For Greater Glory: Film Review

The sort of lumbering epic drama that went out of fashion by the late 1960s, For Greater Glory is mainly notable for shedding light on a little-known historical conflict, namely the Cristero War that took place in 1920s Mexico. This elaborate production about that countrys persecution of the Catholic Church crams in an endless number of battle scenes and real-life historical figures into its overlong 143-minute running time, with increasingly diminishing returns.

Among the gallery of notable performers playing dress-up is Andy Garcia in the central role of General Gorostieta, the esteemed hero of the Mexican revolution who is called out of comfortable retirement to take up the cause of the Cristeros. Not particularly religious himself, he feels called to duty when President Calles (Ruben Blades) declares war on Catholics and deprives them of basic human rights.

A major plot element involves a young boy, Jose (Maurcio Kuri), who when first seen is mischievously throwing fruit at an aged priest (Peter OToole) with whom he ultimately forms a close bond. When the priest is later killed by a firing squad, the boy joins the revolution and is mentored by Gorostieta, who treats him like the son he never had.

Despite its profusion of violent battle sequences, the film is most effective in its quieter moments, such as the scenes in which Calles warily negotiates with the American ambassador (Bruce Greenwood) who is mainly intent on preserving U.S. oil interests. Another standout is the subtly tension-filled encounter between Gorostieta and Calles during a brief lull in the war.

The histrionics in Michael Loves melodramatic screenplay rarely let up, with the characters constantly making portentous pronouncements about religious freedom, etc. Particularly egregious are the emotional debates between Gorostieta and his wife (Eva Longoria, in a stark departure from Desperate Housewives) over his decision to once again suit up for battle.

Making his directorial debut, esteemed special-effects designer Dean Wright (Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) displays little sense of dramatic pacing, letting far too many scenes drag on endlessly. The complicated storyline, with its numerous subplots and supporting characters who pop in and out of the action, is often difficult to follow. And like so many historical dramas, the film, shot on historical locations throughout Mexico, features drab the sort of sepia-toned cinematography that give it the feel of a moving daguerreotype.

The stolid Garcia is so intent on projecting his characters innate decency that he fails to display the charisma that shot him to stardom in such films as The Untouchables. Among the large supporting cast that also includes Oscar Isaac and an underused Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace), the standouts are OToole, quietly moving as the priest who goes to his death with dignity, and Blades, impressively conveying Calles fanatical obsession with ridding his country of religious elements.

Opens: Friday, June 1 (ARC Entertainment)
Production: Dos Corazones Films, New Land Films
Cast: Andy Garcia, Oscar Isaac, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Santiago Cabrera, Eva Longoria, Peter OToole, Ruben Blades, Bruce Greenwood, Bruce McGill, Eduardo Verastegui
Director: Dean Wright
Screenwriter: Michael Love
Producer: Pablo Jose Barroso
Director of photography: Eduardo Martinez Solares
Editors: Richard Francis-Bruce, Mike Oden Jackson
Production designer: Salvador Parra
Costume designer: Dianne Crittenden
Music: James Horner
Rated R, 143 min.

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U.N. Me: Film Review

A damning account of institutional dysfunction whose ability to stoke indignation is undercut by its filmmakers' misguided comic antics, Matt Groff and Ami Horowitz's U.N. Me is armed with enough evidence to make its case but is unlikely to attract the viewers it hopes to convince.

Though former investment banker Horowitz (who narrates and is the film's Michael Moore-like protagonist) has contributed to National Review and The Weekly Standard, and the film's segment on ineffectual nuclear inspections could be used to make a case for invading Iran, most of the doc's main arguments will find support across the political spectrum. Rather than entertaining wingnuts by attacking the United Nations' right to exist, for example, or saying it undercuts U.S. sovereignty, the film focuses on how the institution chronically fails to live up to its own principles, and suggests that in its current form it may be structurally incapable of doing so.

From oil-for-food, bribery, and sex-abuse scandals to the refusal to stop a genocide, the film finds everything from individual greed to institutional failures in which wrongheaded idealism leads to bizarre decisions: If, for instance, one believes that universal membership will encourage errant world powers to change their ways, perhaps it makes sense for Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give the keynote at a U.N. anti-racism conference.

Though the lineup of talking heads includes practically no household names (blink and you'll miss former CIA director James Woolsey, the highest-profile interviewee), the film does offer interesting perspectives, like the experience of Jody Williams, the Nobel Peace Laureate who was recruited to report on Darfur only to see her work suppressed by countries with their own human-rights crimes to hide.

But the legitimacy of all these serious-minded interviewees is thrown into doubt by Horowitz, who weasels through the film like an overprivileged kid making a big-budget audition tape for The Daily Show. From the film's unfortunate title to recurring facetious transitions along the lines of "I needed to get some answers...," he makes the film about himself without explaining why we should accept him as our guide. He pulls stunts, like trying to run through a security checkpoint, and is so snide in interviews one almost feels sorry for spokesmen trying to cover up genocide and illicit nuclear-weapons programs.

The co-director grows more insufferable with each onscreen appearance. Surely, distaste over these antics explains the three-year gap between the film's production and its theatrical booking.

Opens: Friday, June 1 (Visio Entertainment)
Production Company: Disruptive Pictures
Directors-screenwriters-producers: Matt Groff, Ami Horowitz
Executive producers: Thor Halvorssen, Bill Siegel
Directors of photography: Bob Richman, Wolfgang Held
Music: Richard Friedman
Editor: Doug Abel
PG-13, 93 minutes

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Snow White and the Huntsman: Film Review

A bold rethinking of a familiar old story and striking design elements are undercut by a draggy mid-section and undeveloped characters in Snow White and the Huntsman. After the campy family farce of Mirror, Mirror, this second revisionist take of the year on the 19th century fairy tale strides out deadly serious and in full armor, not to mention with more costume changes for Charlize Theronthan a Lady Gaga concert. Designed to appeal to teen and young adult girls and guys, this muscular PG-13-rated action adventure conspicuously lacks romance but should get a good box office ride on the shoulders of stars Kristen Stewartand Chris Hemsworth.

The teeing up is dramatic, to say the least, giving a swift and dire account of the malevolent usurpation of the throne of a rugged waterfront kingdom by Ravenna (Theron), a stunning blonde who infiltrates from enemy territory, bewitches the widowed monarch and dispatches him on their wedding night. The king's daughter is kept prisoner in a high tower until her maturity, at which point the queen's mirror, in this case a giant golden plate that morphs into a molten statue, informs her that the status of fairest in the land has shifted to Snow White (Stewart), who represents the queen's greatest threat as well as her salvation.

All through this, the visual elements are riveting, with production designer Dominic Watsonand costume designer Colleen Atwoodmaking major statements with their fabulously detailed and rich-looking creations. Initially based on blacks, whites and reds, the color scheme is slowly expanded to embrace a rich, carefully calculated array of hues, which first-time director Rupert Sanders, whose background is in commercials, knows how to show off to maximum effect.

Woe be to anyone who would permit Snow White to escape. But since the guilty party is the queen's albino-ish enforcer brother Finn (Sam Spruell), this unfortunate fellow is merely obliged to follow her into the aptly named Dark Forest, to which she has perilously fled and from which the dirty, unschooled teenager can only be rescued by a drunken warrior (Hemsworth), another widower, who has nothing to lose.

Sanders shows a skilled hand for conjuring up dramatic contexts, presenting characters, making actors look good and stirring up threatening moods. He's less effective at maintaining interest over the long haul of the mid-section's lengthy journey, as the huntsman leads Snow White through the dreaded forest to a village of women and children and on to a land known as Sanctuary, a once enchanted home to dwarfs, sprites and unique animals that has come upon hard times since the evil queen has been in power.

Although this interlude has its charms, stemming from the creature creations as well as the from the lightly amusing characterizations of the little guys by normally robust actors such as Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstoneand Eddie Marsan, the protracted odyssey feels especially flat because it's not marked by any deepening of the personalities of the princess and her blade-toting escort or any significant alterations in their relationship. Hemsworth's soldier seems too loaded and hung up on his late wife to think too seriously about Snow White but, even if he did, he'd have to defer to William (Sam Claflin), the princess's childhood friend and presumed intended, who turns up (with this season's obligatory weapon, the bow and arrow) to join the good fight and install Snow White on her throne back home where she belongs.

Every so often, the film cuts back to the castle to reveal the queen in distressed states of aging and miraculous rejuvenation, the latter alarmingly achieved by sucking the youth out of younger victims. This royal would seem to be a self-made vampire of sorts as well as a forerunner of contemporary youth-obsessed women willing to do almost anything to maintain their beauty and allure.

So this is a film of moments, of arresting visuals, marked seriousness, sometimes surprising imagination and with nothing on its mind, really, except to provide the conventional reassurance of installing a rightful royal on the throne. It's also a film in which you can't help but behold and compare the contrasting beauty of two of the most exceptional looking women on the screen today, Stewart and Theron. Sanders studies both of them closely and from many angles, with Stewart nearly always maintaining her ethereal air clenched by angst and determination and Theron expressing a will and mercilessness to rival any despot. Despite the narrow ranges their roles require, both command one's attention throughout. Required in their own ways to be gaze-worthy, Hemsworth and Claflin bear up in far more constricted parts.

Craft and technical contributions are all first-rate. James Newton Howardhas composed an unusually somber and nuanced full orchestral score that helpfully amplifies the story's dark moods and currents.

Opens: June 1 (Universal)
Production: Roth Films
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron, Sam Claflin, Sam Spruell, Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, Johnny Harris, Brian Gleeson, Vincent Regan, Lily Cole
Director: Rupert Sanders
Screenwriters: Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock, Hossein Amini, screen story by Evan Daugherty
Producers: Joe Roth, Sam Mercer
Executive producers: Palak Patel, Gloria Borders
Director of photography: Greig Fraser
Production designer: Dominic Watkins
Costume designer: Colleen Atwood
Editors: Conrad Buff, Neil Smith
Music: James Newton Howard
Visual effects supervisors: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Philip Brensan
PG-13 rating, 128 minutes

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Renoir: Film Review

The story of the young woman who was the final muse to painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the first one to filmmaker Jean Renoir is artistically pivotal and possessing of a lovely symmetry, but it's only mildly dramatic as rendered in the gently observant Renoir. Gilles Bourdos' sun-soaked look at the flame-haired teenager who showed up one day in Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1915 and became the subject of the aged sensualist's ripe final works plausibly brings its subjects alive while displaying an intelligent appreciation for their individual needs at the time. But while the creative careers of the father and son were staggering, not all that much seems at stake in this film, which comes off as a pleasant but mild thing. Goldwyn Films acquired U.S. rights in Cannes and could enjoy a measure of theatrical success by targeting artistically inclined older audiences for whom the Renoir name remains hallowed.

Andree Heuschling was only 15 when, at the suggestion of Henri Matisse, she entered the Renoir household in the south of France and gave a fresh jolt of vibrant life to the painter's late work. Then 74, the wizened old man had just been widowed, and the film vividly depicts how Pierre-Auguste, confined to a wheelchair, needed to have his arthritic hands taped to be able to hold a brush.

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For her part, Andree's hair and complexion already possessed the sort of rosy flush of sun-kissed youthfulness with which the painter endowed his subjects whether they had it or not; similarly, her body's voluptuous fleshiness required no embellishment on his part. In short, she was the ideal model for his late-period nudes. As the artist (Michel Bouquet) enthuses here, Her skin soaks up light.

As depicted in the film, Andree (Christa Theret) is a blithe young thing, very much in the French mold, who at least pretends she would just as soon take a job as a bar girl if it paid better than what one of the most famous artists in the country can offer her. Rude to and resented by the many female workers at the house, many of whom have posed for old master themselves, she has a somewhat raspy voice and does nothing to ingratiate herself.

But it doesn't matter, as the boss is happy, spending his days in the verdant environs of the house or down by the river creating idealized portraits of florescent youth painted by a man whose blood clearly still runs hot, even in his crippled state.

Also hobbled, by a serious World War I battlefield injury that nearly cost him his left leg, is the artist's 21-year-old son Jean (Vincent Rottiers), who arrives home on crutches to convalesce at the film's half-hour point. Much adored by his father, unlike his disaffected teenage son Claude, the young officer remains at this stage an unformed fellow; proper, socially somewhat maladroit and not entirely confident with women. Jean dabbles, according to his papa, not yet sure of his path in life and at the moment only anxious to recover and return his much-beloved comrades-in-arms in the Alpine Hunters 6th Battalion, who have sacrificed so much already.

Although there is incident in the film's second half Jean and Andree soon pair up, Pierre-Auguste paints more masterpieces, Jean discovers the movies, Andree has additional flare-ups it doesn't build to the level of compelling drama, leaving the film in a quiet, temperate realm that scarcely makes the pulse race, the bodacious Theret's frequent nudity notwithstanding.

In fact, Andree ultimately becomes a rather unappealing character, emerging from behind her surface allure as rather coarse and calculating. Intentionally or not, this prefigures the largely off-putting screen persona she eventually exhibited under the adopted name Catherine Hessling as the leading lady of a half-dozen silent Jean Renoir films.

The estimable veteran Bouquet is entirely credible as the old Renoir, who at one point is challenged to stand on his feet by his doctor and, to his great surprise, is able to do so. Rottiers possesses much sharper features than Jean Renoir ever had even in his pre-portly days but reasonably captures the young man's personal and professional uncertainty.

Visually, the film is lovely, if unostentatious, with Taiwanese cinematographer Mark Ping Bing Lee (Flowers of Shanghai and several others for Hou Hsiao-hsien, In the Mood for Love for Wong Kar-wai) sensitively capturing the Mediterranean light and landscapes.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regard (Goldwyn Films, U.S.)
Production: Wild Bunch, Mars Films, France 2 Cinema
Cast: Michel Bouquet, Christa Theret, Vincent Rottiers, Thomas Doret, Romane Bohringer
Director: Gilles Bourdos
Screenwriters: Jerome Tonnerre, Gilles Bourdos, with the collaboration of Michel Spinosa, from the work Le Tableau Amoureux by Jacques Renoir
Producers: Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier
Executive producer: Christine De Jekel
Director of photography: Mark Ping Bing Lee
Production designer: Benoit Barouh
Costume designer: Pascaline Chavanne
Editor: Yannick Kergoat
Music: Alexandre Desplat
International sales: Wild Bunch
111 minutes

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Prometheus: Film Review

Be careful what you wish for, especially if it involves figuring out who invented humankind. That's the warning at the heart ofPrometheus,a visual feast of a 3D sci-fi movie that has trouble combining its high-minded notions about the origins of the species and itsAlien-based obligation to deliver oozy gross-out moments. Ridley Scott's third venture into science-fiction, afterAlienin 1979 andBlade Runnerin 1982, won't become a genre benchmark like those classics despite its equivalent seriousness and ambition, but it does supply enough visual spectacle, tense action and sticky, slithery monster attacks to hit the spot with thrill-seeking audiences worldwide.

The Greek titan Prometheus got in trouble for stealing fire from Zeus and putting man on the same level as the gods. Presuming that humans won't rest until we discover where we came from and how we got here,Prometheusproposes that not very long from now, in 2093 to be precise, a plausible source of human life will not only be found but reached by space explorers backed, not surprisingly, by private, not government, interests.

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The striking opening sequence (shot in Iceland) reveals scientist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace, the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) discovering ancient cave paintings indicating the likely arrival on Earth of extraterrestrials many thousands of years ago. Such evidence points to the source as a moon in a small solar system a vast distance away, but not out of reach of a trillion-dollar spacecraft built by Weyland Industries.

The buildup and arrival are the best part of the film, suggesting a sense of inquiry and genuine sort of thoughtfulness that promise a truly weighty slice of speculative fiction. Not that this territory hasn't been amply mined in the past: In fact, the particulars of the ship's interior design, visual projections, hibernating crew members, sports workout routines and Michael Fassbender's robot character as a sort of ambulatory HAL with an obsession to look and speak like Peter O'Toole inLawrence of Arabia, which he likes to watch, are unavoidably reminiscent of2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Little by little, however, elements of other, less philosophical films come into play, includingFantastic Voyage, Rosemary's Babyand, inevitably,Alien.Arriving on the rugged, outwardly lifeless moon, the 17 crew members notice pyramid-like structures that were clearly not fashioned by nature. Inside, the elaborate tunnels and chambers possess moisture, elaborate writing, a large statue of a human head and, more alarming, countless small cylinders that produce a sticky mud-like substance, and an apparent human head.

It doesn't take long for the crew's number to be reduced by untoward circumstances, nor for doubt to set in about the true agenda not only of Fassbender's David, who can be quietly amusing, but of Charlize Theron's Meredith Vickers, the chilly Weyland executive on board who condescendingly treats everyone else, including the ship's captain (Idris Elba), as vastly inferior employees.

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Elizabeth and her scientist boyfriend Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green) continue to spar about the potential momentousness of their journey she, who wears a cross, hopes to find confirmation of her religious beliefs that will point to the existence of a traditional creator, while he is convinced that what they discover will merely prove once and for all that Darwin was right. But such rarefied considerations are thrown overboard when aliens start materializing, shooting their tentacles where you definitely don't want them, getting someone pregnant and otherwise causing the same sort of mayhem they always have in outer-space monster films.

As the survivors are pared down to a precious few, the grisliness and gross-out quotient increases; a self-inflicted Cesarian section may be a screen first (certainly the result of it is), while Fassbender's fate is similarly imaginative and far funnier. This project started life as an intended prequel toAlienbut morphed into something else. Unfortunately, the closer it comes to a climax, the more you feel the elements being lined up to set the stage for a sequel to this film, most of all in a coda that feels like a craven teaser trailer for the next installment.

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Scott doubles hisAlienpleasure with not just one but two strong female roles here. Rapace credibly expresses her character's combined scientific and religious convictions It's what I choose to believe, she insists and is more than up to the physical requirements of some very intense scenes. Theron is in ice goddess mode here with the emphasis on ice (and this just as her turn inSnow White and the Huntsmanis about to open) but perfect for the role all the same. Blonded up, perfect of diction and elegant of body, Fassbender seems almost alarmingly neutered at first as the ship's all-purpose valet but excels as he's allowed to begin injecting droll comedy into his performance. As the captain, Elba has a few strong moments standing up to his boss, Theron, while the other actors are mostly cannon fodder, save for an unrecognizable Guy Pearce in a late-on role.

Technically,Prometheusis magnificent. Shot in 3D but without the director taking the process into account in his conceptions or execution, the film absorbs and uses the process seamlessly. There is nary a false or phony note in the effects supervised by Richard Stammers, which build upon the outstanding production design by Arthur Max. Dariusz Wolski's graceful and vivid cinematography synthesizes all the elements beautifully in a film that caters too much to imagined audience expectations when a little more adventurous thought might have taken it to some excitingly unsuspected destinations.

Opens: June 8 (20thCentury Fox)
Production: Scott Free, Brandywine
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriters: Jon Spaihts, Damon Lindelof, based on elements created by Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett
Producers: Ridley Scott, David Giler, Walter Hill
Executive producers: Michael Costigan, Mark Huffman, Michael Ellenberg, Damon Lindelof
Director of photography: Dariusz Wolski
Production designer: Arthur Max
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Visual effects supervisor: Richard Stammers
Rated R, 124 minutes

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Dangerous Liaisons: Cannes Review

A womanizing playboy and his scheming ex-lover play destructive power games in this ravishing relocation of an 18th century French literary classic to 1930s Shanghai. Already adapted for the big screen multiple times, Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos clearly has evergreen appeal across cultural, language and age barriers.

Premiered at the Directors Fortnight in Cannes, this latest remake by the Chinese-Korean director Hur Jin-Ho falls short of the most celebrated version, directed by Stephen Frears in 1988. But glossy production values, a universally familiar plot, and the presence of international names like Zhang Ziyi in the cast should ensure modest commercial interest in foreign markets.

In roles made famous by John Malkovich and Glenn Close respectively, the suave Korean actor Jang Dong-gun brings a Clark Gable louchness to the role of heartbreaking libertine Xie Yifan. A luminous Cecilia Cheung also oozes toxic charm as his manipulative sparring partner, the wealthy femme fatale Mo Jieyu. Cast against her usual sex-kitten type, Zhang Ziyi steps into Michelle Pfeiffers shoes as Du Yufen, an earnest young widow who becomes a key pawn in Fan and Mos revenge-driven seduction wager. But playing poker with other peoples hearts can backfire, as Fan finds when he falls in love for real with the target of his fraudulent advances. It can only end in tears - and worse.

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Shanghai in its bustling 1930s prime has always held dramatic appeal for filmmakers as the historical flashpoint where Chinas bright young things partied away the jazz age against a backdrop of gangland wars, political insurrection and imminent Japanese invasion. Films that have recreated this glamorous locale include Zhang Yimous Shanghai Triad, James Ivorys The White Countess, Steven Spielbergs Empire of the Sun and - set a few years later - Ang Lees Lust, Caution.

Hur Jin-Hos adaptation reimagines Shanghai as an opulent eastern mirror image of 18th century Paris or 19th century Vienna, with its grand operas, bed-hopping aristocrats and lavish society balls. The costumes are a blazingly colorful pageant of velvet and silk, the opulent interiors cathedrals to Art Nouveau grandeur. All gleaming chrome and polished mahogany, gold leaf and stained glass, the film is an immersively sensual experience.

Less impressively, the sets are mostly stagey and too brightly lit. Some of the backdrops look cheap and badly integrated, while an exterior street location recurs with suspicious regular throughout the action. The score, mostly consisting of a persistent and syrupy orchestral waltz, also becomes intrusive at times.

Following the French Revolution, the original Choderlos de Laclos novel was hailed in some quarters as a critique of the corrupt decadence of Frances old elite. Similar historical hindsight could be read into this remake, which damns the self-destructive sensualists of pre-Communist China as haughty, scheming, pathological sadists. But if so, any political subtext is buried very deeply. The street protestors who feature tangentially in the action are never even contextualized for non-Chinese audiences. This is not a deep movie.

An interesting twist on a classic plot, Dangerous Liaisons is essentially a deluxe soap opera. But with its beautiful cast and gorgeous production design, it is still a highly enjoyable way to waste two hours.

Venue: Cannes, Directors Fortnight screening, May 24

Production company: Zonbo Media, Homerun Asia

Cast: Zhang Ziyi, Dong-gun Jang, Cecilia Cheung, Lisa Lu, Shawn Dou

Director: Hur Jin-Ho

Producer: Weiming Chang

Sales company: Arclight Films

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Wallander: The Revenge: Film Review

Scandinavian crime fiction continues its American invasion with the Henning Mankell adaptation Wallander: The Revenge, originally made for Swedish TV. Considering the Stateside exposure already given to the BBC series in which Kenneth Branagh plays the hero, theatrical prospects here are limited. But fans of the character should appreciate Krister Henriksson's dry take on the role, and will be happy to learn that 13 of his made-for-TV outings will be offered (alongside this one) on VOD and DVD.

Here, the famously downbeat Kurt Wallander has cause to be laconic and bleary-eyed: Most of the tale concerns a 24-hour marathon of police work that begins, inconveniently, at the end of a drunken housewarming party. When saboteurs wipe out power to the whole city of Ystad at the same time someone murders a local bigwig, Wallander's department is thrown into disarray. Not only are civilians clamoring impatiently for info, but his investigation is hindered by a variety of outsiders ranging from the local prosecutor's office to the Swedish army -- not to mention two new cadets whose on-the-job training has just started.

Some scenes involving these outsiders are plagued by stiff acting and a camera that lingers long enough one feels pushed to acknowledge dramatic tension that isn't there. But director Charlotte Brndstrm is on safer ground with Wallander and his colleagues, who project a believable sense of community. Henriksson in particular hits just the right balance of aloofness and concern.

The politically outspoken Mankell works in some themes about tolerance and War on Terror wrongheadedness (the murder victim sponsored an exhibit of art depicting Muhammad), and the blackout offers a novel backdrop, but on the whole this is a routine mystery tale existing mainly to introduce new characters to the Wallander universe and allow for future installments.

Opens: Friday, June 1 (Music Box Films)
Production Company: Yellow Bird Films
Cast: Krister Henriksson, Lena Endre, Sverrir Gudnason, Nina Zanjani, Mats Bergman, Douglas Johansson, Stina Ekblad, Fredrik Gunnarson, Marianne Mrck
Director: Charlotte Brndstrm
Screenwriter: Hans Rosenfeldt
Based On Story By Henning Mankell
Producer: Malte Forssell
Executive producers: Ole Sndberg, Anni Faurbye Fernandez, Mikael Walln, Vibeke Windelv
Director of photography: Alexander Gruszynski
Production designer: Anna Asp
Music: Flskkvartetten
Costume designer: Kicki Ilander
Editor: Hkan Karlsson
No rating, 90 minutes

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Fogo: Cannes Review

A superb calling-card for the skills of cinematographer Diego Garca, hour-long docu-fiction hybrid Fogo is otherwise austere high-art cinema of the most exquisitely patience-sapping kind. A Canadian-Mexican co-production about the Newfoundland/Labrador island which provides its title, this third picture by Yulene Olaizola will enjoy a measure of festival exposure thanks to the success of her widely-screened 2008 debut Intimacies of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo. TV channels favorable to experimental ethnography may also want to take a look -- likewise any producers seeking a DP especially skilled at outdoor landscape work.

Working with his Mexican compatriot Olaizola -- both turn 30 next year -- Garca here confirms the ample promise he displayed in his sole previous credit, Mark Jackson's outstanding psychological drama Without. Shooting on a wind-swept, heavily-forested island in the Pacific Northwest in collaboration with Jessica Dimmock, Garca worked wonders on a minimal budget with high-definition digital cameras. Here similar equipment crisply renders the starkly bleak beauty of Fogo, its frozen lakes and mossy stonecrops, so powerfully that audiences may find themselves shivering in their seats. As Herman Melville famously said of his masterpiece Moby-Dick - "a Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it."

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The big-sky vistas crafted by Garca and Olaizola are so alluring it's no surprise to discover that the film was part-funded by the Fogo Island Arts Corporation, whose website describes it as "a contemporary arts experiment [which] takes a leading role in regenerating the islands [using] arts and creativity as powerful means of stimulating and enhancing a resilient social ecosystem." But bizarrely, in the light of this remit, Olaizola's sparsely-worded screenplay -- co-written with Garca and Rubn Imaz -- presents Fogo as a benighted, near-abandoned, almost post-apocalyptically harsh wilderness, one whose few remaining die-hard residents are, in the opening scene, offered one last chance to evacuate out back to "civilization."

One would certainly never guess from the movie that Fogo's population stands at well over 2,000 people. In between the striking landscape-dominated exterior sequences, there's a handful of dialogue-exchanges among locals - evidently non-professionals from the area, somewhat stiffly playing themselves - who ruminate on the harshness of fate. "I never thought we were comin' to this," one sighs over his home-brewed hooch. "How are we gonna survive?" ponders his drinking-chum glumly, the pair hunched in a dimly-lit, near-empty kitchen that could have been interior-designed by Samuel Beckett. As in Bela Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky's The Turin Horse, meanwhile, potatoes are silently munched in stoic resignation as the wind blows on and on (and on) beyond the walls.

Admirers of such nature-focused, challengingly oblique recent festival hits like C.W. Winter and Anders Edstrm's The Anchorage and Ben Rivers' Two Years at Sea may respond to Olaizola's ostentatiously dour approach here. And there's much to like about Pauline Oliveros's score, with its keening harmonica and accordion stylings - not to mention the brisk running-time. But for all the elemental grandeur of the locations, Fogo lands with a hefty bump whenever it switches into fictional mode -- indicating that Olaizola would be better off returning to the kind of relatively "straight" documentary which kicked off her career so promisingly.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Directors' Fortnight), May 22, 2012.
Production company: Malacosa Cine
Cast: Norman Foley, Ron Broders, 'Little Joe'
Director: Yulene Olaizola
Screenwriters: Yulene Olaizola, Rubn Imaz, Diego Garca
Producers: Yulene Olaizola, Rubn Imaz
Director of photography: Diego Garca
Music: Pauline Oliveros
Editor: Rubn Imaz
Sales Agent: Pascale Ramonda, Paris
No rating, 61 minutes.

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The Music According to Antonio Carlos Jobim (A Musica Segundo Tom Jobim): Cannes Review

This freewheeling tribute to the Brazilian music legend Antonio Carlos Tom Jobim offered one of the most effortlessly enjoyable screening experiences in Cannes, but also one of the most insubstantial.

Showcasing the songs of the late composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist credited with popularising the bossa nova sound worldwide, it was co-directed by Jobims 36-year-old daughter Dora and the 83-year-old Brazilian veteran Nelson Pereira Dos Santos.

Essentially an audio-visual mixtape stitched together from archive musical performances, this breezy documentary has no editorial commentary, no talking heads and no clear narrative structure. Apparently aimed at specialist music fans already familiar with Jobims life story, the films most likely post-festival afterlife is on the small screen and home entertainment formats.

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Even Jobim himself, who died in 1994, is almost an incidental character in this story. We see him performing at various stages of his 40-year career, but the majority of the films musical content consists of other artists covering his songs in Portuguese - plus French, English, Italian, Swedish and even Japanese translations. Bossa nova classics including Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars), Insensatez (How Insensitive) and of course Garota de Ipanema (The Girl From Ipanema) recur in multiple versions and languages.

The gallery of performers who cover Jobims music is certainly extraordinary, spanning several generation of jazz and pop legends including Ella Fitzgerald, Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Judy Garland and Diana Krall. Two of the stand-out sequences feature Sammy Davis Jr. becoming a kind of human beatbox of bossa nova, and Jobim himself dueting with Frank Sinatra on two cuts from their first joint album in 1967. Grand masters of song working in sublime harmony, their voices intertwined like cigarette smoke.

But while the range of musical flavors in the film is impressively broad, it does tend towards a mellifluous easy-listening blandness at times. A few more offbeat contemporary interpreters of Jobims canon, such as David Byrne or Iggy Pop, might have given a broader picture of his universal allure. Some of the footage, especially the Garland clip, has clearly been salvaged from poor quality videotape. The ever-shifting montage technique also proves frustrating at times, often reducing great performances to fleeting fragments in one long audio-visual medley.

The Music According to Antonio Carlos Jobim is a sweet and undemanding experience, but would have been more satisfying with a more conventional structure and more biographical back story. As it stands, viewers have no choice but to lie back and be gently swept along by the music - rhythms like softly lapping waves, voices like warm tropical breezes. The filmmakers may have set out to write a love letter to a musical icon but it comes over more like a series of postcards.

Venue: Cannes special screening, May 22

Production Company: Regina Filmes Ltda.

Cast: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chico Buarque, Vincius De Moraes, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland

Directors: Dora Jobim, Nelson Pereira Dos Santos

Editor: Luelane Correa

Screenplay: Miucha Barque Del Holanda, Nelson Pereira Dos Santos

Sales agent: Regina Filmes Ltda.

Rating TBC, 84 minutes

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La Playa D.C.: Cannes Review

Three decades after unknown film-student Spike Lee unveiled Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, writer-director Juan Andrs Arango emerges straight outta Bogot with his own auspicious, tonsorially-themed debut La Playa D.C. Focusing on a teenage apprentice barber coping with the city's forbiddingly mean streets, it's a minutely-observed peek into hardscrabble lives that pours intoxicatingly fresh aguardiente into a rather dusty old bottle. Plentiful festival play should flow from its Un Certain Regard premiere at Cannes, cementing Arango as Colombia's most notable cinematic export since Oscar-nominated actress Catalina Sandino Moreno.

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While Sandino Moreno's breakthrough vehicle Maria Full of Grace was officially a Colombian-American co-production, it was directed by California's Joshua Marston. South America's most northerly country has long kept a very low international profile in terms of moviemaking: the most prominent current Colombian-born director, Rodrigo Garca (Albert Nobbs), has carved his career almost exclusively in the US.

Arongo, a 35-year-old native-born Bogotano, trained and worked in Canada and the Netherlands before returning home to shoot his debut feature in the high-altitude city. Indeed, the unique geography of this chaotic metropolis - sprawling concrete encircled by lushly damp verdant hills - is a major element in its impact, evocatively rendered by cinematographer Nicols Canniccioni via a chilly color-palette of cobalt blues, mossy greens and asphalt grays.

Teenage brothers Tomas (Luis Carlos Guevara), Jairo (Andrs Murillo) and Chaco (James Solis) have fled to the capital from their formerly-idyllic home on the country's western seaboard, driven out by the civil war which claimed the life of their father. Chaco has spent time in "el Norte" - the USA - and has returned sporting the latest ghetto-fabulous fashions and hairstyles. Jairo is is tearaway of the trio, forever falling foul of dangerous foes. Quietly-spoken Tomas, a lanky lad who looks much older than his 13 years, recognizes that he's going to need a trade if he's to have any chance of a decent life. And as Afro-Colombian males favor massively intricate braided designs - painstakingly executed with clippers and razor-blades - there's no shortage of work for a lad with a steady hand and a degree of artistic flair.

Arango's screenplay is a familiar enough coming-of-age chronicle, in which Tomas embarks on his first serious romance while prematurely buckling down to responsibility - under the amusingly stern eye of his barbershop mentors - and keeping tabs on his wayward siblings. Painful bonds of fraternal love are unfussily celebrated this generally downbeat but humor-flecked journey around the male-dominate city-within-a-city that comprises the title's Playa D.C. - i.e. the ironically-named "beach" of Colombia's "capital district" or Distrito Capital.

Almost every scene is scored by hip-hop music - often with a distinctive Indio twist - in a picture whose soundtrack is seamlessly integrated with the tunes blasting out of the characters' own radios and disc-players, often with lyrics that exude a hard-knock, hard-won optimism ("life's a daily struggle - but we get by. / Life isn't easy - but we manage"). The US-influenced rhythms of Tomas's soundscapes thus contribute to the pervasive tang of unpretentious authenticity that elevates La Playa D.C.above the general run of urban-ethnographic world cinema.

Bottom line: Closely-observed Colombian coming-of-ager introduces the latest bold directorial talent from Latin America.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), May 23, 2012.
Production companies: Cine Sud Promotion, Bananeira Films, Hangar Films
Cast: Luis Carlos Guevara, Andrs Murillo, James Sols
Director / Screenwriter: Juan Andrs Arango
Producers: Diana Bustamante, Jorge Andrs Botero
Co-producers: Thierry Lenouvel, Vania Catani, Angelisa Stain, Mauricio Aristizbal
Director of photography: Nicols Canniccioni
Art director: Juan David Bernal
Costume designer: Angelica Perea
Music: Erick Bongcam, Jacobo Vlez, Mara Mulata, Socavn de Timbiqui, Diocelino Rodriguez, Flaco Flow & Melanina, Choquibtown, Jiggy Drama
Editor: Felipe Guerrero
Sales Agent: Doc & Film International, Paris
No rating, 89 minutes.

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The Oath of Tobruk (Le Serment de Tobrouk): Cannes Review

CANNES - A FIRST-PERSON DOCUMENTARY ESSAY about last years Libyan uprising presented by the globe-trotting French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lvy, The Oath of Tobruk brought a whiff of the Parisian Left Bank to the closing weekend of Cannes. A late addition to the festival program, Lvys film was co-produced by the French-German culture channel Arte and seems most likely to find a home on similar prestige TV networks. However, the Weinstein Company announced in Cannes that they have bought US rights, so a theatrical run seems likely, possibly backed by serious marketing muscle selling Lvy as Michael Moores erudite Euro cousin.

A journalist and philosopher with friends in high places, Lvy is an archetypally French figure. Both man of letters and man of action, he enjoys Truffaut-esque good looks, an elegantly sculpted swoosh of graying hair and a predictably colorful love life. But he also has a long-standing side career as a semi-freelance French government envoy to global trouble spots, from Bosnia to Afghanistan to Libya. This film tracks his six months of behind-the-scenes work in war-torn Libya last year, making deals with the emergent National Transitional Council and arm-twisting western leaders to use military force against Muammar Gaddafi.

Lvy has many critics, especially in France, who routinely dismiss him as an intellectually shallow narcissist who built his career on family money and establishment connections. The Oath of Tobruk plays right into their hands in places, with its author projecting himself center stage as a key player in Libyas liberation struggle, striding purposefully through rubble-strewn war zones in his signature black suit like an orchestra conductor on his way to a fancy cocktail party. Before addressing one heated demonstration, he even dons the new Libyan flag as a kind of jaunty cravat. Trs chic, and trs French.

But for all his flashes of pomp and vanity, Lvy does not just talk the talk, he also walks the walk. However egocentric his motives may be, his courageous hands-on intervention does help swing the international consensus for UN military action in Libya. Backing up his version of events with a starry guest list of talking-head commentators including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, outgoing French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, Lvy delivers the goods, not just to the Libyan resistance but to filmgoers as well.

Mostly shot by photojournalist Marc Roussel, who simply switched his digital camera from stills to video mode, The Oath of Tobruk is full of striking close-up footage of battlefields and bombed-out cities. In cinematic terms, it has a fluid rhythm, a visceral beauty and a level of street-level detail missing from more conventional news footage. The otherworldly grandeur of the Libyan desert is a recurring background character.

The films title invokes the oath of Kufra, made when the Free French army scored their first Libyan victory in World War II and vowed to drive the Nazis out of France, a parallel which feels slightly strained. Lvys core argument, that liberty always prevails over tyranny, also sounds a little simplistic and Pollyanna-ish in places.

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That said, he does concede there are darker moral complexities to this unfinished story, briefly addressing allegations that former Gaddafi loyalists have been tortured. And there are fascinating scenes when Lvys brings his own Jewishness into the debate, an inflammatory ethnic angle which the former regime used to try and undermine him, to draw contentious parallels between Zionism and Libya's liberation struggle.

A highly topical story with a charismatic presenter, The Oath of Tobruk is a more engaging experience than it may sound on paper. The Weinsteins and Frances Studio 37 are unlikely to repeat the same level of commercial success they scored with The Artist, of course, but this fascinating films niche box office prospects could yet be boosted by ongoing events in Syria and other troubled Mideast nations.

Venue: Cannes screening, May 26
Production companies: Studio 37, Margo Cinema, Arte
Cast: Bernard-Henri Lvy, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, Nicolas Sarkozy, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron
Director: Bernard-Henri Lvy
Cinematographer: Marc Roussel
Writer: Director: Bernard-Henri Lvy
Sales Company: Rezo
Rating TBC, 110 minutes

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Sofia's Last Ambulance: Cannes Review

Its misleadingly alarmist - and inaccurate - title aside, Sofia's Last Ambulance is an admirably solid slice of old-school cinma-verit that chronicles and celebrates a team of Bulgarian EMS personnel. Debuting in the International Critics' Week at Cannes, it landed the sidebar's inaugural "Visionary Award" for the Sofia-born London-trained director/camera-operator/co-editor Ilian Metev, and will be a very popular pick for non-fiction festivals and upscale TV networks worldwide.

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A Bulgarian-Croatian-German co-production, it was made with support from both German and French television channels (WDR and Arte) and deals with subject-matter that's become a staple of small-screen programming across the globe: The real lives and professional activities of medical personnel in daily crisis situations. But for obvious reasons of practicality and safety, the type of workers foregrounded here have more often featured in fictional treatments than documentary ones.

There are perhaps some places where equipment-toting film-makers shouldn't be encouraged to go, and the cramped confines of speeding ambulances - carrying patients who may be hovering between life and death - arguably fall into that category. Perhaps because of such considerations, much of Metev's footage comes from three small dashboard-mounted cameras trained on the faces of his protagonists: Stoic, middle-aged Doctor Krassimir ('Krassi') Yordanov, chatterbox paramedic Mila Mikhailova and thirtyish driver Plamen Slavkov. The visages of their patients, however, are tactfully concealed from our view throughout.

Filmed over a period of two years, Sofia's Last Ambulance provides an 80-minute snapshot of the trio's professional activities - including down-time when they can smoke, chat and pass comment on the world as seen through their grimy windscreen. "There's a woman who knows what she wants in life," notes an admiring Mila of an unshown passer-by - the speaker herself evidently uncertain whether attending to the complex needs of Sofia's sick and injured, some of them perhaps less worthy of her compassion than others, should be the limit of her ambitions.

It's tough, demanding labor for sure - but relieved, M*A*S*H-style, by the flinty humor and camaraderie which has built up among what an observer calls a "really nice" team. On one level, Metev's movie is a study of workplace relations and how folk get along in cramped spaces and extreme conditions. But it also provides indirect commentary on the state of the nation - as illustrated by various districts in the city-centre and the run-down surrounding areas - painting as unflattering a portrait as Cristi Puiu's fictional variant The Death of Mr Lazarescu did of Bulgaria's Balkan neighbor Romania.

While the director's m.o. is to eschew overt editorializing of any kind, a little more basic information - about the ambulance, its staff and the health-care system in general - wouldn't have gone amiss. The Cannes press-notes, for example, describe Sofia as "a city where 13 ambulances struggle to serve 2 million people," thus giving the lie to Metev's inexplicable and hyperbolically apocalyptic choice of (English-language) title. "I am the only resuscitator in the whole of Sofia," remarks Krassi at one stage, but "last resuscitator" and "last ambulance" are very different things.

The final scenes, meanwhile, seem to hint that Mila has finally had enough of the ambulance life and has quit - but it's impossible to know for sure as Metev evidently intends the images to speak for themselves. They do so, up to a point - but the picture's briskly austere directness leaves fundamental questions naggingly unanswered.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (International Critics' Week), May 23
Production companies: Sutor Kolonko, Nukleus Film, SIA
Director: Ilian Metev
Producers: Dimitar Gotchev, Sinia Jurii, Ingmar Trost, Ilian Metev
Exective producers: Lora Chenakova, Dan Cogan, Lisa Kleiner Chanoff
Director of photography: Ilian Metev
Editors: Ilian Metev, Betina Ip
Sales Agent: Wild Bunch, Paris
No rating, 80 minutes.

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For Love's Sake (Ai To Makoto): Cannes Review

Love and social classes tangle dangerously in For Loves Sake, a delirious if overly long and repetitive high school musical spoof, contaminated with indigenous Japanese genres like anime cartoons and the action film. It would be a reckless leap to call the constant fist fights, coupled with absurd song and dance numbers, a send-up of classical Broadway musicals like West Side Story. Directed by Japans one-man film factory Takashi Miike, whose rapidly produced oeuvre has been averaging two releases a year and grabbing much festival attention, this spontaneous genre-bender targets teens and the midnight movie crowd. The fan club will undoubtedly find things to admire here, but its not one of his unmissables.

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Taking its cue from a period manga by Ikki Kajiwara and Takumi Nagayasu, The Legend of Love and Sincerity, which has already been adapted for film and TV many times, the main story opens and closes with two charming anime sequences that explain how rich girl Ai and poor boy Makoto met as children. The live-action story begins in 1972, when they have grown into very different teenagers. Pretty Ai (Emi Takei) is the daughter of wealth and entitlement, top of her class and an outstanding athlete; Makoto (Satoshi Tsumabuki) is a hardened loner from the wrong side of the tracks with a big scar on his forehead and a huge chip on his shoulder.

Early scenes unfold at an elite prep school for children of the bourgeoisie, where Ai convinces her parents to pay for Makotos tuition. All tousled hair and attitude, he sticks out like a prickly weed in a perfumed flower garden and is soon expelled, landing in an infernal trade school where male and female gangs rumble under the guidance of their love-sick leaders. Makoto is a one-man army when it comes to fighting and can whip a dozen armed antagonists without incurring more than a scratch. His steely-sad gaze and cool indifference bring two more powerful young women under his spell, the awkward, very funny punk witch Gumko (Sakura Ando) and the beautiful, cold Yuki (Ito Ono), whose internalized issues are a match for Makotos.

Ais unconditional love is scorned by the object of her affections; she in turn ignores the insufferable prep school boy with glasses Iwashimizu (Takumi Saitoh), who loves her more than life itself. How this unbalanced trio is going to sort itself out, especially with Yukis competing bid for Makoto, is left hanging until the end.

The young actors fill their tongue-in-cheek roles with earnest abandon. Satoshi Tsumabuki (Waterboys, Villain) is particularly effective as the deeply scarred outsider Makoto. The very basic choreography and songs look lifted from a high school musical, which may well be the way they were conceived.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Midnight Screenings), May 21
Production companies: Concept Film, Excellent Film, OLM Production
Cast: Satoshi Tsumabuki, Seishiro Kato, Emi Takei, Yo Hitoto, Takumi Saitoh
Director: Takashi Miike
Screenwriters: Takayuki Takuma, based on a manga by Ikki Kajiwara, Takumi Nagayasu
Producers: Tsutomu Tsuchikawa, Hidehiro Ito, Takayuki Sugisaki, Masamitsu Washizu, Misako Saka, Miharu Yamazaki
Executive producers: Shinichiro Inoue, Yasushi Shiina
Director of photography: Nobuyasu Kita
Production designer: Yuji Hayashida
Editor: Kenji Yamashita
Music: Takeshi Kobayashi
Choreography: Papaya Suzuki
Sales Agent: Kadokawa Shoten Co.
No Rating; 133 minutes.

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Aquí y Allá: Cannes Review

An ostentatiously downbeat peek into the life of a poor Mexican family, Antonio Mndez Esparza's Spanish-US co-production Aqu y All is attracting international attention after taking top honours in the Critics' Week sidebar at Cannes. But prospects for this patience-taxingly boilerplate example of current Latin American art-cinema are much closer to that of relatively little-seen 2009 Grand Prix winner Goodbye Gary than to 2010 scorer Armadillo or last year's big breakout Take Shelter - festival berths won't translate to much theatrical or small-screen play.

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Its title, which is left deliberately untranslated on the film's digital 'print' and in the press-notes, is Spanish for "here and over there," - though Here and There has been used as a shorthand version. The "here" is a small village in the southern, sparsely-populated and mountainous Guerrero region - home to thirtyish couple Pedro (Pedro De los Santos Jurez) and Teresa (Teresa Ramrez Aguirre) and their high-schooler daughters 'Lore' (Lorena Pantalen Vzquez) and Heidi (Heidi Solano Espinoza). The "over there" is the United States, where Pedro spends considerable spells of time as a migrant worker - the unspoken implication is that he's doing so illegally.

These periods away from home mean that Pedro barely knows his own children - as is evident from the first of the film's four chapters, 'The Return,' which takes place in the immediate aftermath of his latest stint in el Norte. Pedro tries to make ends meet doing menial jobs in the area, dividing his free time between his family and working on his own musical compositions. In part two, 'Here,' we see him performing with his band and coping with Teresa's difficult third pregnancy. In part three, 'The Horizon,' baby Luz's arrival brings further financial strain, resulting in Pedro taking the decision to return north: "I do care," he assures the distressed Teresa, "That's why I want a better life for all of you." The short final segment, 'Over There,' focusses on Lore and Heidi as they share their memories of their departed parent.

The plight of folks like Pedro isn't confined to Mexico, of course, and issues of globalized labor and cross-border movement are only going to become tougher as the impacts of the recent worldwide financial crisis bite deep. As a glum, slow-burning, austere treatment of a topical, serious issue, Aqu y All is guaranteed a favorable reception in many quarters - even if, in film-making terms, it's nothing we haven't seen before dozens of times (and usually done with rather more flair).

The non-professional actors, reportedly playing slight variations on themselves, are awkwardly subdued and self-conscious, and overall it might have been more productive for Mndez Esparza, whose debut feature-length work this is, had stuck to 'straight' documentary - in the vein of, say, Ed Moschitz's recent Austrian eye-opener Mama Illegal - rather than a docu-fiction hybrid.

This is also editor Filippo Conz's feature debut, and his inexperience shows in the way he lets scenes trundle on and on before cutting abruptly - resulting in a repetitive, monotonous rhythm that repels rather than compels interest, and makes it difficult to follow the chronology of a story which, judging by Luz's rapid development, takes place over a couple of years.

Frustratingly, one of the most promising sequences, in which an elderly lady wryly reminisces about bygone days, is also one of the shortest, Conz and Mndez Esparza devoting much more time to half-baked dramatic developments involving the vagaries and inadequacies of the Mexican healthcare system. And for all its makers' self-evidently admirable intentions, Aqu y All ends up - even at nearly two hours - saying surprisingly little about the hot-button subjects it ambitiously sets out to explore.

Bottom line: Award-winning examination of migrant labor would have worked better as a documentary.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Critics' Week), May 22, 2012.
Production companies: Aqu y All Films, Torch Films
Cast: Pedro De los Santos Jurez, Teresa Ramrez Aguirre, Lorena Pantalen Vzquez, Heidi Solano Espinoza, Angel De los Santos Leyva
Director / Screenwriter: Antonio Mndez Esparza
Producers: Ori Dov Gratch, Tim Hobbs, Pedro Hernndez Santos, Diana Wade, Antonio Mndez Esparza
Exective producers: Alvaro Portanet Hernndez, Amadeo Hernndez Bueno
Director of photography: Barbu Balasoiu
Art director: Priscilla Charles Caldern
Editor: Filippo Conz
Sales Agent: Alpha Violet, Paris
No rating, 110 minutes.

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Camille Rewinds (Camille Redouble): Cannes Review

CANNES - AN EMOTIONALLY DISTRESSED woman goes in search of her lost youth in this bittersweet French time-travel comedy, which owes more to Marty McFly than Marcel Proust. A strong local crowd-pleaser in Cannes, Camille Rewinds closed the Directors Fortnight and picked up a minor prize, the Prix SACD. A writer, actor and film-maker with a large fanbase in France, Nomie Lvovskys track record should guarantee the film solid local business and a niche Francophile following around the world. But this universal story of love and regret also feels funny and charming enough to break out to wider audiences, with the right marketing.

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Lvovsky directs, co-writes and stars as Camille, a 40-year-old Parisian drowning in alcoholic anguish after splitting up from her former childhood sweetheart Eric (Samir Guesmi) after 25 happy years together. In the depths of her boozy despair, at a snowy New Years Eve party in 2008, she experiences a kind of fairy-tale flashback and wakes up in 1985. She is still attending school, her late mother is alive again, and she has a bright yellow portable cassette player buzzing with cheesy 1980s Europop hits.

Fate, it seems, has granted Camille a second chance. With the wisdom of hindsight, she struggles to rewrite history, resisting classmate Erics advances to save her adult self from future heartbreak, and forcing her mother to address some undetected health problems. But destiny is not so easily persuaded, and Camille eventually comes to learn that some life choices can be changed while others must simply be embraced.

Camille Rewinds opens with a bravura title sequence, a montage of liquor and cigarettes and assorted bric-a-brac tumbling across a dark backdrop in slow motion, followed by a surprised looking cat. Thus Camilles life as a kind of midlife Bridget Jones is neatly encapsulated in prologue form. The visual style then settles down into fairly straight, light comedy mode: breezy and brightly lit, full of brisk comic energy, and garnished with an agreeably lurid assortment of gauche 1980s fashions and hairstyles.

Playing Camille at both 40 and 16, Lvovsky finds some inspired humour in the gap between what the audience and the characters can see, although Guesmi is more convincing in his physical transformation from middle age to gawky classroom Romeo. Devotees of French cinema will appreciate the sprinkling famous cameos, including Mathieu Almaric as a creepy teacher and Franois Truffauts long-time screen alter ego Jean-Pierre Laud as a magical watchmaker. Denis Podalyds, one of a duo of comedy film-making brothers with a large local following, also plays a small but significant role.

Lvovsky is plainly winking at her French audience here, playing to the gallery. Camille Rewinds is full of such crowd-pleasing touches, mostly well-judged. A wry Gallic twist on Back to the Future or Peggy Sue Got Married, it is hardly the most original or challenging work, but it is effortlessly charming and emotionally engaging.

Venue: Cannes, Directors Fortnight screening, May 25
Production companies: F Comme, Cine@, Gaumont
Cast: Nomie Lvovsky, Samir Guesmi, Yolande Moreau, Michel Vuillermoz, Denis Podalyds, Mathieu Almaric
Director: Nomie Lvovsky
Writers: Nomie Lvovsky, Florence Seyvos, Pierre-Olivier Mattei, Maud Ameline
Cinematography: Jean-Marc Fabre
Editor: Michel Klochendler
Sales company: Gaumont
Rating TBC, 120 minutes

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Mud: Cannes Review

The story of a sympathetic fugitive who forges a bond with two teenage boys near a mighty river down south, Mud is shot through with traditional qualities of American literature and drama. Jeff Nichols much-anticipated follow-up to his breakthrough second feature Take Shelter feels less adventurous and unsettling but remains a well carpentered piece of work marked by some fine performances and resilient thematic fiber. A shrewd and determined distributor would pursue the connection this exploration of loves elusiveness could make with a mainstream heartland audience more than highbrow critical acceptance, as the potential seems present for good word of mouth with a public hungry for stories with which they can directly relate.

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Nearly every relationship in Nicholss screenplay is threatened, fractured or broken. Ellis (Tye Sheridan) has good reason to believe that his parents (Sarah Paulson, Ray McKinnon) are headed for a divorce, while is best pal Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) is being raised by his oyster-diving uncle Galen (Michael Shannon). Ellis, whos 14, lives in a funky old houseboat while the nearby Arkansas town is a characterless wasteland of large chain stores and housing developments.

On a deserted island out in the Mississippi, the boys stumble into the grizzled, unkempt Mud (Matthew McConaughey), whos hiding out in an old boat stuck up in a tree. Even though Mud soon admits that hes killed a man in a dispute, the boys are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and, in exchange for the promise that they can have the boat once hes done, they start ferrying food across to him in a launch.

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Nichols readily admits the influence of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on his story, in addition to those of other Southern writers. Such stories were formerly staples of American writing and theres enough dramatic and emotional meat on this one to suspect that audiences would easily engage with it. The title character is a perennial, a flawed man who admits the error of his ways and hopes for a second chance in the face of those who vengefully seek to take him down.

Significantly more appealing is the boy, Ellis, a sensitive, watchful, tough kid whos able to stand up for himself. Although much smaller, he punches out an older high schooler and is flirted with seriously enough by an older girl to imagine that shes become his girlfriend. His anger at his parents for not finding a way to remain together is painful enough to give them pause. Sheridans performance grows in stature and confidence as the film pushes on; he often keeps his words to a minimum, but his eyes and increasingly untrusting attitude toward adults and what they say speak volumes for his burgeoning understanding of the unsavory ways of the world.

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Muds getaway plans require the boys to steal an outboard motor for him but he also asks Ellis to contact his ladylove Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), whos laying low in town waiting for the green light to join Mud. Also hovering, however, is a squad of bounty hunters led by a hulking bad old boy (Joe Don Baker), whose son Mud killed.

Theres more than enough anger, disappointment and disillusion to go around in Nicholss carefully constructed, slightly overextended drama. Its easy to criticize Mud for being old-fashioned, too redolent in familiar dramatic tropes, overly intent on establishing interlocking motifs and themes, and happy to fall back on both climactic violence and wishful thinking when it comes to second chances. More than anything, the characters of the boys keep it real and alive, the films emotional credibility overriding its dramatic convenience.

Mud is McConaugheys second characterization of a Southern trouble magnet in the Cannes competition this year, along with The Paperboy, and this is the more distinctive of the two; with messy hair, tattoos and a chipped tooth, his Mud is a mess but still not without charm. After a string of silly and underperforming commercial outings, Witherspoon is on the money here in a strictly supporting turn as a trampy gal whos wasted her life thus far. Young Loflandas Elliss pal, has a great face; Shannon, the star of Take Shelter, seems present more for moral support than for his role, which is very incidental, while Sam Shepard puts far more than his recent norm into his acute characterization of a man who may or may not be Muds real father and may or may not have been a government hit man.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (in competition)

Production: Everest Entertainment, Brace Cove Prods., FilmNation Entertainment

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Paulson, Ray McKinnon, Sam Shepard, Michael Shannon, Paul Sparks, Joe Don Baker, Johnny Cheek, Bonnie Sturdivant, Stuart Greer, Clayton Carson

Director: Jeff Nichols

Screenwriter: Jeff Nichols

Producers: Sarah Green, Aaron Ryder, Lisa Maria Falcone

Executive producers: Tom Heller, Gareth Smith, Glen Basner

Director of photography: Adam Stone

Production designer: Richard A. Wright

Costume designer: Kari Perkins

Editor: Julie Monroe

Music: David Wingo

131 minutes

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Maniac: Cannes Review

CANNES - Theres nothing cuddly or Frodo-ish about Elijah Woods psycho killer in French director Franck Khalfouns haute-horreur remake of the low-budget 1980 William Lustig movie thats become something of a grubby touchstone among genre fans.

Woods limpid saucer eyes are used here to telegraph unhinged blood-lust and insanity, even if only sporadically, as he plays a sicko with mommy issues who scalps his female victims. The twist, and what helps elevate the nasty, no-holds-barred Maniac from the grindhouse to an out-of-competition midnight-screening slot in Cannes, is that the entire movie is shot from the killers POV we only glimpse Wood in reflection and in photographs.

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Its a daring decision, potentially stripping the film of the suspense of not knowing where the killer is and obliquely inviting the audience to have empathy with him. For the most part Khalfoun and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre pull it off, although the technique more than once tips over from inventively arty to film-school-grad pretentious.

Slasher-movie fans, however, need not be put off by the stylized camera work and arty patina: this is down and dirty genre filmmaking, and the various slaughters, excruciatingly detailed scalpings and other atrocities are no less gruesome because of the highfalutin approach.
Khalfoun worked as an actor on the similarly stylized 2005 French horror movie High Tension, written and directed by Alxandre Aja, who serves here as co-scriptwriter and producer. Both have evidently watched a lot of Dario Argento movies.

In Lustigs original Maniac, Joe Spinell played the serial killer Frank as a sweaty, overweight and overwhelmingly physical monster who terrorized the women of grimy 80s-era New York. Khalfoun shifts the action to downtown Los Angeles (Disney-fied New York being far too clean and shiny now) and, taking advantage of Woods ethereal delicacy, makes him a slender, shy, creative type who is, in the end, no less creepy.

Frank works alone in a store that once belonged to his mother, restoring vintage mannequins. He has some issues. Hes completely deranged in fact, stalking his female victims, stabbing or strangling them and sawing off their scalps to bring home in the belief it will bring the mannequins to life and thus fill the void left by his neglectful, promiscuous mother. Or something.

When he meets Anna (French actress Nora Arnezeder, who starred with Ryan Reynolds in Safe House), an artist who specializes in photographing mannequins, they form an attachment based on their mutual interest in plastic people. But then Franks headaches start up and things go off the rails.

The movie is essentially a sadistic art-house bloodbath, with opera music and ballet dancers and funky little art galleries. The nerve-shredding score, by the mono-monikered Rob, salutes the music Italian prog-rockers Goblin provided for Argentos early horror-thrillers, the 1980s electronica lending a deeply melancholic city-at-night vibe.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition)
Cast: Elijah Wood, Nora Arnezeder
Director: Franck Khalfoun
Production companies: La Petite Reine and Studio 37Director: Franck KhalfounScreenwriters: Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur
Producers: Alexandre Aja, Thomas Langmann, William Lustig
Executive producers: Daniel Delume, Antoine de Cazotte, Alix Taylor, Pavlina Hatoupis, Andrew W. Garroni
Co-producer: Emmanuel MontamatDirector of photography: Maxime AlexandreProduction designer:
Costume designer: Mairi Chisholm
Music: RobEditor: BaxterSales: Wild BunchNo rating, 89 minutes

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The Suicide Shop (Le magasin des suicides): Cannes Review

Theres a whiff of a Tim Burton shroud here, but the humorous creepiness of Edward Gorey and the Addams family are better references to the black comedy feature animation The Suicide Shop, a tongue-in-cheek Parisian-set romp in which the warm humanism of eclectic director Patrice Leconte shines through. Based on Jean Teuls novel, oft adapted for the stage, this film version is full of musical numbers (the French lyrics rhyme in the subtitles) and has a cheery, old-fashioned look that could appeal to young teens attracted to skull motifs, though it may be too juvenile for the tattoo and piercing crowd. After its French release in September, the French-Canadian-Belgian coprod should be ripe for television. It ought to be mentioned that, unlike the novel, Leconte opts for a very bright and happy ending suitable for all ages.

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In a gray, gray city where recession rhymes with depression, everyone is gloomy and anxious to leave this cruel world. Suicides rain from tall buildings, with people dropping like dead pigeons on the streets below. Public suicide is forbidden, however, and here is where the Tuvache family has successfully found a niche. Their quaint Suicide Shop, tucked away on a back alley, sells ropes and poison, guns and knives, and more exotic implements for a quick trip to the Sweet Hereafter.

The whole Tuvache family works in the store, father Mishima demonstrating the merchandise, mother Lucrezia behind the cash register and kids Vincent and Marilyn glumly encouraging customers to end it all. Into this scowling family, an unusual baby is born: Alan, whose gap-toothed smile and incurable optimism is the despair of his father. Instead of depressing customers, he cheers them up with his light-hearted skipping and whistling, that not even beatings can stop.

Leconte adds several strong scenes not in the novel, including a delightful sequence of Alan arranging for his little pals to climb a tree and ogle his plump sister as she dances naked to Oriental music hes given her for her birthday; or the comic cruelty of his father teaching him to smoke and inhale deeply. In general, the trick of reversing good and evil, parent-child relations, becomes familiar and ho-hum almost at once, again suggesting young audiences as viewers.

Like the drawings by Florian Thouret and Rgis Vidal, there is an old-time quality to Etienne Perruchons scoring of Lecontes black humored lyrics, resulting in cute songs that dont stand out for originality. A Greek chorus of hideous red-eyed rats observe the action and sing their comments.

The film is available in both 2D and 3D versions, though the 3D print seems to mainly use the technology to layer the flatly drawn figures and objects in rows, like a childrens stand-up fairy tale book.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Out of competition), May 24, 2012

Production companies: Entre Chien et Loup, La Petite Reine, Caramal Films, Diabolo Films, ARP Slection

Cast: Bernard Alane, Isabelle Spade, Kacey Mottet Klein, Laurent Gendron, Isabelle Giami

Director: Patrice Leconte

Screenwriter: Patrice Leconte based on a novel by Jean Teul

Producers: Gilles Podesta, Thomas Langmann, Michelle Ptin, Laurent Ptin, Andr Rouleau, Sbastien Delloye

Art Direction, graphic design: Florian Thouret, Rgis Vidal

Editor: Rodolphe Ploquin

Music: Etienne Perruchon

Sales Agent: Wild Bunch

No rating; 79 minutes.

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Chernobyl Diaries: Film Review

A basic monster movie that benefits greatly from its unique setting, Chernobyl Diaries again demonstrates Oren Pelis ability to wrest scares with minimal production values and a clever premise. The wunderkind behind Paranormal Activity came up with the story for this effort, which he also produced and co-scripted. While unlikely to match that franchises unworldly successbarring a Fukushima Diaries, there seems little prospect for a sequelthis low-budget horror film provides a reasonable quotient of scares.

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The film concerns six twentysomethings who impulsively decide to forego their planned trip to Moscow to partake in some extreme tourism. Led by their guide Uri, a hulking ex-Special Services soldier, they embark on a tour of the Ukrainian town of Prypiat, abandoned since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster rendered it uninhabitable.

Wandering through the eerie deserted apartment complexes, they manage to engage in the usual youthful tourist silliness, posing for romantic pictures and cracking wise. But their general uneasiness is not alleviated by such mock-serious comments by Uri as I want you to tell me if you see something moving in the water.

After a half-hour or so of subtle build-up, its when the groups dilapidated van refuses to start that all hell breaks loose. As darkness falls, it soon becomes apparent that they are not quite as alone as they thought.

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And so the hapless tourists are forced to deal with creatures ranging from wild dogs to, well, who knows what? The victim count quickly rises as they run into menacing figures who make vividly apparent the nasty effects of decades of radiation poisoning.

Or not so vividly, as director Brad Parker wisely eschews prolonged shots of the horrific creatures in favor of quick glimpses via jumpy hand-held camera work that only hint at their physical deformities. Although the film is mainly shot documentary style, Peli does manage to work in his usual found-footage format in one key sequence.

Even with its brisk 90-minute running time (including credits), Chernobyl Diaries soon proves repetitive with its endless scenes of the frightened victims wandering into forbidding environs only to keep running into things that go bump in the night.

But the novelty of the setting ultimately proves highly effective. Shot mainly in Eastern European locations that effectively stand in for Prypiat, which is now actually a tourist site, the film is highly convincing in its verisimilitude. Adding greatly to the overall effect is the realistic production design that well conveys buildings long abandoned to nature and the use of such evocative locations as tunnels underneath the streets of Belgrade.

The youthful performers, who include such familiar faces as actor/pop star Jesse McCartney, are very natural in their terrified reactions, and Dimitri Diatchenko is so convincing as the affable but menacing Uri that he seems to have been recruited on the streets of Moscow.

Opens: Friday, May 25 (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Production: Alcon Entertainment, FilmNation Entertainment, Oren Peli/Brian Witten Pictures
Cast: Devin Kelley, Jonathan Sadowski, Ingrid Boso Berdal, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Jesse McCartney, Nathan Phillips, Dimitri Diatchenko
Director: Brad Parker
Screenwriters: Oren Peli, Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke
Producers: Oren Peli, Brian Witten
Executive producers: Richard Sharkey, Rob Cowan, Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson, Allison Silver, Milan Popelka, Alison Cohen
Director of photography: Morten Soborg
Editor: Stan Salfas
Production designer: Aleksandar Denic
Costume designer: Momirka Bailovic
Music: Diego Stocco
Rated R, 90 min.

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Cosmopolis: Cannes Review

After a strong run of films during the past decade, David Cronenberg blows a tire with Cosmopolis.

Lifeless, stagey and lacking a palpable subversive pulse despite the ready opportunities offered by the material, this stillborn adaptation of Don DeLillos novel initially will attract some Robert Pattinson fans but will be widely met with audience indifference.

DeLillos short, chilly 2003 book adopted a Ulysses-like format of a mans journey across a city in a single day to presciently foresee the anarchic Occupy mentality rising up to protest the financial shenanigans of the ultra-rich. The means of conveyance is a white stretch limo; to those in Cannes who have seen Leos Caraxs controversial, much wilder Holy Motors, in which the central character wends through Paris in a day in the same vehicle, the coincidence begs the question of whether Carax knew about DeLillos novel.

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By contrast, Cronenbergs film is remarkably prosaic, confined through long stretches to the dark and narrow interior of the car, only to be concluded by a static half-hour final scene that feels like a two-character Off-Off-Broadway play.

Pattinsons Eric Packer, not yet 30, is a brilliant financial visionary who never puts a foot wrong. With billions at his disposal, he practices rarefied and enormously profitable business strategies incomprehensible even to his colleagues while cocooning himself in an enormous apartment and his sound- and bulletproof car.

This day, his whim is to travel across Midtown Manhattan, east to west, to get a haircut. His bodyguard Torval (Kevin Durand) warns him about the complications presented by a presidential motorcade, resultant protests and what he terms credible threats against Erics own life. But the cold young man, presiding from what resembles a black leather throne in the middle of the cars back seat, feels aloof from physical danger.

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One by one, figures from his life join him in the car or for brief pit stops at a diner or bookstore: His blond wife (Sarah Gadon), whom he doesnt seem to know that well or spend much time with; his art dealer (Juliette Binoche), who vigorously screws him and talks to him about a Rothko chapel that has become available; a financial guru (Samantha Morton), who warns that, Something will happen soon; a mad pie assassin (Mathieu Amalric), who achieves his longstanding goal of creaming the elusive Eric in the face; and a man (Knaan) with whom Eric commiserates about the sudden death of a charismatic black musician whose funeral procession is causing further traffic chaos.

On the page and on film, Eric is a controlled and controlling figure, a man impervious to societys norms who one must feel has a mind operating well beyond the capacities of mere mortals. Hes utterly humorless and without detectable compassion or accessible humanity, which makes him less than companionable as a character. Pattinson doesnt help matters by revealing nothing behind the eyes and delivering nearly all his lines with the same rhythm and intonations, plus repetitive head nods in the bargain. Its a tough character that perhaps a young Jeremy Irons could have made riveting, but Pattinson is too bland and monotonous to hold the interest.

The shortcomings are compounded in the long climactic scene in which, after a startling bit of violence, Eric settles in to a dumpy building on the far West Side to be confronted by desperate and armed former employee Benno Levin (Paul Giamatti). A self-confessed nonentity and no-hoper, Bennos rants about Erics riches and his ultimate plot function made DeLillos book disappointingly predictable in its resolution and do the same here, making for a tedious, airless final act. Coming from Cronenberg, the pacing and staging of the scene are remarkably conventional.

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Disappointingly, the director could not find a way to electrify the energy of the opposition (sometimes seen outside the limos windows, which also allow Eric to shut off the rest of the world like a TV set), nor has he found a fluid, quasi-hallucinatory technique for transitioning among the numerous situations and their constantly changing participants. Of the guest cast, Morton probably makes the strongest impression as an adviser closest to Erics level of expertise.

Shot in Toronto studios with considerable rear projection and some location shots, the film would have greatly benefited from the continuous presence of the real New York, but financial considerations clearly prevented extensive work there.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (In Competition)

Opens: May 25 (France), June 8 (Canada)

Production: Alfama Films (France), Prospero Pictures (Canada)

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Almaric, Jay Baruchel, Kevin Durand, Knaan, Emily Hampshire, Samantha Morton, Paul Giamatti, George Touliatos

Director: David Cronenberg

Screenwriter: David Cronenberg, based on the novel by Don DeLillo

Producers: Paulo Branco, Martin Katz

Executive producers: Gregoire Melin, Edouard Carmignac, Renee Tab

Director of photography: Peter Suschitzky

Production designer: Arv Greywal

Costume designer: Denise Cronenberg

Editor: Ronald Sanders

Music: Howard Shore

No rating, 108 minutes

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Sightseers: Cannes Review

The most consistently hilarious Brit-com for a good half-decade - probably since Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz - Sightseers cements director Ben Wheatley's reputation among his generation's smartest and edgiest filmmakers. A pitch-black and sometimes gorily violent laugh-riot in which a nerdish holidaying couple semi-inadvertently embark on a killing spree, it was snapped up for North American release by IFC just before bowing - out of competition, bizarrely - in Cannes' Director's Fortnight sidebar.

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While its offbeat quirkiness and plethora of specific cultural and geographical references make it likely to play best to UK audiences, with careful handling this raucously enjoyable hybrid of two very different 1970s classics - Terence Malick's ever-influential Badlands and Mike Leigh's teleplay Nuts In May - might also spawn a cult international following as a surefire midnight-movie option for festivals, and on DVD/VOD. Wheatley's characteristic fondness for extreme imagery - as displayed in 2010's critical favorite Kill List - will, however, restrict broadcast-tube options and may impair theatrical prospects.

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Essex-born 40-year-old Wheatley's two previous features - including Brighton-set crime-family chronicle Down Terrace (2007) - combined sharp humor and explosive bloodshed with appealingly confident aplomb. Wheatley's m.o. involves smartly toying with genre conventions and showcasing superb contributions from relatively unknown performers. Having co-written both of his first pictures, he now works from a screenplay credited mainly to Sightseers' two leads - Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, who spent several years honing their characters on stage and on the small screen. The benefits of this unusual preparation are evident from the first scenes, whose spot-on dialogue and minutely-observed characterizations are matched by the eagle-eyed attention to details of dress and decor by Jane Levick (production designer) and Rosa Dias (costumes).

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Mousy wallflower Tina (Lowe) and her boyfriend of one month - red-bearded, balding Chris (Oram) - prepare for their first getaway together under the disapproving eye of Tina's mother, worrywart widow Carol (Eileen Davies). The thirtysomething duo stock up their 'caravan' - a homely, distinctively British variant of the larger American trailer - and hit the road on an itinerary taking them from the Midlands north to Yorkshire and the Lake District, with a selection of old-school museums and attractions along the way. But it isn't long before frustrated writer Chris's ire is stoked by an irresponsible litter-lout and first blood is spilled, albeit semi-accidentally. As the lovestruck pair continue their tour of historic sites and beauty-spots, the body-count steadily rises - likewise the domestic frictions inside the caravan...

Much of Sightseers' humor sparks from the unlikely contrast between Chris and Tina's dowdy ordinariness and the often-berserk nature of their crimes. Even after several kills, the duo - whose energetic sex-life yields several droll sequences - continue to chat and bicker over trivialities, exactly like regular folks. Expert modulation of disparate tones within the same scene ensures that while this is yet another road-movie about a murderously amorous couple - a tradition that includes Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers, Tony Scott's Natural Born Killers and even Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde - Wheatley and company's new variation has a wit, brio and panache entirely its own.

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There's also the matter of the cleverly-chosen and pungently British backgrounds - from Penrith's cozy Pencil Museum to the spectacular Ribblehead Viaduct during a genuinely unpredictable finale - whose charm and beauty take on a pleasingly sinister cast here. Regular Wheatley collaborator Laurie Rose's widescreen digital cinematography presents the countryside in a sufficiently splendid and alluring manner to delight UK tourist authorities - even if Wheatley's vision of this "green and pleasant land" tends to be strewn with messily-dispatched corpses.

Oram and Lowe's total immersion in the characters and their off-kilter world easily transcends their relative paucity of movie experience - both appeared in minor roles in Kill List, with Lowe having also popped up (as a very different 'Tina') in Hot Fuzz. That movie's Edgar Wright takes an Executive Producer credit here and was the stars' initial idea as director - but Wheatley's track-record with his self-penned films makes him an ideal fit for this tricky material. It's rare and heartening to see such a talented film-maker retaining his distinctive, uncompromising approach as he takes a step towards the mainstream. Sightseers' 'Palm Dog' award at Cannes - awarded to four-legged scene-stealer 'Smurf', a delightful presence as purloined terrier Banjo - should just be the first of many accolades.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Directors' Fortnight - Special Screenings), May 23, 2012.

Production companies: Big Talk, in association with Rook Films

Cast: Alice Lowe, Steve Oram, Eileen Davies, Richard Glover, Jonathan Aris, Monica Dolan

Director: Ben Wheatley

Screenwriters: Alice Lowe, Steve Oram (additional material by Amy Jump)

Producers: Nira Park, Claire Jones, Andy Starke

Exective producers: Matthew Justice, Jenny Borgars, Danny Perkins, Katherine Butler, Edgar Wright

Director of photography: Laurie Rose

Production designer: Jane Levick

Costume designer: Rosa Dias

Music: Jim Williams

Editors: Amy Jump, Ben Wheatley, Robin Hill

Sales Agent: Protagonist Pictures, London

No rating, 88 minutes.

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