The Pleasure Garden
Mismatched lovers, girls who look a bit similar, canny canines, dodgy flats in Brixton … Hitchcock’s THE PLEASURE GARDEN provides plenty of visual cues to what was to come, writes David Perilli.
Category Archives: Reviews
Barbara
BARBARA follows a disgraced doctor who has tried – and failed – to flee to West Berlin in the 80s. Two standout performances bring warmth to a film set during a sombre and unforgiving time, writes Liam Jack.
Hemel
Trauma and lust, taboo and love: HEMEL tries to explore the complex relationship between a daughter and a father, their sexual obligation towards each other, and also their individual struggle to find love.
Hope Springs
Potentially schmaltzy subject matter is not likely to leave an audience cringing in its seat, writes Eve Stebbing: HOPE SPRINGS was a five star film simply in terms of the tenderness portrayed.
ShortFusion: To Rust
TO RUST is a collection of short films about experimentalism, but a secondary theme could be ‘the hypnotic’. Sophie Skinner reviews.
Formentera
The absence of genuine tragedy in Ann-Kristin Rayels’ FORMENTERA – set on a small island not far from Ibiza – weakens the drama, writes Keith Braithwaite
About Elly
The audience begins to share in the sense of guilt which hangs heavy in the sea air in Asghar Farhadi’s ABOUT ELLY – a meditation on friendship, complicity and the very nature of truth itself, writes Hannah Clarkson.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Robert Guediguian salutes Cambridge as “the birthplace of Marxism” – and his film THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO, a drama set in the shipyards of Marseille, is vibrant with political argument.
Come As You Are (Hasta la Vista)
It’s impossible not to warm to COME AS YOU ARE, which takes as its starting-point the defiant cry of “I’m not going to bloody die a virgin!” from Lars, forced into a wheelchair by terminal cancer.
A Cube Of Sugar
In A CUBE OF SUGAR, screening twice at CFF2012, you get to see a more humane and rounded view of Iranian society. It provides a vivid and moving portrait of family life, writes Mike O’Brien.