The Childhood of a Leader -hmmm, bit mixed on this one. You have to give real credit to the director, for a debut film the vision and ambition is really bold. Moreover, sometimes the vision does come off, there are some really powerful set pieces. The attention to detail is also very strong, the sets and costumes give a real atmosphere and even the credit sequences have been thought about the put together with intention. Most of the cast give good performances though I'm wasn't entirely convinced by Robert Pattinson, I especially liked seeing the the excellent Liam Cunningham in something.
However, despite all that I have to say I don't think it really worked. Firstly, the references and nods to fascism are just trite, and revel an ignorance of what fascisms was/is. Second, that bleeds through to the plot in general, it doesn't work as a political allegory but I also don't think it worked as a family drama. Individual scenes are powerful but the characters seem more like ciphers than real people and so I didn't feel any emotional connection to the events. Bit harsh to call it an interesting failure but it's good points are more for what it could have been rather than what it is.
Things to Come - Mia Hanson-Løve's new film, starring Isabelle Huppert as a philosophy lecturer dealing with a number of difficulties in her personal life - divorce from her husband, an ageing mother, her job. My main problem with it was that the central character is pretty much the sort of Macron loving, second home owning, liberal 'intellectual' wanker that I want to bury an icepick in.
For example, there's a scene where students are trying to stage a college strike, Huppert's charater walks right though the "picket" and takes other students across, then in classical liberal arrogance the film/character makes the classical liberal assumption/implication that her actions weren't political, she just wanted to teach! It was the strikers that were political. So my sympathy for the character wasn't really there anyway, but even the events she has to deal with are really pretty benign. Ok, so her husband leaves her (after ~20 years of marriage) for another woman but she doesn't have to move out of her, extremely nice, apartment. Her mother has dementia but she can afford a carer to visit and then to send her to a private nursing home. She loses a book contract but she still has a very high paid job.
Berlin Syndrome - Australian film by Cate Shortland (Somersault, Lore) set in Germany about an Australian traveller, Clare (played by Teresa Palmer) who meets and has a two-night stand with a local, Andi, only to find he's locked her into his apartment won't let her leave. It's got that same washed out look and feel that Shortlands previous films have. It's a drama rather than a horror film, though there are a couple of (pretty cliched) horror set pieces, that it makes use of.
The first two thirds of the film are the best, with the set up done well and good performances from the actors. It loses it way at bit towards the end, and final 5-10 minutes are very stupid and make no sense.
Strangely, there's another 'woman kidnapped and locked up' Australian film released in a few week times, Hounds of Love, which has been getting very good reviews.
