned for Rebel Without a Cause there...) and the purely Hollywood-esque (in the best Holly Golightly tradition, Keanu Reeves lived there for years until he was ready to buy a house).

It makes sense then, that Sofia Coppola decided to use this setting for her delicate portrayal of an actor (Dorff) trying to make sense of what his life has become.

The Chateau Marmont arguably represents more than just Hollywood, it also embodies Coppola's rich history within this industry. Writers are always told to write about what they know and Coppola has always been a master of extracting seemingly trivial details from her own experience and molding them into something that recalls universality.

On the surface then, the film captures a slice of the life of movie star Johnny Marco during a few days during which we see him attend press junkets, engage in casual sex, travel to Italy for an awards show and spend time with his daughter Cleo (Fanning).

It's this surface that always makes Coppola's films seem like the work of a spoiled teenager with dreams of filmmaking, but those willing to be seduced by her presentation of a world that's completely external to them, are usually rewarded with melancholy essays that deal with the inherent humanity that can be found in extreme separation.

Where Lost in Translation was a film about finding each other, Somewhere explores what happens when people begin to isolate themselves from the world.

As such, the film has undertones of Greek tragedies in which the heroes faced the wrath of the gods in order to fulfill a mission. The difference is that we don't see Johnny Marco battling Medusa (although the prominent gold statues during an Italian sequence could say otherwise) we see him battling the unnamed anger of someone who sends him insulting messages on his Blackberry.

We are therefore forced to look beyond the strokes of "poor little rich boy" the film suggests in order to empathize, or at least sympathize with someone that has it all but really has nothing.

The thing about Sofia Coppola's films is that they suffer from the very human tendency to oversimplify and the moment you try to encompass their meaning in words, this seems to evaporate in front of our eyes.

Somewhere consists of a series of precious little moments that lack any meaning when seen with judgmental eyes but whose meaning at the same time is so personal and unique that the whole movie could be taken as a recollection of memories pieced together randomly.

Coppola indeed seems to try hard to please her audience and find an ultimate meaning for everything she put together; therefore, the movie's finale might seem unsatisfying, when it could've been ethereal.

We could say then that the film fully depends on its audience's reaction to be something other than shadows projected on a screen. Yet, then again, isn't this what all movies are about?

Perhaps what makes Somewhere so difficult to connect to for some, is that the characters fails to ask their audience to love them. Failure in this terms is solely judged from a popular point of view, given that the characters themselves are so well constructed and thoroughly expressed that they never seem to be aware that they are being watched.

The issue of intrusion is also deal with in the movie. Johnny fears being followed by paparazzi and during a seemingly trivial moment he shows mild discomfort when he's sitting on a restaurant having a beer and a stranger goes "hey, Johnny!". We have to ask ourselves where can we draw the line when it comes to celebrities who arguably asked to be thrown into the public eye but are keenly trying to preserve whatever amounts to privacy.

Coppola handles this beautifully and despite the fact that we aren't technically invited to see Johnny's life, Dorff acts like there's no one there and gives in to moments of utter carelessness as when he engages in sex with a hotel guest.

Dorff, who has rarely shown this much emotion, makes a complex figure out of Johnny. What resonates the most about his character is his utter lack of self awareness. He plays him like someone who just "is". His indifference as he falls asleep watching two strippers perform in his room is hilarious and gains pure joy when sequences later the twin strippers return with a new routine for him involving rackets. The look in his face is one of pure childlike wonder and we understand then and there that this man has become someone who determines his life's worth by the moment he's living.

Dorff along with Coppola, make Johnny Marco a symbolic figure who's also quite real. Leave it to the director (along with the extraordinary DoP Harris Savides) to let us see Johnny's problems externally. Notice how he's rarely seen in open spaces, except for two crucial moments, otherwise he's inside a hotel room, inside his car driving around or walking through the hotel hallways which seem to get tighter with each scene.

This oppression is perhaps best represented with a not so subtle cast on his arm, which Johnny attributes to making his own stunts. In the life of an actor that means he got it just living his life.

Johnny rarely seems to be moving and Coppola often catches him in bed, drifting on a pool or being taken to places.

The director suggests that, more of a salvation, Cleo is who he once was. We see her as a free spirited child who despite having a famous father has not forgotten who she is. Her introduction in the film is done in a way that pretty much symbolizes their entire relationship.

In the previous scene one of the strippers comes up to Johnny's face and blows bubblegum (bubble is about to burst for him). Cut to the next scene and we see Cleo carefully signing her father's cast while he sleeps.

The camera moves towards Johnny and we get a glimpse of a tattoo in his other arm that reads "Cleo". She was there all the time.

This also represents what might be the central theme in Somewhere: the fear of being forgotten. Each of the characters seems to be drifting but trying hard to leave something behind. Whether it be Johnny's movies (which judging from the posters seem forgettable), Cleo's lovely ice skating routine or the whole idea of the Chateau Marmont (perhaps stories will be told about Johnny being there...) the characters seem to be scared about the possibility of not being remembered.

There's even a scene where they watch an episode of Friends dubbed in Italian but seem to rely on its nostalgia and feeling of home so much that they don't mind not understanding what's going on.

Yet this, like everything else in this fragile work, is out of the protagonists' hands. There is only so much they can control and eventually they too must face the fact that they might just be guests in this world.

Outside the Law *½

Director: Rachid Bouchareb

Cast: Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila

Bernard Blancan, Chafia Boudraa, Assaad Bouab

Outside the Law is a film that's actually rather restricted by cinematic conventions. As if trying to keep itself bounded by the notions of what makes a film politically correct, it deals with one of the darkest episodes of the twentieth century by filtering it through a sensibility that would please Hollywood's rulebook on how to bend history for dramatic purposes.

The story spans for almost two decades and takes us to French occupied Algeria where it concentrates on three brothers who, fed up with French colonialists, decide to take the law upon their hands.

We see how they are kicked out of their land as children and then join the FLN as grown men. The entire film then consists of vignettes that lead us to the only politically correct solution you can have in a movie about terrorists who are doing the "right thing" (yes, that finale...).

The problem with Outside the Law is that it does this without any real conviction, the whole movie seems to move aimlessly towards a resolution it might not agree with but still feels like the only one they could deliver without getting in trouble.

The film shows unmistakable technical mastery but everything is done with such stale, almost impersonal efficiency that you wonder if there is any actual urgency behind the making of this movie.

Each of the three brothers the story concentrates on, is given a determinate quality that identifies him without making him human.

The protagonist among them is perhaps Said (Debbouze) who has the most prominent scenes and is the most easily recognizable actor. He gets the duty of fulfilling the rebel hero/prodigal son in a movie that already spends most of its running time expressing how everyone already is providing stereotypical roles.

Outside the Law only breaks any convention when it bends history, turns it into dramatic putty and then proceeds to shape it at its will, however said will is what the film lacks.

Some moments seem to be saying that the film is criticizing the way France handled Algeria but then the movie turns its heroes into monsters.

This could be call impartiality and objectivity. Neither should be the qualities of a fiction movie but if they were, they should be clearly stated that way. What Bouchareb does here however is take a bit of everything that serves him to make a movie that condemns and later takes it back, analyzes and then stereotypes, over dramatizes and then tries to create docudrama...

For a movie that in theory had so much to say, it's sad that it never takes cue from the revolutionary spirit its heroes are supposed to have.

The Illusionist ***½

Director: Sylvain Chomet

Jacques Tati had a cunning eye for finding humanity through the use of complicated setpieces and quietly heartbreaking humor. Whether he was at the beach, the city or on the highway, he had a way to make us laugh about the senselessness we allow to rule our lives.

When he died in 1982 he had been at work on a story about a magician who befriends a young woman and finds hope in a world where he's no longer needed.

Years later, the extraordinary Sylvain Chomet adapted this screenplay to bid adieu to Tati with The Illusionist.

Chomet, best known for his quirky work in The Triplets of Belleville, took Tati and literally turned him into the animated figure he played in his movies.

The main character here is Tatischeff, a French magician trying to find audiences to entertain as rock bands and pop artists take over the world.

In the opening scene we see him struggle with his hat-rabbit and the lack of an audience, who leave the theater once the musical group stops playing (the group is a wonderful hybrid of Elvis Presley and The Beatles). We understand that Tatischeff has become a second rate act.

Later when he loses his rabbit, a theater employer brings over a rat. Tatischeff explains to him that this particular rodent doesn't belong to him but Chomet has told us all we need to know about this man.

Few working directors have the lyrical economy of Chomet. With a mere strokes, and usually without dialog, he is able to encompass such a large array of emotions that it's no wonder he took onto this project.

Like Tati, and to a certain degree like Chaplin (who Tati arguably paid homage to), Chomet creates entire worlds in tiny episodes. The stylized work of the animators in The Illusionist have precious qualities that could border on caricature (which they technically are) but usually as seen as mature embodiments of more transcendental elements.

It's impossible not to see the smoky decadence of Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich in a chanteuse we only get a glimpse of and once we learn about the autobiographical nature of the film we are just left in awe of Tati's great intellect and heart.

We see how Tatischeff has to travel all over looking for audiences that will let themselves be enchanted by his tricks.

During one of these travels to a remote Scottish pub, he meets a young girl named Alice who becomes enthralled by what she considers to be real magic.

Alice becomes the magician's loyal follower and travels with him to Edinburgh where during the day, he presents her with lavish presents-by way of his magic-and at night tries to earn a living by doing "regular" jobs.

The sequences where he works as an advertising painter and a car parking guard are sensational and provide us with little gags that particularly recall Playtime.

Tatischeff is a combination of Tati himself and Mr. Hulot and through him the film talks to us in a subtle meta language that carefully leads us to ask ourselves where does the man end and the artist begins.

This is perhaps the central theme of the movie given that the screenplay was supposed to be an apology to one of Tati's estranged daughters.

Seeing the way in which Tatischeff tries hard to please Alice but finds himself unable to keep up the charade for too long speaks not only of Tati's real life or even of a father and daughter, it has something deeper to say about the magic of movies themselves.

Too often movies try hard to mimic reality and become projections of our world that seem all too real and identifiable.

The Illusionist however reminds us that movies are the ultimate illusion; as hard as they try they will always be shadows of a universe we only think we know. The movie then offers sequences where we see the process of movie making in miniature.

During one scene Alice stares out a window while outside an old lady has an accident with feathers which fly through the air creating the impression of snow. Alice rushes to light a fire to keep warm and only later realizes her mistake.

The truth is however that she fails to see that for a minute the phenomenon was real because she saw it. This leads us to yet another important part of film making which is taking into consideration the things the audience never sees. The behind the cameras process if you like, which we also see here in a hilarious moment when Alice fails to get water when she opens the faucet (take notice of how Chomet frames these moments using mirrors, windows or doors that recall movie screens).

This willing ignorance on our part makes us not gullible but naively enthralled by things that seem to have escaped from our wildest dreams.

However what happens when these illusions disappoint us? We see this in Tatischeff himself who comes to realize that, hard as he tries, there's only so much magic the world is willing to take.

The Illusionist is a heartbreaking work of art that deals with melancholy and the artistic process, yet pulls off the ultimate trick: through its nostalgic palette and carefully constructed characters it reminds us that magic is real for as long as we wish to believe in it.

Burlesque **

Director: Steven Antin

Cast: Cher, Christina Aguilera

Eric Dane, Cam Gigandet, Kristen Bell, Dianna Agron

Alan Cumming, Peter Gallagher, Stanley Tucci

If The Pussycat Dolls could sing and had been discovered by Cher, their story would look something like Burlesque.

The story in the film has been told a million times (and in much better ways) but here's the deal:

Ali (Aguilera) is a small town girl trying to make it in Los Angeles, who just happens to sing like Christina Aguilera.

Tess (Cher) is a club owner trying her best to save her club from a real estate mogul (Dane) who wants to buy it from her, of course the club's not doing well and the only thing that could save them would be a new star...

Things do go as you expect them to and the movie pretends it's not about how well they tell the story but about how it looks.

The musical numbers are done in a Bob Fosse-meets a Kylie Minogue concert way and as such are quite effective. There's lots of lights, lots of feathers, more hot girls than Tess could ever afford to keep on payroll and of course Aguilera squeezes those pipes like there's no tomorrow.

Yet the thing is that for all of its flash and glitter, the movie can't help but feel absolutely lacking. For instance the second Aguilera comes onscreen (which is immediately after the studio logos appear) we know the gal can sing (in fact she does a number by herself as soon as the opening credits appear).

So when the moment comes for Tess and the club people to realize she has a talent, the audience is way knowledgeable of this fact (not to mention that Aguilera isn't much of an actress and Ali really comes often looking as a poorly dressed version of the singer).

In between numbers we get glimpses of the characters' lives and Aguilera gets a love triangle (with the efficiently cute Gigandet and Dane), Tess gets rejected by banks and other characters fill stock roles with grace (would've been fantastic to see more of Kristen Bell's bitchy Nikki).

The movie is instantly forgettable but boy do we come out craving more Cher. Her appearances are quite limited and she does the best numbers in the movie but we just can't get enough of her attitude, her flawless skin and her stingy one-liners (her chemistry with Tucci who technically reprises his character from The Devil Wears Prada) is just fantastic.

But Burlesque will not please those who expect their films to make any sense and demand more than lights and heavy makeup to have a good time at the movies.

For those, a complimentary cocktail or two are a must before entering this club.

Blue Valentine ***

Director: Derek Cianfrance

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams

Mike Vogel, Faith Wadlyka, John Doman, Ben Shenkman

Blue Valentine is essentially a twee remake of Revolutionary Road, they both explore the courtships and eventual destructions of two marriages.

In this case it's Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Williams) who rushed into marriage after an intense love affair and eventually come to terms with the fact that they've become strangers to each other.

The film is edited so that we see the past and present at the same time. Through some ingenious cuts we see the intensity of their initial romance and the decay with which their marriage begins to crumble years later.

This technique, while aesthetically pleasing, provides the film with its major flaw, given that the audience immediately realizes that this was never going to lead to anywhere good.

Their romance is based on lies, youthful inexperience and a life altering twist that takes away some of the 70s-style realism director Cianfrance seems to be aiming for.

It doesn't take an expert to realize that their relationship was doomed from the moment they met, yet the film naively tries to surprise us and them, into discovering how bad things can go from one moment to another.

The editing therefore becomes like a way of torture and Cianfrance reveals a deep pessimism about the idea of love that we have learned from the movies.

His deconstruction of film romance is well intentioned but fails on the grounds that he eventually makes the plot feel absolutely redundant.

The film then is rescued by its two leading actors who give masterful performances. Williams infuses Cindy with a dislikability that few actresses would play with.

As a young adult we see her live joyfully and give in to the irresponsible delights of discovering love for the very first time. It's a pleasure to see Williams turn Cindy into someone who should know better but chooses to go for the fairy tale.

When we see the way she's turned out to be a few years later, Williams has aged in front of our eyes. Her joyful Cindy has become a bitter, resentful woman who is in so much pain that we can almost see it pour out of her skin.

Gosling first plays Dean like the Prince Charming every indie girl dreams of: he plays the ukulele, wears fantastic clothes and has an easy job that helps him pay the bills without compromising his artistic potential.

Later we see he has become a pathetic little creature who loves his wife so much that he's forgotten to love himself. Watching Gosling and Williams play off each other is a delight and their most dramatic scenes ache with a tender acidity that makes us ignore Cianfrance's intention to take this simple tale out of proportions.

Blue Valentine suffers because like its characters it feels like a jaded movie that should've known better. Williams and Gosling provide it with the bleeding heart it needs and resents.

Daft Punked.

Click here to read my review for Tron: Legacy.

Then come back and share your neon lit thoughts!

Short Takes: "Love and Other Drugs" and "Hereafter".

More than the "Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhall Naked Variety Show", this movie is a sadly overdone ode to complicated love. Sure, Anne and Jake are naked a lot and as good a marketing angle as that might've been, the truth is that they are remarkable not because of their bubble butts and perfect stomachs but because of the nakedness of their performances (corny to say it but true...).

Gyllenhaal plays womanizing Pfizer medical representative Jamie. Hathaway plays Maggie, the cynical, early onset Parkinson's disease, patient he falls for.

They try to make it all about sex but movie conventions have showed us that before soon they'll be entangled in some messy emotional issues.

When this happens the movie gives its lead actors a chance to shine, the rest however is a confused mess that makes it seem as if the editor and the director were on some weird emotion altering pill.

The film alternates between moods in such an uneven way that it's impossible for the filmmakers to say they were doing a cute postmodernist take on the drug experience through editing. The whole thing is jut muddled filmmaking.

It's nice then to see Gyllenhaal stretching his limited chops to explore a more aggressive character, someone unafraid to come off as a total jerk and win our hearts by the end (George Clooney would've played him in the 90's...).

And it obviously comes as no surprise that Anne Hathaway is all sorts of magnificent. The little things she gives Maggie are stunningly detailed without being show-offs. She could've played this woman with pity and gone over the top to deliver her message, however she does quite the opposite and slowly lets Maggie become who she is.

Watching Hathaway go from sexiness to raw pain is the one truly addictive thing about this movie.

Clint Eastwood has got to be one of the most overrated working directors, yet at the same time some of his films are so subtle and misunderstood that he seems to be slightly underrated.

Such is the case with Hereafter, a haunting romantic drama that fails to ignite the tragic passion The Bridges of Madison County did but is still able to steer off the preachy stubbornness of Changeling.

The script (written by Peter Morgan) seems to be getting its line from the Iñárritu school of "connecting random dots to achieve universal catharsis" and as such, we see how the lives of former psychic George (Damon), French tsunami survivor Marie (de France) and British boy Marcus (Frankie McLaren) are united by death and then brought together by the magic of the movies.

Eastwood however directs taking his cue from the school of Clint and turns the film into a meditative examination of life in times of chaos. Hereafter takes its time to make its point but it's never a slow movie. In fact Clint plays with the story so well that for a moment we doubt it's leading to the place where it eventually takes us to.

This makes it a curious experiment and the film often feels as moody as the characters are tragic. Damon gives a superbly restrained performance but the film perhaps belongs to the stunning de France. Her bittersweet portrayal of Marie is infused with a cruel tenderness that gives her such rich layers. Her story is often at risk of becoming the most convoluted and corny, yet she handles it with such class that you really don't care when the movie tries to turn her into a paperback romance heroine.

The ending of Hereafter might turn off some who feel Clint's gone senile, surrendered to love and just teased us for 130 minutes with the promise of turning on his darkness and delivering one of his intense takes on justice.

However those willing to look past the sensationalism the movie deals with, will be rewarded with a heartbreaking tale that tells us to stop worrying about what's to come when all we really have is today.

Love and Other Drugs **

Hereafter ***

The Social Network ****

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield

Armie Hammer, Rooney Mara, Max Minghella

Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones

It should be ironic to think that a movie that deals with the creation of Facebook never seems to be aiming for our "like"s. Yet that's just what David Fincher does in his transcendental The Social Network; a harsh film that deals with the way in which we search for humanity in a world that's constantly trying to rob us of it.

The plot centers on Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg), the Harvard undergrad who patented what came to be the largest social club on Earth. We see him struggle with his awkward social skills, his relentless need for approval and success, and eventually with the lawsuits he got from people claiming he'd robbed the idea from them.
As played by Eisenberg, Mark is a complicated, trying to be complex, guy who seems to be looking for acceptance while being driven by overpowering ambition. When we first meet him, he's practically insulting his girlfriend Erica (Mara) but he reacts in a way that we understand he means to do no harm. His defense mechanism of using bitterness, sarcasm and asshole-ness have become his modus operandi.

When he's approached by the Winklevoss twins (played brilliantly by Hammer) who want him to take part in their new project, Mark's faux condescending reaches a turning point: we see this man has chosen his identity and like the website he would create, has decided to create a facade of who he is.

Because regardless of how much people show on Facebook, the truth is that it still remains a canvas where we paint our lives the way we want others to see them. Regardless of the nature of the contents, everything that's on Facebook is there because we know people will see it and more than that, we want people to see it.

Therefore Eisenberg's immersion into Zuckerberg is not as much an impersonation as it's an embodiment of a spirit. Not to say that he makes Mark just a symbol, because he infuses him with painful human traits, but he seems to be aiming more towards understanding what would drive someone to do the things Zuckerberg allegedly did; instead of focusing on representing the way in which he comes off in public.

This dialectic between what we are and what we show might be the center of the film. One that's already a strange beast for what it is on a technical level.

On one side we have Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, which recalls the fast paced exchanges of classics like His Girl Friday and anything Woody Allen has done. Despite the extreme quotability of the dialogs, the painfully funny jokes that Sorkin inserts in the most unexpected moments and the overall "movie" feeling of the way in which he constructs these characters, at the end of the film they are essentially human and real.

This, in combination with the supreme cast, make for an odd, but never awkward, pairing of clever wording and natural representation. Each character and each scene in the film have been structured in such a classic way that we understand what some people mean when they said that "they don't make them like they used to". The Social Network has the kind of screenplay that defies categorization: it can make you laugh, gasp and jump in excitement, yet with all of its wit and shattering sarcasm it's also the kind of movie that will break your heart.

When the film ends we might not understand more about the characters and the creation of Facebook (we certainly don't like or identify with most of what we've seen) but this is a movie where you leave the theater and have the impression that the characters' lives continued after the credits started rolling.

This isn't owed to the obvious fact that all of these people are still alive but the story is told with such urgency that it just can not be bound by celluloid.

This energy is owed to David Fincher, the maverick genius who has specialized in pushing the boundaries of what people are comfortable watching onscreen. His ability to extract cheap sentiment from even the most seemingly manipulative screenplay might be compared by some to extracting someone's soul.

Yet the truth is that Fincher is no demonic exorcist, in fact he's an avid student of what makes the soul what it is. He fools us by doing this, not in the way Hollywood has used us to (i.e. using melodrama and extreme manipulation) but by doing it in an almost procedural way. Fincher dissects everything until getting to the heart of it.

It's even more surprising that he grabs onto the very structure of Facebook to create his film. It might take several screenings to realize that The Social Network isn't very different from the site it discusses so much. Like Facebook we perceive mostly walls in which the characters express themselves.

We see Zuckerberg's obnoxious nerdiness, the Winklevoss' studly All-American poses and Eduardo Saverin's (Garfield) inherent goodness. Yet taking a deeper look at what lies beneath their facades, what they keep "private" so to speak, they become completely different beings.

Like Facebook, the film is selfcontained on an ever changing canvas that varies on mood, feeling and even state of sobriety.

Because of this, the site's creation during the film becomes less "geek talk" and more encoded language for these people's true identities. There is not much difference between the societal circles in Network and say the constricted, almost baroque stylistic choices of Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence.

Perhaps what Fincher is pointing to all along, is that despite the migration from traditional values to virtual ones, we're still essentially the same people, looking for the same things.

Our pursuit of happiness hasn't changed, what's changed is the way in which we conceal it. Whether we create corporations to get over the one that got away, or sink in eternal self pity and tragedy, The Social Network makes a case for what keeps on being our collective innermost fear: the curse of lifelong solitude.

Fair Game ***

Director: Doug Liman

Cast: Naomi Watts

Sean Penn

Sam Shepard, Ty Burrell, Noah Emmerich

Bruce McGill, Brooke Smith

Perhaps casting Sean Penn as former US diplomat Joseph Wilson isn't the most subtle way of expressing your film's liberal agenda. Not only is the actor one of the most politically outspoken celebrities in the world, he also has become a universal symbol for portraying tragic heroes who more often than not are screwed by the system they're trying to change.

What continues being remarkable about Penn though is the way in which he makes each of these characters completely his own.

As Wilson, he's the epitome of suburban discontent. When we see him take on each of his dinner parties as if he was taking part in a huge political debate we understand this is a man who has fully assumed the idea that democracy begins with each of us.

It's even a more pleasant surprise when we see him become "human" when he's with his wife Valerie Plamer (Watts). She's a CIA agent who spends half her time traveling around the world organizing top secret missions for the government.

When the Iraq war breaks and Wilson makes it known that after investigating abroad, no evidence of actual weapons of mass destruction were found (which instantly might remind you of Penn's 2004 Oscar acceptance speech), his wife is outed by government officials and their life becomes a harsh "he said they said" game as they face the fact that they have been betrayed by the very system they were trying to protect.

This turns Fair Game into a strange hybrid movie that's one part thriller, two parts domestic drama and a lot of political outrage. In a time when films choose to be so blatantly subtle or encode everything through alien, monster or fantastic metaphors, it's actually refreshing to see a movie that expresses its deep dissatisfaction with the state of the world.

Watts gives yet another electrifying performance, making Valerie a woman who has to choose where her loyalties stand under the eye of the press, the government and family.

Few performers would be able to expose themselves so much without recurring to cheap trickery and mannerisms. Watching the actress as Valerie is watching a testament for the way in which films have always been the most powerful medium of ideas.

Short Takes: Les amours imaginaires, Ondine

Based on his first two films you can tell that Xavier Dolan was the kind of guy who kept a journal in which he wrote about his first kiss next to a haiku about the Monet exhibit he'd just attended. His films express exactly the same thing and as an actor/writer/director he comes off looking as one of the following: a hipster wunderkind or a pretentious artsy douchebag.

Regardless of your personal opinion of the man working on all levels of the film, what's true is that Dolan has quite impeccable taste and this can be seen in the way he pays tribute (or steals from) Godard, Wong Kar Wai and Pasolini among other cinema greats.

What might appeal to so many about his work is that in a way he brings these arts down to the angsty teenager masses, for what is Les amours imaginaires if not an attempt to express, or perhaps conceal, his inner demons filtered through the higher arts.

The plot of the movie is nothing if not inconsequential (two best friends fall for the same guy) and while sometimes you can see the director trying too hard to make a big deal out of some things (like his homosexuality) the truth is that the film is expressed beautifully through the eyes of someone who's still growing up; if everything in the film feels like a tiny drama taken out of proportions it's precisely because it's what it is! This is a film for all the drama queens in the world who also happen to have a taste for Asian cinema and the French nouvelle vague.

As if trying to recreate the strange lyrical romanticism he achieved with The Crying Game, Neil Jordan tackles on something more mythological in Ondine: a tale of a fisherman named Syracuse (Farrell) who catches a mysterious young woman (Bachleda) with his fishing net.

Romance ensues as we begin to know who the enigmatic Ondine actually is. Farrell works his underrated sensitivity to the most and he seems smitten by Ondine, but the leading lady lacks the charm to trap us as well. The lovely surroundings give the film an antique quality but Jordan's last act twist, in which he tries to have his fairy tale cake and eat it too, makes for a fishy finale.

Les amours imaginaires ***

Ondine **

The King's Speech *½

Director: Tom Hooper

Cast: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter

Guy Pearce, Eve Best, Michael Gambon, Timothy Spall

Jennifer Ehle, Claire Bloom, Derek Jacobi

It seems that for as long as there have been movies, that's how long their need to convince us they're just like us, has existed.

Why have most movies lost the need to revel in their own cinematic-ness? Why such a need to make us identify with them?

If you're looking for answers to those questions you might as well stay away from The King's Speech, a film so secure about its heart-tugging contrived maneuvers, that it dares to pretend it's a story about the every man when in fact it's a piece of ideological brainwash that reinforces the notion that the people watching it are precisely the exact opposite of what they're watching onscreen.

The film basically deals with King George VI's struggle with stuttering. We see him shame his father (Gambon), be bullied by his brother (Pearce), be nurtured by his wife (Carter) and eventually be cured by magical Australian Lionel Logue (Rush) before delivering the speech that, according to the movie, mattered more during WWII than the tons of lives lost afterwards.
The film is handsomely made but it's slightly offensive to think that more thought was put on the details in Helena Bonham Carter's hats, than in the way the film relishes in its somewhat fascist ideology.

With each new scene we see how more and more it's buying its own love for royalty and its seemingly "human" approach (awww it's tiny Queen Elizabeth!) is nothing more than a reaffirmation for the film's condescending look at the world that surrounds it.
As Hooper and company fail to find anything to question about the characters, these become puppets at the command of a modern fairy tale that pretends to exalt humanity when all it does is trivialize war in the face of royal adversity.

Sure, the king's achievement was notable and a triumph on its own, and sure, the fact that the people around him congratulate him on his success and seem to forget about the larger reality outside Buckingham Palace is quite normal, what's baffling is that the film fails to question these things.

It comes as no surprise that the film's best performance and its biggest asset comes in the shape of Eve Best as crown wrecker socialite Wallis Simpson; it's through her that we get the only glimpse of seeing what lied beyond the crown, beyond the obligations and especially beyond the facade.

If it wasn't for her we'd be stuck with a bunch of people who use their status as means to demean other- when Queen Elizabeth pokes fun at commoners who feel surprised to meet her, it's not really cute, it's disturbing- and as much as the film tries to make Lionel and the King achieve some sort of Becket like synergy, not such relationship is truly ever formed.

We are presented with a portrait of a group of gorgeously lit saints whose own personal troubles amounted to more drama than the Blitz and while some might get a kick out of watching the intimate lives of royals, their lives here are so restrained by public relations that this doesn't even serve as royalty porn, its purpose was never to allow us into their lives but to perpetuate the sort of ideology that can pass patronizing as back patting.

For a film that deals so much with communication, it's a shame that The King's Speech muffles the audience's voice so much.

Just a Hairy Note:

Head over to The Costa Rican News and read my review for Tangled.

Then come back here and comment!

Never Let Me Go ***½

Director: Mark Romanek

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley

Andrea Riseborough, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling

Never Let Me Go begins with a title card that reveals we're about to take a trip to a past that never existed. One where human beings had finally found a way to cure disease and life expectancy had grown to 100 years.

This past also meant a different route had been taken and some had obviously suffered; however, we almost immediately understand that this isn't an exploration of the ethical rules and alternate history that shaped this events but merely a snapshot of a few lives trapped in it.

The scene then changes to Hailsham school, a seemingly idyllic boarding school where quite simply, clones were raised to donate organs during their adulthood.

Twenty-nine year old Kathy (Mulligan) narrates her own story, first within the confines of Hailsham and later in the "outer world". We see how as a child (played seamlessly by Isobel Meikle-Small) she develops a crush on the introverted Tommy (Charlie Rowe) and how, after they learn about the nature of their existence (in a perfect scene with a devastating Hawkes), their lives only seem to take a minor twist, as Kathy's friend Ruth (Knightley) begins a romantic relationship with Tommy.

Why the plot focuses more on the friends and not the secret they've just learned about their fates is one of the many things that make this such an enigmatically, beautiful piece.
Director Mark Romanek shoots Alex Garland's screenplay (based on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel) with the utmost trust in that there is an entire universe contained in what we are not seeing.
The matter of fact-ness with which these young people embrace the source of their existence is so unromantic that we are forced to wonder if we shouldn't in fact envy them, for they have already solved dilemmas that have plagued human kind since its start?
Where are we going? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Because of Romanek's precise hand and elegant formalism we see the characters' reactions as something that just couldn't have been any other way. These people have not been raised in the same way the rest of society was.

This makes it absolutely fascinating to watch as they try to fit in the world they only know through horror stories and eventually through duty. The cast does a terrific job in creating all these subtleties that don't entirely give them away but help establish the fact that they aren't as the others.
Knightley for example, seems to always hesitate before she does something. This hesitation is minimal and the actress disguises it beautifully giving us just enough. The plot may sometimes try to turn her into a villainous creature, or an antagonist to be more precise but because of the actress' committal to the role we see that this is just her nature.

Same with Garfield, whose contained performance doesn't really scream "romantic lead" but his quiet grace makes for something irresistible in the context.

In one of their best scenes together we see Tommy and Ruth have sex, as she acts like someone she must've seen on a movie, he covers his face unsure as to how he should be acting.
It's strange and somewhat off-putting that the filmmakers never really try to make us "understand" what's going on. We get a grasp that there's an entire hierarchy at work and that there must be harrowing stories to be told about these clones, yet by choosing to concentrate on these three characters we are being made part of the society that's beyond Hailsham.

As Ruth, Kathy and Tommy begin to get entangled in their very own way of love and survival, and the mood becomes more quietly moving and not macabre, we realize that this isn't a film about clones, it's a metaphor about existence itself.

Therefore Ishiguro, Garland and Romanek have gotten away with telling us the story about our own existences and making us believe we're watching something completely external. Once we begin to think about this, we are moved to explore if there is anything really natural about the things around us.
Is love, for example, a game we invent just to keep ourselves entertained while we await our demise? Do we not too sometimes stop fighting against a fate we have determined has been written in stone for us?

The movie's themes are embodied beautifully by Carey Mulligan's performance. Through her simple performance we realize that the fact she accepts her fate with such resignation makes the film's events all the more heartbreaking.

And it's ironic that the film should even result moving when everything about it is so sterile and distant.

Then it clicks on us, nothing in the movie is heartfelt because how could it be? When a heart is something that can be so easily extracted from us at any time.