Review: Pan’s Labyrinth and four more...

Guillermo Del Toro (or Billy the Bull as I like to call him) is one of sev­er­al bril­liant tal­ents in a remark­able cur­rent Mexican wave that includes Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel) and writer Guillermo Arriaga (Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada). Alternating between Hollywood fran­chises like Blade II and Hellboy and more per­son­al work he pos­sesses the richest visu­al ima­gin­a­tion of the group, and it is all on vivid dis­play in Pan’s Labyrinth.

Like he did in the great The Devil’s Backbone in 2001, Del Toro tells the story of a child caught up in the hor­rors of Spain’s Civil War, escap­ing into a world of fantasy that may be more dan­ger­ous than the ter­ri­fy­ing real world out­side. Pan’s Labyrinth is com­pletely bril­liant on every level.

For more from Latin America check out the 6^th Latin American Film Festival from April 19 at Rialto.

The best bits of Mr Bean’s Holiday have all appeared in oth­er films, but I’m less upset about it than I would nor­mally be. After all, how many eight year olds are going to get dragged along to a Jacques Tati film these days and a cinema edu­ca­tion has to start some­where. Bean wins a hol­i­day in France (and a han­dic­am) in a church raffle and, of course, causes mild inof­fens­ive hav­oc every­where he goes.

On his travels he meets a French act­ress played by Emma De Caunes who, coin­cid­ent­ally, is the daugh­ter of Antoine De Caunes who wrote and dir­ec­ted Twice Upon A Time which stars Jean Rochefort who also has a cameo in Mr Bean’s Holiday. Coincidences are every­where this week. In Twice Upon A Time Rochefort plays Louis Ruinard, a film dir­ect­or and former para­mour of legendary English act­ress Alice D’Abanville played by Charlotte Rampling. He dis­covered her back in the 70s and their pas­sion­ate romance fuelled their suc­cess­ful art. Inexplicably, to him, she left him in 1975 and retired from cinema to devote her­self to theatre and marry effete English aris­to­crat Evelyn Gaylord (a tired look­ing Ian Richardson). The ques­tion is, does she still really love him even after 30 years? Well, duh.

The usu­ally bril­liant Edward Norton gets an act­ing les­son from Paul Giamatti (Sideways) in The Illusionist. Norton plays a stage magi­cian in fin-de-siecle Vienna, try­ing to save the love of his life (Jessica Biel) from the clutches of dast­ardly moustache-twirler Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell). Giammatti is Inspector Uhl, Chief of Police and top spy for the Prince, and his job is to be fooled by the mys­ter­i­ous pres­ti­di­git­at­or which he does more than capably.

Sneaking into theatres this week is the excel­lent Breaking and Entering, writ­ten and dir­ec­ted by Anthony Minghella, com­ing back down to human scale after the epic Cold Mountain. He’s still cast­ing Jude Law, though, and Law repays the favour with his best per­form­ance in years. Law plays Will Francis, a land­scape archi­tect redevel­op­ing the blighted Kings Cross area of London, a stranger camped out in a sort of refugee Wild West under the radar of the middle classes.

But it’s a film about the rela­tion­ships between people, more than the eco­nom­ics that keep them apart, and on that level it is end­lessly fas­cin­at­ing. While a final plot twist might lay it on a little thick, there’s usu­ally plenty of truth sup­port­ing the intel­li­gent script and gen­er­ous dir­ec­tion. Highly recommended.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday, 4 April, 2007.