Matching Curtains

Two Lovers

Notable not only for yet another magnetic performance from Joaquin Phoenix, who manages to channel both a latter day Brando and De Niro whilst maintaining a screen presence distinctly his own, Two Lovers also achieves the rare feat of giving the interminably dull Gwyneth Paltrow a role in which she is both interesting and sexy. Phoenix plays Leonard Kraditor, the son of first generation immigrant Russian Jews who live in working class Brooklyn and manage a dry cleaning store. After a period of severe depression and a suicide attempt, he is living with his parents at the age of thirty-something. His worried parents set him up with Sandra, the daughter of some business associates who is both beautiful and sensitive to his problems, with the added advantage of being the archetypal ‘Jewish princess’ they covet for him (Vinessa Shaw, making the best of a character whom many would portray as more anaemic). Although not as keen on the match as his parents, he embarks upon a gentle and potentially nurturing relationship with the straightforward and caring Sandra. However, upon meeting his parent’s slinky new neighbour Michelle (Paltrow), a fucked up WASPy type saddled with a drug problem, emotional neediness and a relationship with a much older married man, his obsession with her unravels in scenes highly evocative of Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

 

The reference to Hitchcock isn’t just empty allusion for the benefit of movie geeks – the movie inherits the tense, erotic atmosphere of Hitchcock’s oevre, with a voyeristic streak just the right side of sleazy (if, at the same time, opening up a few minor plot holes). As director Gray closes in on his character’s emotional frailties, creating as much tension as in his previous, less intimate outing with Phoenix, We Own the Night, there is something of the thriller in this sensual tale of love and obsession. Tragedy looks inevitable as Leonard, still involved with Sandra, becomes increasingly infatuated with the sexy and exciting Michelle, who is as damaged as he is and clings to him to prop up her own diminishing self esteem rather than out of a deeply felt attraction. OK, this doesn’t present him or Michelle in a good light but it’s certainly a credible portrayal of vulnerable and desperate souls. Phoenix’s portrayal of Leonard is painful to observe. He seems to have regressed to adolescence, his body language that of an awkward teen and in almost absurd contrast to his sheer physical bulk. Isabella Rosselini and Moni Moshonov also give sensitive performances as the parents, even if Rosselini, a respected doyenne of cinema, looks as regal as her cinematic lineage suggests – perhaps unfortunate given what is supposed to be an unglamorous role.

 

There’s much to commend this movie, irrespective of its sensual pull: its presentation of immigrant communities is neither heavy-handed nor the narrative’s central focus– its characters just happen to be Jewish and whilst their faith informs their lifestyles, it is their emotions as lovers, sons or parents which define their characters (also true of the Grusinkys in We Own The Night). The same could be said of its handling of mental health issues. Leonard and Michelle are emotional train wrecks to be sure, but their problems are never revealed to the viewer in histrionics or longwinded speeches. Instead we read all this from looks, hesitation and movement; in Phoenix’s hunched posture and tongue-tied speech, or the mournfulness in Paltrow’s come to bed eyes. The cinematography is also embedded in emotional realism, depicting worlds which in themselves are anything but beautiful yet managing to elicit real emotional currency and momentum from them through evocative use of light and shade.

 

After the movie friends and I debated as to the realism of its ending, which after a great deal of suspense, sidesteps major tragedy whilst retaining its melancholic mood. To me, Leonard’s choice indicates a pragmatic acceptance of what it is he needs. There is no moment of epiphany for him – he is left with the woman who will allow him to survive, if not the one who inspires such consuming passion. It is a fact of life that some relationships are built upon a tacit acknowledgment that one person must love or give more than the other and it is here that the story’s tragedy remains:that of missed opportunity, or the inadvertent cruelties our emotional baggage cause us to inflict on those least deserving – or even what we must give up in order to protect ourselves. Leonard yearns to protect Michelle, but doesn’t have the emotional equipment to care for himself, let alone her. In Rosselini’s watchful gaze we see she knows this about her son, and the fear of him making the wrong choice and undermining his mental health is never far from her features. In light of this, his ending is in many ways a positive one; he could revert to the hopeless paths of the past, but he chooses to live and reaches some level of acceptance.

 

OK, I’ve made this sound pretty miserable I’m sure. It probably won’t surprise you then, to discover that it was based upon the Dostoyevsky short story ‘White Nights’. However, whilst you might not like or approve of the character’s actions, Two Lovers is a really intelligent, honest movie about love with knockout performances and a story that manages to avoid cliché. Anyone navigating the rocky terrain of relationships and lifestyle choices (and the often dissonant relationship between the two) will find something to relate to in this beautiful and original movie.

Morvern Callar by Alan Warner

After the density of John Updike’s prose I was relieved to turn to Alan Warner’s debut novel Morvern Callar, so named after its heroine and told from her perspective in what is indisputably a far more successful attempt by a male writer to enter the female psyche than Updike’s wretched efforts. Stylistically too, it was immediately a marked contrast, being so much leaner a read compared to Updike’s knarled – if poetic - verbosity. However like Rabbit, Run, Morvern Callar proved somewhat depressing; Morvern is a young woman who lives in a small, deprived port in mid-1990s Scotland and who works in a supermarket, spending her free time with various down and outs and getting wrecked. If the word chav had existed back then, it would no doubt sum some of the characters up well. The book opens with her boyfriend’s suicide and Morvern’s singular choice to hide his body and behave as if nothing had happened, telling friends he has merely gone away as she uses his cash to holiday and rave. As the story unfolds we are offered glimpses into why Morvern behaves in the way she does, even if we don’t necessarily see it as the most moral of choices. There’s a quote on the back of my copy of the book comparing the novel to Camus’s The Outsider and I’d have to agree that there’s much in this amoral, existential tale which resonates with Camus’ work.

I can’t say that reading this was especially gratifying but it was certainly different. Morvern herself is a memorable character; someone slightly off the rails who nevertheless refuses to apologise for who she is or lurch into self pity for what has been a pretty miserable start to life. She seems neither to belong in the murky world of the Mantrap (the port’s dodgy nightclub-cum-bakery) or her foster family – she’s looking for a more meaningful existence in her own unique way. Her thoughts and speech are presented to us starkly, offering an insight into her soul which prompts us to reflect on the contrariness of life as well as offering a subtly feminist critique of Morvern’s world (again, impressive that it’s a male writer who does this so well!). Although sparse, the text insidiously comes to demand a greater commitment from its reader than some more ‘psychological’ novels: this is not a book to be taken at face value. Warner’s gift is to show readers Morvern’s development and changes rather than explain them, and he handles dialect well to create distinct personalities for each of his characters, showing how each person’s behaviour can impact on Morvern without emotionally descriptive clutter.

The community Morvern is part of is a realistically presented group even if the events unfolding in her own life seem totally incredible: I could really hear the Scottish voices and see the desolate environment in which she lives. Warner creates a very precise mileu often by using the rawest of language, drawing out moments of unusual beauty in the most unexpected of places. The motives behind Morvern’s unconventional behaviour are only partially explained and when we discover the Spanish meaning of her surname, silence, it seems apt. Morvern is an enigma but a character who in spite of everything, wins our admiration for her spirit and tenacity. It’s credit to her characterisation that I could overlook the novel’s somewhat outrageous premise and whilst I’d be careful who I recommended this tale to, I’d finish by advising that it’s completely original and certainly hard to forget. I read Warner’s second novel The Sopranos when I was in my teens and getting to know Morvern has encouraged me to return to it – expect a review in the future.

Bat for Lashes - Daniel

I LOVE this band. Natasha Khan is amazing.

Life and Beth at the Oxford Playhouse

I must confess that before seeing this play I was a complete newcomer to Alan Ayckbourn. Sure, I knew he was a renowned playwright and theatre director, but his reputation is such that I’d always just assumed I must have seen something by him before. Alas, it was not the case. So when review tickets came my way, what else could I do?!

Life and Beth, Ayckbourn’s seventy-first(!) play, is a relatively recent project; a slight, whimsical study of an ordinary woman’s response to widowhood which is perhaps not quite what is expected …. Although it won’t change anyone’s world, it is, I must add, a rather entertaining production and for an Ayckbourn newbie like myself, probably a suitable introduction to his work. Rooted thoroughly in the mundanities of daily existence, the play nonetheless has a supernatural element, as the title’s pun hints. We meet middle-aged Beth (Liza Goddard) as she prepares for her first Christmas as a widow, joined by son Martin (Richard Stacey), his girlfriend Ella (Ruth Gibson), and boozy sister-in-law Connie (a scene stealing Eileen Battye). Her equanimity in the face of recent bereavement seems at first strange and then stoic, but when she receives a somewhat unwelcome visitation from husband Gordon’s ghost, all becomes clear. Performed to grating perfection (if that’s not too much of an oxymoron) by Adrian McLoughlin, who clearly revels in playing such an everyday monster, we soon discover that Gordon, a former health and safety manager, is precisely the kind of person you’d hate to spend half an hour sat next to on the bus let alone a lifetime with. His ghost’s hectoring of Beth sets up some very funny moments which suggest what their marriage was like without getting too solemn. Although Beth has come to realise how she has suffered as this pedantic bore’s wife over the years, she doesn’t seem subservient or meek; she has a feistiness which promises to be given free rein if only she can get rid of that pesky apparition.

Life and Beth is definitely not a tragedy or a conventional ghost story, but a comic, subtle reflection on everyday lives and relationships. Set entirely in Beth’s living room, the stage resembles what could be the suburban residence of any middle aged couple and is utilised cleverly to reveal Gordon’s ghost at key points in the story. There are no puffs of smoke here; the appearance of the spectre is as naturalistic as the dialogue. Highlights were Eileen Battye’s drunken table laying (honestly – it mightn’t sound much, but it really worked), Goddard’s droll delivery and Terence Booth’s local vicar David. Booth was great as the slightly jaded cleric who gets Connie’s pulse rating, managing to make an offer of prayer sound like a come on. The only thing which felt on less stable ground was the rather forced handling of Martin and Ella’s relationship. It was clear that Martin was supposed to be an insecure man desperately trying to emulate a father whom his mother would ironically rather forget, and certainly Stacey’s comic snorting and overeager posture reflected this well. What was less clear was how his apparently ineffectual character could possibly reduce Ella to such a hysterical wreck whilst they are offstage. It’s to Ruth Gibson’s credit that she won our sympathy without uttering a single word throughout the entire play; but the couple not only seemed badly paired, their body language at times suggested domestic abuse rather than increasing irritation which was surely not the point of the comedy. If their roles were to provide a contrast to and highlight Beth’s new freedom, it would seem to do the audience a disservice. We get to know Gordon after all! I won’t dwell on this though as the play was overall a pleasant way to spend an evening, infused as it is with deadpan, homely humour and gentle emotional tugs. Showing at the Playhouse until 21 March, I would recommend this, although given it’s duration many might balk at the price of admission. I suspect the play’s situational comedy and crowd pleasing central character would do rather well on TV and wouldn’t be at all surprised if the BBC commissioned an adaptation.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

As mentioned in my last blog, I recently acquainted myself with the work of John Updike. He's someone I've been meaning to get into for a while and his recent passing reminded me of the fact. As one of the 'great American writers', his stature has always somewhat intimidated me, but he was on my list of authors who must be read and I was determined to familiarize myself with him this year. So I grabbed myself a copy of the first in his Rabbit series, Rabbit, Run, and settled down to read it. This was at the height of my recent brush with antibiotic hell, so was maybe not the most cheering of novels to plump for, but be that as it may, I persevered with Updike's densely woven prose and can reveal that I feel, well, rather ambivalent about it.

Rabbit, Run is set in the late 1950s and is the story (for want of a better word) of Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, a former high school celebrity renown for his skill on the basketball court whom we meet as a married twenty-something regretting that his existence has become, in his words, 'second rate'. He leaves his alcoholic, pregnant wife Janice and young son Nelson for Ruth, a good time girl, before returning to them after his brief foray into another life proves too guilt-ridden to continue with and the pleas of local vicar John Eccles convince him to give his marriage another try. My first thought upon reading the book was how similar Updike's style was to Jack Kerouac's - there's a thickly poetic quality to his writing which after the cleanness of Richard Yates was initially tough going. That's not to say I didn't enjoy some of it though - Updike creates a tangible atmosphere and evokes a sense of place well. The industrial suburb of Mount Judge, Pennsylvania, is both comforting and claustrophobic for Rabbit and we sympathise with his conflict as he struggles to conform to family life and the mundanities of his existence as a salesman (so far, so far American Dream gone wrong). However Rabbit is not a character we can empathise with easily. He is, in short, a bit crap. His prevaricating between wife and mistress is cruel to them both and although he tries to do the right thing, he seems fundamentally incapable of committing to either woman and ends up hurting each of them. In particular, there is a horrifying scene towards the end of the book which I won't reveal here, but which is a shocking symbol of all that is wrong with the Angstroms' marriage - and indeed Janice's mental state. In an afterword written by Updike in my copy of the novel, he writes that he was trying to counter the celebration of personal freedom extolled by Kerouac to show how abandoning one's responsibilities impacts upon those around them, and through the flawed - realistic - character of Rabbit, he does this effectively. We might not like Rabbit, but he acts as many people do in real life and who's to say we have to like our literary (anti-) heroes?! It's not for us to judge Rabbit; his predicament is that of many people then and now, trapped in an existence he fell into, and it's impressive that Updike creates such a well formed protagonist. If we don't like him, it may well tell us something we don't want to know about the human condition, however extreme. I also liked the way actual historical events were covertly threaded through the narrative, helping to establish a sense of history and context for the characters' actions. We are all influenced by external events, however seemingly remote, and we meet Rabbit when America is on the brink of great social change. Apparently the rest of the Rabbit series continues to reference historical events and for readers of the day it must have felt as though they were growing up with Rabbit, which I imagine prompted a great difference in their response to him compared to that of modern readers.

For all that, what I definitely did not like was Updike's treatment of women. His descriptions of Janice are downright insulting; when he writes from her perspective he completely infantilises her and as for Ruth, she is described as nothing more than a sexual object, defined primarily by her physical attributes. When he tries to create an internal monologue for her, discussing her previous sexual experiences before Rabbit, he goes some way to atone for such chauvinistic presentations of women, but even this feels laboured and lacking in realism. I was also not a fan of the way he wrote about sex. Apparently the Literary Review awarded him the dubious honour of winning their Lifetime Achievement Award for bad sex writing and I can only jump on the bibliographic bandwagon and wholeheartedly agree with their decision. If you need evidence, take this description by way of proof: 'His sea of seed buckles, and sobs into a still channel'. Now I'm not asking for Lawrentian ecstacies every time I read about people making love (although surprisingly Updike claims to have been influenced by Lawrence), but purleease. This is quite possibly the bleakest description of a climax I've come across in some time. Great sibilance yes, but 'sobs'?! You take my point.

Rabbit Run was, I am sure, a very controversial novel in its day, publishing as it did shortly before the sexual revolution of the sixties, but I must confess that I found Updike's presentation of women deeply offensive - in contrast to Richard Yates, who for the most part at least stuck to presenting Revolutionary Road from Frank's perspective, the exploration of female psychology feels too pat to have any real integrity (compared to Yates' attempt at conveying April's thoughts). I can't help but wonder what Updike's wife at the time made of his female characters. I found it very hard to detach this distaste from my appreciation of the characterisation of Rabbit and the very human contradictions and flaws he embodies, which probably explains my ambiguous response to the novel as a whole. I respect its achievements and I'd certainly continue to read the series, but am wary of how Rabbit's women will go on to be handled - I suspect I will need to prepare myself if I do venture forward with Rabbit's progression through recent American history.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I seem to have been doing a lot of reading about disenchanted Americans and broken lives of late, which understandably has had the effect of leaving me rather maudlin. I feel the need to post a blog on the matter if only to cleanse myself of said feelings(!), so here we go ...

First up is Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road. You'll remember I reviewed the film and promised I'd get hold of the book - well, I kept my word. I enjoyed it so much I gave a friend a copy for her birthday. Hang on - I say enjoyed, that's not quite the right word given the book is possibly one of the most bitter treatments of relationships I've ever read (don't worry, I didn't just give said friend an utterly miserable tome to see in her birthday). We know the plot so I won't elaborate all over again, as the movie adaptation is pretty loyal to the source material and even lifts entire chunks of speech from the novel. RR is a cauterizing analysis of a failing relationship and everyday life which manages to be both of its time and yet endlessly relevant to today, with strong characters who feel immediately very real. Having read the book after seeing the movie, I was stunned to find how completely Yates' description of Frank could describe Mr DiCaprio:

'He was neat and solid, a few days less than thirty years old, with ... the kind of unemphatic good looks that an advertising photographer might use to portray the discerning consumer of well-made but inexpensive merchandise ... But for all its lack of structural distinction, his face did have an unusual mobility: it was able to suggest wholly different personalities with each flickering change of expression.'

How wonderfully this evokes DiCaprio's own mercurial features; he seems made for the role. He certainly had some great source material to work from, as the novel is told pretty much entirely from Frank's perspective. Where the book differs is in it's presentation of Frank and April, who are depicted as rather more bohemian than in the film, and about whom we're given more insight into their upbringing. Granted a movie can't convey everything a book can, but you'll remember that I felt where the film fell short was in provoking emotions from the audience. The book succeeds in this completely. The last time I felt so drained by a reading experience was after reading Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin, another incredibly depressing but well written book. Yates' style is at once economical and devastatingly astute; his description of Frank's working day will make any office worker cringe. We may not have the martinis at lunch and the typewriters have given way to Dell computers, but whoever works in an office 9-5 surely can't fail to empathise with this passage, in which Frank reflects on the daily grind:

'Over the years he had discovered slight sensory distinctions between it and all the others of the building; it was no more or less pleasant, but different for being 'his' floor. It was his bright, dry, daily ordeal, his personal measure of tedium. It had taught him new ways of spacing out the hours of the day - almost time to go down for coffee; almost time to go out for lunch; almost time to go home - and he had come to rely on the desolate wastes of time that lay between these pleasures as an invalid comes to rely on the certainty of recurring pain. It was part of him'.

Bleak huh? But I bet it strikes a note. My friends and I are all of a similar age to Frank and on discussing the book with those who've read it, have conceded somewhat bashfully that yes, we can all relate to the drudgery of routine and the shock it presents after the relative freedom of university. The struggle to reconcile youthful hopes with adult reality makes it all too easy to ally ourselves with Frank and April. Who can't relate to the desire to escape the hum drum but also the fear of doing just that? And then there's Frank and April's crumbling relationship. The rare sections of the book told from April's perspective offer psychological insight into how conflicting perceptions can spiral out of control, changing our responses to someone we once loved. The quiet ways in which two people who once felt excited by the other can slip into first hatred, then indifference, are powerfully evoked and have a vaguely feminist feel. Frank's immaturity and misguided opinions condemn him whilst we still seek to understand him, and the action April takes are an indictment of the position of women at the time.

How has Yates been ignored for so long?! As the Wheeler's shared dreams give way to resignation with their lot, metaphors of performance dominate the text and illustrate the fantasy of the American Dream. This has been done to death since Yates wrote RR, but at the time it must have been revolutionary (ahem) stuff. Yates offers us a critique of America in the midst of change. The Campbell's, a more blue collar version of the Wheelers, have kids who seem glued to the television in their lounge, a new gadget that was then such a novelty and now the bone of contention for so many, opening and closing worlds at the same time; the political winds are beginning to stir and the notion of the woman's place being in the home would soon fuel the feminist movement. In some ways the book reminds me of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, as the emancipated mood of the 1960s came too late for McEwan's characters just as it does for April, whose character symbolises the tragedy at the book's core (doubly so because she seems the stronger of the couple). Both books capture an unnamed restlessness, personally and socially. I guess throughout the sixties a book like RR felt old-fashioned and irrelevant, with so much in transition. But although Yates has slipped off the literary radar over the last 40 years or so, the themes of relationships and the constraints of adulthood are timeless and the writing is top class.

Other American authors like John Updike seem to have taken up the cause of the flawed and frustrated everyman, but as I will discuss in a future blog, in my opinion he benefited from timing and a more ambitious authorial strategy rather than a fundamentally better way of writing. Do read this book. It won't cheer you up, but it will astound you with its power.

We Own the Night - DVD review

After surprising everyone (including myself) with how much I enjoyed The Young Victoria, I atoned for my love of chocolate box Victoriana by watching We Own the Night yesterday. Set in the late 1980s in New York, the movie stars Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg as brothers Bobby and Joe respectively, sons of Robert Duvall's Police Chief Grusinsky. Conforming to traditional cinematic convention, the two are total opposites. Joe is a family man and an earnest cop following in his father's footsteps and, it has to be said, a bit of a jobsworth. Bobby is way more dissolute: he runs a nightclub, indulges in drugs and has a sexy senorita on his arm in the shapely form of Eva Mendes' Amada. The brother's relationship is strained, to say the least. Bobby has long abandoned his family name Grusinsky and adopted the more generic sounding Green, in reaction against his family. The set he hangs with subsequently haven't a clue that he is part of the community's policing dynasty and this, it seems, is as he likes it. Bobby's relationship with his father is similarly troubled, until a Russian mob running a huge cocaine operation start frequenting Bobby's club and make it known that they intend to take out the police to secure the operation's success. After they narrowly miss killing Joe and confide in Bobby that the chief - Bobby's father, don't forget - will be next, he decides to take action and defects to the other side, as it were, to save them. Without his father or brother knowing (they oppose wiring him), Bobby takes it on himself to go undercover for his family's policing colleagues and root out those who have threatened his family. What follows puts him and his family in grave danger ...

It's only at a midway point that the movie really starts to get into its stride - from the moment Bobby goes into hiding after his failed attempt at infiltrating the mob, it's hard to remember to breathe as danger closes in on him. Suspense is stretched taut across the second half of the movie as the mob close in on the Grusinskys, with the audience's vision often partially obscured from what is happening to key characters, disorienting us and making us work harder to establishwhat is going on. I was relieved by this shift as I was a bit embarrassed by the selfconscious '80s vibe director James Gray insisted upon at the start (although the heavy - if chronologically implausible - reliance on Blondie tracks for the soundtrack was greatly appreciated). I was also pleased to see a crime movie which told a story from the side of the police for a change - even if most of the movie's success can be attributed to Phoenix's unique grasp of character rather than any inherent sense of the story's originality. Phoenix always brings a sense of huntedness to his roles and fails to disappoint here - although marketed as a two header between him and Wahlberg, this is very much his movie. His performance is hard to tear your eyes from as he grapples with the implications of being the black sheep of the family, projecting both vulnerability and aggression. Goodness is much less interesting than nastiness or conflict, and it's not really Wahlberg's fault that he is less memorable than his co-star. Joe is a good man (I'm resisting the urge to add 'and thorough' - oh, there you go) but essentially rather dull, and it was to my chagrin that I found myself responding to him in much the same way as Bobby's girlfriend does to Bobby himself when he decides to join the police - with slight indifference. That's not to say that Bobby's choice makes him less interesting by the end; if anything it lends an extra layer of internal conflict to proceedings and gives a neat twist to what should be a redemptive closing scene. The brother's reunion comes at a great cost; a lesser actor may have treated the reunion as a resolution in itself, but Phoenix conveys Bobby's psychological turmoil through his sheer physical presence, granting the close a deeper complexity. 

If you decide to rent this movie, I implore you to stay with it - the first half is very slow and a bit dull if I'm honest. There are also a number of inconsistencies - the technology the police give Bobby when he acts as a mole is arguably way ahead of it's time, for instance. Eva Mendes is also wasted in a role which any pretty girl could have done passably well in, involving nothing but a lot of smouldering and a smattering of tantrums. This is a masculine movie for sure. Amada as the only central female character does nothing to offset this; she's a complete stereotype and nothing more than a vapid, shallow sexual object with no discernible personality to speak of. Feminists would have a field day with her presentation and rightly so. But there's much that makes the movie's failures worthwhile. Phoenix negotiates a character trying to be good with real dexterity and emotion; a task which is the direct opposite of gangster movies where we watch someone morally deteriorate as the story unfolds. He inhabits the role of Bobby in a tortured, Brando-esque fashion, his heavy presence trumping even Duvall's talents (when you consider Duvall worked with Brando in The Godfather, this is not an insignificant achievement). Bobby's sense of psychological confinement is maybe too obviously illustrated by the direction, which seems intent on repeating motifs around enclosed, narrow corridors to reinforce how hemmed in Bobby feels, but otherwise Gray does a competent enough job, creating a moody world built of shadows and dim lighting. For all its flaws, We Own the Night is a great vehicle for Joaquin Phoenix's formidable acting talents. Let's hope this beardo rapper nonsense is all just a stunt and that his intentions to quit performing prove to be falsehoods. We need this man on our screens. And not just because he's hot. In what could be a turgid story about filial loyalty and male notions of honour, Phoenix's performance makes a pedestrian movie something quite different indeed.

Stevie Wonder - Superstition (on Sesame Street!)

What did we do before iPods?! I've been revisiting my Stevie Wonder collection of late and as I pedalled along the cycle path to work this morning with his honeyed voice singing in my ear, the springlike sun beaming down on me and warming the winds, I felt - wait a minute, those of you who know me well - gloriously happy. OK, it lasted until I got to work, but that's not bad going for a Monday morning eh?! A longtime favourite of my mum's, he's always been there in my life but I'm currently experiencing a bit of a revived appreciation of Mr Wonder which is really rather lovely. The total pleasure he takes from performing is so tangible you'd be utterly soulless not to take a little nugget of joy away with you after listening.

Superstition's one of my absolute favourites, so when I saw this Sesame Street performance I couldn't resist sharing it with you all. Check out that kid on the top step - now he really knows how to rock the party.

The Young Victoria

I should first set my stall out before diving into a review of this movie. I am neither a royalist nor indeed a fan of costume dramas, so by rights I should have avoided The Young Victoria like the plague. However the presence of Emily Blunt, who stole every scene from Anne Hathaway's drippy Andy in The Devil Wears Prada, encouraged me to sweep aside any misgivings and give this movie a try. And I am very glad I did.

Blunt plays our longest reigning monarch to date in a movie which chronicles her early years, from a cosseted childhood as heir to throne to her coronation and marriage to her beloved Prince Albert. We witness Victoria endure the scheming of her mother the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson, most definitely no longer Queenie) and her mother's private secretary (a devilish Mark Strong, who seems to be forging a strong Hollywood career bytaking on such characters), both of whom want her to establish a Regency on the grounds that she's too young to succeed her uncle William IV, played to addled perfection by Jim Broadbent; the scurrilous whispers around her relationship with her favourite Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister at the time; and a number of assassination attempts. Already the parallels to Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth movies are hard to ignore. However, this historical drama prefers to dwell on the period in miniature with little in the way of high drama, preferring instead to focus on the romance unfolding between Victoria and Albert rather than any wider historical events. It's straightforward, literal interpretation of history is perhaps down to the presence of Sarah Ferguson, who, bizarrely, shares producer credits with no less than Martin Scorsese (trivia fans look out for a cameo from Princess Beatrice as a lady in waiting in one of the movie's opening shots).

Whatever, the movie is absolutely charming and rather moving it's own way. Blunt is very well cast as Victoria; her profile lends itself well to the period and she injects the character with just the right balance of spunk and girlishness to make her likeable without being irritating or sickly - something another young actress who springs to mind may not have been able to pull off. Yes, I do mean Kiera Knightley, whose brand of plucky posh I really can't stomach, so I'm glad the casting directors saw further than the most lucrative choice and plumped for Blunt in the title role. This leads me nicely into appraising Knightley's current squeeze and Blunt's co-star Rupert Friend, who plays Prince Albert (snigger, sorry) with a quiet confidence and intelligence that captivates us just as immediately as the real prince must have Victoria: chafing at the bit to be treated as more than just her consort, his influence on her and their growing mutual respect is touching to follow. As a somewhat shallow aside, Friend is also rather notable for outprettying Blunt, who hasn't exactly done too badly for herself in the looks department either. He looks delicious - even with the dodgy tache. Together, the pair create sparks which don't need gratuitous love scenes or overwrought speeches to underscore their affection and are totally believable as young lovers, even if most of their courtship is epistolary or under the watchful eyes of courtiers. Ooh repressed passions. How very Victorian. I think there's definitely an argument for renaming the movie Victoria and Albert on the basis of their chemistry, which is sensual and fresh and devoid of the tragedy we come to expect from most dramas about royal romances. The rest of the cast don't do badly either, and by 'the rest' I mean principally the fantastic Paul Bettany as 'the great seducer' Lord Melbourne, who is both calculating and oddly irresistible. Bettany's one of our finest character actors and it never fails to amaze me that he isn't given more credit for his work (see: A Knight's Tale for his scene stealing turn as Chaucer, or the otherwise execrable The Da Vinci Code for his performance as Silas).

The direction is also pretty flawless. Yes we have the mandatory camera swoops over perfectly manicured palace grounds and driveways, but there are some quirky moments thrown in (the introduction of key political figures is pacey and kinetic and there's a lovely treatment of the sparkling rows of wine glasses used at the King's birthday function). Just as Blunt herself captures something both old and new in the queen, so the overall effect of the movie is one of tradition (royalty, the conventions of the genre) mingling with modernity: perhaps the only way to treat a monarch whose reign oversaw such great social changes. Both lavish and intimate, this film may not be the most dramatic thing you'll see this year, for all the events it covers, but it is thoroughly enchanting and will make a star of Blunt which is no bad thing at all.

Slumdog Millionaire

OK, OK, I know – I’ve been slow to catch this one purely because of the wealth of wonderful movies on offer recently. That and birthdays and illness – yada, yada, yada. We all know that this cleaned up at the Oscars which may not in itself be very interesting but for the fact that unlike Milk, Revolutionary Road, Benjamin Button and the like, it’s clearly not designed with awards in mind. It’s refreshingly free of the tragic hues so many Oscar contenders normally share, lurching from bathos to pathos and back again with a great vibrancy and relish for life – even though at times this movie is rather gritty and bleak, dealing as it does with the slums of Mumbai and orphaned children. We all know the story by now – this is a rags to riches tale of young Indian ‘slumdog’ Jamal (played as an adult by geeky Skins’ star Dev Patel) who takes part on the Indian version of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ and gets each answer right. He’s subsequently arrested for cheating and the movie sees him relay in a brutal police interrogation how he -legitimately - came to know the answers, through flashbacks structured around the questions he answers on the TV quiz. The style of filmmaking is full of energy and colour, its frenetic handheld camera work and adrenaline-fuelled pace unique to Danny Boyle. Accompanied by a thudding and well chosen score by A.R. Rahman (which is making a household name of former artist M.I.A.), it’s a movie full of motion and emotion. Jamal goes on the quizshow to win the heart of the beautiful Latika (played by Freida Pinto as an adult), with whom he shares his slumdog history, so although his quest is ostensibly to get rich, Slumdog is really a good old fashioned love story culminating in a wonderful Bollywood dance routine at the end (I adored this). He has to save his true love, first from the threat of prostitution and then from his own brother Salim (Madhur Mittal), whom a traumatic childhood has hardened and pushed into a life of crime.

There are many contrasts in this movie, both stylistic and thematic. I preferred the ‘indie’ feel of the first half much more to the romantic sentimentalism of the latter half, which felt much more formulaic and simplistic: good brother/bad brother, poor versus rich portrayed with sledgehammer subtlety (at times even pointing out explicitly how a slum is a now high rise business district) etc. The first half and indeed all the flashbacks felt very innovative and looked really different to anything I’d seen before; I thought the child actors playing Jamal, Salim, and Latika (Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Rubiana Ali respectively) were particularly incredible given the fact they'd had no training: Azharuddin and Rubina were actually real life slum children – it’s worth noting that Boyle has set up trust funds for these children to ensure they receive a more lasting benefit from their work, which is lovely; this movie could so easily slip into being a colonialist nightmare and I'm pleased that the makers are not exploiting those they leave behind, as Hollywood has often done in poorer parts of the world. I also thoroughly enjoyed Anil Kapoor's turn as the sleazy and egotistical quizshow host and the scam which the teenage Jamal and Salim pull outside the Taj Mahal, which illustrates the chasm between Eastern and Western cultures in comical fashion.

 

The things I was less keen on: the schematic structure began to really drag in the latter half of the movie for me – question, history, present day, and then back again, yawn – and my interest really flagged. The characterisation also felt a bit flat and there are numerous plotholes which the anally retentive and those lacking in any kind of feeling could point out. But it would be churlish to rob this movie of its moment of glory. Slumdog Millionaire might not be a perfect movie and there are numerous, some would say, apposite criticisms of aspects of it (see Salman Rushdie’s article in The Guardian which tackles elements of the film as part of a wider discussion on adaptation) but it has the same exuberance of former Boyle efforts Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary, a characteristic which makes it hard to resist. In spite of its grim subject matter, Slumdog has a truly life affirming quality which makes you suspend your cynicism and enjoy it as a modern day fairy tale.