Round Two of Five At Once.

Right, I'm fairly well on record on not being Christian Bale's biggest fan, but this DVD was fanging about in the living room and I had nothing to watch and I kept hearing such great things about, and about his performance (I'd heard similar things about his showing in American Psycho, and we all know how that panned out...) I think the points given to him in The Machinist are for his weight loss, which yes, while demonstrating incredible commitment, also demonstrates a level of insanity - boy, that's going too far. And he still seemed like Christian Bale. Emaciated, but still him. An interesting tale of being haunted by your conscience, it might have played better if Fight Club hadn't done such a bang up job a few years earlier. I remember being a little scared in a few points, but I shit myself over anything. 2 stars.

Have I mentioned that I love Atom Egoyan's name? Yes, I think I might have here. His name will always draw me to his films. Of course, whacking Julianne Moore in there is going to go a long way towards me heading out to see it also. I liked The Sweet Hereafter, but not so much Chloe. It was fine, I guess, but it didn't grab me the same way. The family drama was all a little off. Moore was terrific, as always, but I didn't quite gel with Amanda Seyfried and Liam Neeson. I just don't think they quite worked. (Max Thierot was cute though...) And the cerebral nature of everything kept it all a little cool and distant - the white rooms and glass everywhere, I can see where it was going with the kind of sterile environment and how that plays against the drama within, but it was all a little too much. It was a fine film that could have been great but in the end I feel that it missed it because of lazy visual cues. 2.5 stars.

Man, I totally don't even know where to start with Aguirre: Wrath Of God. Werner Herzog is one crazy, crazy guy. Like, seriously. Nuts. Brilliant, but loopy. I definitely don't think I can contain all that is this film in such a nutshell. Klaus Kinski is the titular Aguirre in a South American expedition to find El Dorado. He takes charge, seizes power if you will, and leads his troops or whatever onwards against all common sense, coming under attack from all sides, until eventually his men are hallucinating and he is proclaiming himself the wrath of god whilst covered in monkeys. No, really. Herzog really laid the groundwork for many of his latter films with this one. Kinski is terrifyingly mad, Herzog is terrifyingly creative, and the film somehow works for it all. It's mental, absolutely mental, but such a riveting piece of filmmaking, and seemingly such an influence on films such as Apocalypse Now (I'm seeing it - anyone else?)(In looking back, that's another film I watched and didn't write up. Damn.) 4.5 stars.

This is a film I really want to spend time on. But I must be strong. Abbas Kiarostami is a genius, he really is. I really enjoyed Close-Up, I loved loved loved Taste of Cherry, and now I really liked Ten as well. His is an oeuvre I really need to explore in much more depth, and repeatedly. Here, he has ten episodes of customers (or a son) in the passenger seat of a van, driven by their psychologist, who is interacting with her as she drives them around Tehran. It's such a simple concept, all taking place within the car, but it is a masterclass in what can be achieved with so little, and so simply. It is truly beautiful and a wondrous look at the often ignored stories of the women in this part of the world, opening them up not as victims of repression but as people just like the rest of us. Without it ever feeling like that is what is going on. Truly marvelous. 5 stars.

The major thing I can say about Food, Inc. is that is has changed the way I eat. Literally. I pay so much more attention to it now. To where my produce is coming from. To its content. I'm shopping more at farmer's markets when I can, but when I can't I'm doing everything within my means to make sure I pay attention to the lessons learnt from this film. Because they are many. The film follows in the footsteps of other docos like The Cove that are truly terrifying, particularly affecting (I've only eaten salmon twice since watching The Cove, and I used to eat salmon a lot. And they don't even mention salmon!) I can't recommend it highly enough, but be prepared to be very challenged about your habits. As a look at the global food industry, it is a horrifying exposé. Overly didactic and preachy in parts, perhaps, but when dealing with a subject as important as this one, a little bit of ramming down the throat probably doesn't go astray. 4.5 stars.

Long Time...

Right, a few things have happened. I've moved to Berlin. It had been in the cards, but it then all became concrete in a very short space of time, and then I left, and then I had to find a place to live, and now I have and I'm in Berlin and I love Berlin and I am only here for a couple of months so I'm going to try and make the most of it. Of course, I love films, so they are going to keep popping up, but there's no way I'm going to hit my target of 365 over a year - I'll be very lucky to hit 270 I think. Still, a good effort considering.


I'm also way behind on writeups, so I'm going to give some very brief notes on all of those that I'm behind on over the next few entries, spreading them out a little.


First things first:

I'd never seen Oliver Stone's Wall Street until recently. Never. It had always kind of drifted around wanting me to watch it, always there hovering somewhere in the middle of the list of titles I want to pick up. Probably due to the recent release of the sequel I finally got it out. I gotta say, I didn't overly love it. Michael Douglas' performance in it was fine, but even that didn't really wow me. Strong, yes, but not mind-blowing. Some good moments, the 'greed' speech being obvious, but I've never much liked Charlie Sheen either. That phone of Gordon's is hilarious. And sure, it was entertaining enough, towards the lower level of enjoyment. Let's go with 2 stars.

I saw Inception right when it came out in the UK (that's how far behind I was to start, and then the last almost month in Berlin has taken even further behind...) and came out of it really, really liking it. Visually amazing, though goddammit I want to see Leonardo DiCaprio smile at some stage soon - after Shutter Island and then this I'm so tired of his furrowed brow, and I know he can do other things. Joseph Gordon Levitt (future husband) I loved, but I'll love him in pretty much anything, and Tom Hardy gave his character a difference to what one might imagine for his Hollywood breakout - his Bronson promise will hopefully come good. I thought the film as a whole was very cerebral, very clever, but lacked an emotional core. I sense that the Marion Cotillard segments were aiming for it, but I don't think Christopher Nolan managed to pull that off. Now that I think about it, his films always seem a little detached from the heart. It is a terrific film, a very showy piece that doesn't go over the top, and what it does show, it shows well. I don't understand how people found it confusing - if you're paying even half the attention any film deserves, they spell it out pretty clearly as to which dream layer you're in. Very good, but not great, and a couple of months on my desire to rewatch that was very strong after exiting the theatre has become a general feeling that it's not necessary for me to go there again any time soon. Very entertaining, but not earth-shattering. 4 stars.

I was alive in the 1980s, but only just, and I've never much liked the period. It's only recently that the fashion, the music, the general vibe of the decade hasn't grated on me, so I'm putting the blame for having never seen The Breakfast Club right in the court of the 80s in general. John Hughes' seminal teen flick starring Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwals and Ally Sheedy was fun to watch with its broad characterisations and strong stereotypes. As a basic introduction to cliques and generalised judgements of character it works well by keeping it light while introducing us to the characters. Maybe if my viewing of it had been more timely, instead of twenty-five years after the initial release, my opinion would be different. Maybe if I sat down and laughed and watched it with friends I'd have enjoyed it more. That being said, it was fun, but it's not in my own personal canon. 2.5 stars.

Melissa Leo gives a tour de force performance in Courtney Hunt's debut feature Frozen River, which won the Dramatic Prize at Sundance in 2008 and netted Leo a deserved Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Leo is single mother trying to get together the money to pay for her new double wide before the cut off date when she loses her deposit when luck finds her united with a native American people smuggler. On the border of the US and Canadia, the pair take people back and forth between two reservations on opposite sides of the frozen river that is the national border. It's a marvelous story of what two different women will do for their children in very different circumstances. I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, it all felt a little 'righteous Hollywood', but there's no denying the power of Leo's performance. Hunt is surely someone to watch. 3 stars.

When I saw that Caligula was the next film on my list I did kind of laugh out loud. This film is a fucking mess, but a brilliant and hilarious mess nonetheless. It was only after the fact that I realised there are about a trillion different cuts out there, and I saw the tamest, shortest one. I'm half inspired to go and find the original 7000 minute version or whatever, but then I also remember how bad this was, and despite the camp hilarity, do I really want to do that again? Though the cast is terrific - Peter O'Toole, Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, John Gielgud - it is a ham-fisted mess, apparently directed by Tinto Brass though with financing from Penthouse's Bob Guccione really directing the themes of the film and what goes on screen. Caligula is the young heir to the Roman throne, and after doing away with his predecessor takes over, becoming quite popular despite his eccentricities. There's a bunch of debauchery involved. There is incest and intrigue and coercion, and finally Caligula is murdered. It really is a terrible film, but so terrible as to be almost entirely watchable. I will one day hunt down the longer version. 1 star.

Life Is Wasted On... People.

So, there were a couple of laugh-out-loud moments in Greenberg, and that line was one of them. The whole delivery of it. "'Life is wasted on the living.' 'I'd go further. I'd say, life is wasted on... people.'" Hilarious. Pity that for the most part, though, the film was just kind of tedious.

Ben Stiller takes the lead role of Roger Greenberg, a 40 year old carpenter who has just returned to Los Angeles to housesit his brother's house while he is on an extended holiday with his family. Roger has also just suffered a nervous breakdown. His brother tells Roger that he can use their personal assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig), and, after a rocky start, the two enter into a sexual relationship. At the same time, Roger is reconnecting with his old life in LA. He meets up with an old bandmate Ivan (Rhys Ifans), the only one who really talks to him now after Roger scotched a record deal fifteen years earlier that lead to the demise of the band, who in turn helps to reconnect him to other friends, including Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh), an ex-girlfriend that Roger also tries to hit it off with, only to be met with rejection.


Aaand, that's about it. Really. 


I can see what the aim was here. Casting Stiller was probably similar to the tried and tested casting of someone against type in a serious but slightly, wryly comic film (see The Truman Show, Man On The Moon and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind for examples of this succeeding with Jim Carrey...) and show off their acting chops whist dealing with a serious subject and breaking down audience perceptions of the reality of the ailment and of the abilities of the actors. I'm sure that was the aim. The problem was the script just didn't really have anything going for it. There is no hook there. The hook is presumably meant to be Roger, but he is almost entirely unlikeable - nothing makes you root for him, nothing makes you really care about his predicament. He's a knob. Sure, he's had a hard time recently and that might be making him more of a knob, but it also seems that he was a knob before, and he doesn't stop being a knob as the film goes on, which leads you to conclude that, yep, he's a knob and nothing's going to change. 


And then it doesn't seem quite like they finished writing it. There are points in there that feel perfectly scripted, but then points where it feels like they're running on impro, but they're not doing in particularly well. There's a scene involving Leigh and Stiller in a coffee shop where I really noticed it. Like, not having a script is fine and all, and improing all the way along can work really well, but you can't chop and change like that. If it's going to feel like you're making it up as you go along then make sure it is consistent and it can add to the film. But when an occasional scene here and there feels like that it is very, very distracting. And incredibly frustrating.


More than that, however, was the issue with the character arc, and the fact that our protagonist didn't seem to have one. Florence kind of did, she was a much more interesting and empathetic character beautifully played by Gerwig. Maybe if the film had focused on her it would have worked, but she was secondary and her vastly superior story was an also-ran.


Leigh co-created the story with director Noah Baumbach, as well as serving as producer. The film felt very Baumbach, but I'm sure some of the blame must sadly be laid at the feet of Leigh, which is sad because I quite like her. And for the most part, out of the just-off impro segment, I liked her performance in Greenberg. And I think the idea had merit. But then... no. 2 stars.

You Killed Your Momma, I'm All You Got Left.

Man, I keep thinking I'm kind of making headway, and then I remember a title I watched and forgot to make a note of in my list, and never wrote up, and find myself back at the beginning. Every time I get one ahead of myself, this happens. At this rate, I'll be twenty-odd films behind forever.


I watched The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things a loooong time ago. Really. I think it was around the same time as I watched The Brown Bunny, which would place it many months ago. So, I don't really remember thaat much about it.

It's a really cool title (taken, as it is, from the bible), which is probably why I have been drawn to it again and again over the years. Like books such as A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, or films like Me And You And Everyone We Know, the title has stuck in my head and always  made me want to watch it (or read it, whatever), which is probably the primary reason I picked it up.


Now, I remember very little of it, except that I didn't think it was a particularly great film. There were good elements, sure, some good moments and interesting themes, and quite a noteworthy cast when you include Jeremy Renner, Ben Foster, Michael Pitt, Peter Fonda and even Marilyn Manson in a role in which you would miss him if you didn't know he was in the film. Asia Argento directed herself from her own screenplay based on the shorts of JT LeRoy.


Because she wrote it and directed it, I feel that it's fair to say that I didn't really feel any sympathy for her character. Yes, it could be that the character was entirely unsympathetic, but I think you needed some sympathy for her in order to truly feel for her son, but you didn't. No sympathy for her, and I then struggled to consistently find sympathy for the kid either. He was far too passive. Yes, I know he was, like, six and eleven for the whole film, but still. 


I think that might be a big problem. The two primary characters were either unsympathetic or passive. And the film was entirely too dour for the duration. I actually think it picked up and gained some edge, became a little more interesting and dynamic, towards the end when Argento's character was withdrawing and going a little nuts, but then the film ended, and that was it.


Really, I'm clutching at straws here. I don't really remember that much about it. I'm sorry. I don't. I remember what I felt about it after, and what I felt was 2 stars. So there you go.

Don't Married People Tell Each Other Everything?

Meh, another meh. Though it was my second Bruno Ganz film in a day, which is always exciting. I don't think I'd ever seen him in anything other than Der Untergang until I got around to watching Gillian Armstrong's 1992 Australian film The Last Days Of Chez Nous.


Vicki (Kerry Fox) returns from travelling to stay with her sister Beth (Lisa Harrow), her French husband JP (Ganz) and their daughter Annie (Miranda Otto.) They're all happy being back together again, though Vicki's 'free spirit' type attitude towards life starts to grate, though not on JP who finds himself falling for her. While Beth and her father (Bill Hunter) are out on a road trip so that Beth can confront him about why they never get along, Vicki and JP start to play, mirrored by Annie's first romantic blossomings with a lodger staying with the family.


It's very much a naturalistic film, doing away with melodrama and major dramatic plot points, climaxes or confrontations in favour of just showing it how it is. Maybe it's something to do with me and naturalism, then, after The Child. Maybe I just don't really like it in its natural form. Because I didn't find anything particularly interesting about Chez Nous. It just kind of muddled along and didn't seem to do a great deal. I didn't feel a great deal for the characters, with the possible exception of Beth, whom Harrow did a great job of adding nuance and texture to, and by the end I thought Vicki was pretty selfish. JP really gets away easily in the eyes of the viewer, playing the European card making you think it's not totally his fault, it's a matter of breeding, or some such tripe.


Helen Garner's script seemed a little bland, and then a little over the top in parts too, not fitting in with what she had already set down. The performances were actually fairly good, despite the fact that they didn't make me feel much. Fox went through fine, but it was Otto, Ganz and Harrow who sang for me. Hunter was Hunter - he always is, let's be honest. Geoffrey Simpson (who has done some terrific work - let's not talk about Glitter) lenses fine, keeping it real and natural like it's all meant to be. It's just a bit boring.


All in all, it felt like a bit of a nothing film again. Perhaps there's a feminist reading or something that I'm missing. But as it stands, it's 2 stars. Sorry Gillian.


(I also can't find a decent still of it. So it's not getting one.)

You Blew Up My Car. I Loved That Car.

Meh, I don't have a great deal to say about Martin Scorsese's latest Shutter Island. I didn't think it was terrible, I just didn't particularly like it. I kept waiting for it to get scary, for the tension to cut through, and it never did. It was a seemingly constant almost there film, which seemed to get stuck in contentment with its own mediocrity. It was like Scorsese got tired part way through and thought 'ah, fuck it, I'll just coast with this one.' We've seen much better here and here, after all.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Teddy, a 'duly appointed Federal Marshal' heading with his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) to a mental institution for the criminally insane on the remote Shutter Island in Boston Harbour. The two are investigating the disappearance of a patient who must be hiding out somewhere on the island. Run by Dr Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the question is raised as to whether the hospital is running experiments on its patients. Teddy gets crazier and crazier, searching out a patient he believes to be responsible for the death of his wife in a fire (played in flashback by Michelle Williams.) He encounters sinister beings in Dr Naehring (Max von Sydow), who liaises between the board of directors and Cawley, and patient George Noyce (a terrifying Jackie Earle Haley), as well as the missing patient Rachel and a whole host of dreams and hallucinations. Gradually, and then faster and faster, Teddy descends into his own paranoid insanity... but I won't give away the twist, no matter how easy many people claim it is to pick.


The cast is terrific, and they do some good work. I thought DiCaprio was trying a little too hard with his intensity, but I think I can see why he had to go all or nothing... it was kind of necessary for his character development, but I found it quite irritating after a while. The rest were all exemplary, with Emily Mortimer and my love Patricia Clarkson popping up, and the performances and Scorsese's direction worked well with the way they had to play their cards - I found them all a little off to start with, but it all came clear as to why that was.


The elements of the film... meh. I thought the production design was waaay over the top, similar to the horrible and completely removed from reality look of Gangs Of New York. It was just so over the top. I remember a scene early on where there was dirt or mud on someone's hands, and it looked so fake, so hammed on because we're in the movies now, where it really shouldn't have distracted from the psychology of the piece. And some of the effects... how when you're working with a budget like that can green-screening or projection be left to look so, so unrealistic? Seriously. We all know it can be done better than that. Robert Richardson lensed it pretty well, getting in lots of moody tones and sinister scenes, but the sets he was working with left it all looking a little too hyper-real - not even psycho-hyper-real, just not-very-well-done-hyper-real. Though, art director Dante Ferretti isn't exactly known for toning it down.


So yeah, coming out of this I think it is definitely lesser Scorsese. When you've built yourself a reputation like he has, it's sad to see a film so average. But we all have our off days. Here's hoping the next one restores my faith. 2 stars.

We Do Not Make B Pictures Here At Capitol.

I try. I try and I try and I try. I really do. I try to like the Coen Brothers' films. I recall liking Fargo, though I saw that a long time ago - I do recall liking it a lot, though, so hopefully time hasn't dampened it for me. Maybe I'll check it out again soon, actually. I've seen an awful lot of their films as well. In fact, I mostly like them, and then somewhere towards the end I turn and end up getting angry with them. I remember that in The Man Who Wasn't There. I remember it in No Country For Old Men. The Big Lebowski we've already discussed. And now Barton Fink, a film that has been on my radar since it came up for some class I did back in uni. All I remember was that some lines from the screenplay were involved (making me think it was one of my writing classes, though who can be sure) and that I liked them, always intended to check out the bigger picture, as it were.

W.T.F.

Barton Fink (John Turturro) is a Jewish New York playwright who has just had a critical smash in his home town. He is lured to LA to make some quick, easy money working on contract at Capitol, under Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner), the reasoning from his agent being that he makes a couple of thousand a week in Hollywood, and then he can afford to devote himself to making socially serious plays for a lot longer in the Big Apple. (Keep in mind this is the early 1940s and that money means a fortune, whereas now it is a pretty decent living.)


He checks himself into a cheap hotel and is set the task of writing a boxing picture, only he has never seen a boxing picture (he doesn't really watch movies at all), doesn't like boxing, and has no inspiration, or even really an idea of where to start. And he's under pressure to perform. Cue his neighbour, Charlie Meadows (John Goodman.) Meadows sells insurance, and is a drunk, a friendly fellow, prone to barging in and making Fink feel decidedly uncomfortable. The two, in the end, strike up quite a friendship.


Meanwhile, Fink has called upon W.P. Mayhew (John Maloney), his writing hero also selling himself in the movies. He strikes up a friendship with Mayhew's partner Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis), but that all ends badly in his hotel room. Meadows heads in to help him clean up the mess, and then things start to go strange.


This is what I mean. Things start to go strange. There's just no such thing as a straight story in the Coen universe. Not that I necessarily want a straight story, but I don't want one where I feel the filmmakers are smugly sitting there saying 'ha, we're sooo much smarter and cooler than you.' And that's what I always feel. I sit there waiting for something random to fall from the sky, or for the hallway to suddenly catch fire. I get that we're talking in metaphors. I get it. I really do. But the hallway on fire? Or UFOs? Or whatever? I was mostly enjoying it up to that point!


Actually, I wasn't overly in love with Barton Fink at any point. It was mildly entertaining, and then I just wanted to pelt my television (or, more accurately, my friend's television as I was at his house) with olives. I didn't, obviously, because it was my friend's television. And I didn't have any olives. But still.


Goodman was wildly entertaining. The script was smart enough, harking back a bit to the age of movies it was set in. Turturro inhabited his character quite well. This is probably my least favourite thing I've seen Davis in, and let's remember that I love her to death. But not so much here. Lerner is fabulous. It won the Palme d'Or, and apparently was the first film to win that prize, the Best Director prize and the Best Actor prize in the same year. That's about it. 2 stars. I'm actually getting angry again sitting here writing about it.

Dude.

I’m going to put it out there at the beginning: I’ve never been a big Coen Brothers fan. Maybe I came to them at the wrong time - I don’t think I really saw one of their films until my late, late teens, and I started with their later films and worked backwards, so maybe there is a narrative arc I have missed. Either way, the only film of theirs that I recall truly liking from start to finish was Fargo. No Country For Old Men I thought was good for the most part, but I came out of it feeling patronised by it - I felt that the film thought it was better than the audience, regardless of who they were. This is a problem I have felt with most of their films that I have seen - it's like, by the time the end has come around, the films have become tricky for the sake of being tricky just to prove to those watching that they are one step ahead, and to be damned with connection.

Having said that, The Big Lebowski is such a big cult film. Everyone (other than me, until a few days ago) has seen it. Everyone seems to love it. Except me.

I was hoping for something grab my funny areas like Fargo did. I was hoping to laugh. Actually, I think that’s the killer. I wanted to laugh, and I don’t think I really did at all. Maybe I watched it too late. Maybe this kind of stoner movie has now been done to death (I will recognise this as better than most other stoner movies I’ve seen, though I should also note that I have seen very few) and if I’d seen it a decade ago I would have a different appreciation for it. But really, I had no sympathy for the Dude. I just wanted to slap him in the face and tell him to pull himself together.

I’m getting ahead of myself. The Big Lebowski centres around a case of mistaken identity. Jeff Bridges plays Dude Lebowski, whose real name (though no one addresses him by it) is Jeffrey. There is another Jeffrey Lebowski (the ‘Big’ Lebowski of the title), an apparent millionaire businessman whose wife has gotten herself into a fairly significant debt. Thugs and fraud ensue, and the Dude gets mixed up in it in an attempt to receive a pay off.

The Dude doesn’t have a job. He just bowls, and drinks white russians, and smokes pot. He wants this as an easy pay day. And I just. Don’t. Get. How that is funny. He cocks up again and again, and it doesn’t strike me as funny. It seems a little pathetic to me. Sure, he was admirably portrayed by Bridges, but when you don’t have a great deal of sympathy for the character it’s similarly hard to respect the performance.

The bright spot for me was Julianne Moore’s role as The Big Lebowski’s estranged daughter Maude. As in Fargo, where my favourite was Frances McDormand’s character, the supporting female role does seem the most interesting. Yes, she is heavily caricatured, but she has the most hysterical mannerisms and lines. Moore plays her perfectly. I love Julianne Moore. And it’s nice to see her play comic - I don’t think she does it enough.

The big killer for me with this film was the fact that I didn’t think it was funny, and it needed to ride off its laughs (it is a comedy, after all), so that, for me, is a massive failure. I may be the only person in the word who doesn’t particularly like it, but then again I didn’t like No Country or O Brother, Where Art Thou? either, and most people seem to like them.

Look, I didn’t find the film terrible. I watched it all, and I never felt like killing myself to get it over with. I wanted more, but I did get enough from it to not want to slander it endlessly. I’d even watch it again, though mostly to make sure I’m not missing something. Maybe if I were drunk it would hit me a little more. One day, maybe, I’ll revisit. In the meantime, I’m going to lay on a lonely 2 stars.

I've Never Really Liked Children Anyway

Look, I get naturalism. It's fine. I quite like it sometimes. But this, this just didn't do it for me. I'm sorry.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (or the Dardenne Brothers, as they are often referred to) are one of only six filmmakers to have twice won the Palme d'Or at Cannes - the others being Alf Sjöberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Shohei Imamura, Ermir Kusturica and Billie August. Their two wins are also the only two wins for Belgium, ever, at the festival. The Child (or L'enfant) was their most recent win, in 2005.

It's the story of Bruno, a petty criminal, who has a baby with his girlfriend Sonia. He seems to have no qualms, no shame, and no real sense of morality, but for all intents and purposes he seems likable enough. The couple seem very young (at a few points they seem to act as little more than children themselves), but they seem very happy until Bruno does something rash, selfish, greedy and incredibly stupid regarding their new baby, Jimmy. One thing leads to another, but still nothing much seems to happen - naturalism, remember.

That, I think, is what doesn't quite work for me here. What is the film trying to say? Crime doesn't pay? Never heard that one before. Naturalism works for me when it is emblematic of a bigger picture, when by saying little it is actually saying volumes, and I don't get that from L'enfant. I really don't. It just seems to happily muddle its way through a nice little story without really drawing you in or putting you off, and ends up with something kind of meh. Yes, Bruno grows in the film, but in a very cliched way, and still, I feel, in a selfish way. I ultimately just don't care about him, and I don't know Sonia enough to care that much about her either.

The elements of the film were all fine. The actors did a fine job with their characters, I suppose. It looked how a naturalistic film should look. It sounded how a naturalistic film should sound (there was absolutely no non-diegetic music in the film.) But it just. Didn't. Do it for me. I'm not sorry I watched it, but I'm leaving it with 2 stars, and putting the Dardenne's Rosetta on my list of films to watch.