A great piece of casting is the main reason François Ozon's Le Refuge works as well as it does. In the central role of Mousse, Ozon has cast Isabelle Carré who, aside from being a fine actress, was heavily pregnant throughout the film's shoot. At the start of the picture, Mousse and her boyfriend Louis (Melvil Poupaud) are drug addicts and the opening scene finds them injecting a fateful overdose of heroin. Mousse later wakes up in hospital, but Louis is not so lucky, and after being informed of her lover's death, Mousse then discovers that she is carrying his child. Louis' wealthy family put pressure on her to have an abortion, but she refuses and leaves for an isolated country house, where she can prepare for the birth of her baby, the last piece of Louis she possesses.
It's clear that the fascination in this story for Ozon lies very much with his leading lady. He makes great use of Carré's naturally bulging belly and swelling breasts, and other characters in the film seem to find them just as transfixing as the director does. Le Refuge is an extremely tactile film, with people constantly reaching out to touch Mousse's stomach; when she meets a man who asks her to go to bed with him, she responds by requesting that he simply hold her and another scene has Mousse encountering a rather intense woman on the beach. There's a great tenderness in the film overall, with Mathias Raaflaub's delicate cinematography bringing a sense of peacefulness to the scenes at Mousse's retreat, particularly when compared with the harsher shooting style in the early Paris-set scenes, and Ozon, who has always been a great director of women, draws a superb display from Carré. She's a mesmerising screen presence who is especially watchable in her character's quieter, more contemplative moments, but after a while I began to wonder if there was much more to the film beyond this strong central performance.
In truth, I'm not sure there is. Mousse is eventually joined at her refuge by Louis' younger brother Paul (Louis-Ronan Choisy), and the pair's developing friendship is troubled by the resemblance to Louis that Mousse sees in him. Choisy is a musician rather than an actor (he also contributed the lyrical score), and he never really brings his character to life. The film rather drifts through its second half as this central relationship grows more complicated, but Ozon's understated approach fails to engineer any kind of dramatic momentum. Le Refuge builds to a climax that is both surprising and touching, but it still feels like a minor piece of work from a talented director. Frankly, I'm a little disappointed that of the two films Ozon made in 2009, this is the one that's receiving a UK release while his other feature Ricky (about a flying baby, no less!) failed to get distribution.
My mind has a tendency to wander when the film I'm watching isn't sufficiently engaging, and as I sat in front of Knight and Day, my thoughts kept drifting back to the title. Knight and Day – what does that even mean? Before the film, I had assumed that these might be the surnames of the lead characters played by Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, but they're actually called Roy Miller and June Havens. Wait a minute, it turns out I was half right, as Roy's real name is revealed to be Knight halfway through the film, and then there's that whole business about hiding the MacGuffin everyone's after in a toy knight, but that still doesn't explain the Day bit...oh, I suppose it's really not worth thinking about. Still, at least I had something to ponder as this increasingly tedious movie went about its business.
I guess Knight and Day isn't an awful film by the standards of the usual mainstream summer movie, but it's so painfully average in every department. It wants to be both an explosive action blockbuster and a screwball comic romance, but the sheer desperation of all involved, as they strain to please the mass audience, practically drips off the screen. Unsurprisingly, the film is a conflicted mess that is neither exciting enough or funny enough to succeed in any of the genres it strays into, and after the first hour has elapsed, the endless superficiality and senselessness of the whole production becomes exhausting.
Most frustratingly, this is a project that had some potential, and the first 15 minutes or so are intriguing and occasionally funny. Cruise's Roy and Diaz's June meet-cute at an airport before trading some flirtatious banter on the flight, and when she excuses herself to freshen up, he quickly despatches the agents on board that have been sent to kill him. It turns out he's a spy who has gone rogue to protect a young scientist (Paul Dano) from the traitorous FBI man (Peter Sarsgaard with an unnecessary accent) who wants to sell his invention to a notorious arms dealer. At least, that's his story, but the agency's claims that Cruise is a loose cannon who has lost the plot may be true for all June knows. Either way, she's now mixed up in whatever plot he's involved in, and despite her efforts to extricate herself from this adventure, she ends up following Roy from Boston to South America, via Austria, Spain and a remote tropical island.
However, it doesn't matter where they go because Roy and June just end up getting involved in another chase sequence and/or fight at every stop. James Mangold's direction is competent enough, but it lacks the liveliness and invention needed to give these action set-pieces a distinctive edge. Instead, we just watch as the seemingly invulnerable Roy wipes out dozens of assailants while June screams and flaps her arms and accidentally takes out the odd assassin herself. When they find themselves in a particularly tight spot, the scene sometimes ends with Roy drugging June, before she wakes up in an entirely new location, with no idea of how they managed to get there. Mangold uses these ellipses to move his story forward, but they end up leaving huge gaps in the narrative, giving the film a disjointed, slapdash structure that actually disrupts the momentum. Knight and Day feels hastily thrown together, a sense that's exacerbated by the shoddy effects work noticeable in a number of sequences, and it's clear that the filmmakers are banking heavily on the picture's star power being enough for audiences to overlook its flaws.
The gamble doesn't come off. Roy Miller is actually a good fit for Cruise and he brings his customary full-on intensity to the role, giving the character a slightly manic air that is clearly intended as a nod to his public persona. It's a decent performance, but he only has a single note to play for the whole movie. Diaz has her amusing moments as June (the truth serum scene being a highlight), but her performance is generally as strained as much of her recent work has been – where is the light radiance that made her such a star in the 90's? Ultimately, the terminal blow for the film is the complete lack of spark between its two stars. No matter how often they flash their blindingly white teeth at each other, we never believe in these characters or their relationship, and so Knight and Day just plays out as another empty mainstream dud; a film that has money to burn but hasn't taken the time to put in place the basic building blocks of a solid picture. In the right hands, Knight and Day could have worked, but it would have required a complete overhaul of personnel, scale and focus. They should have started with the title.
There's a double meaning behind the title The Secret in Their Eyes. On one level, Juan José Campanella's film is a love story, and the title therefore refers to the way Benjamín Esposito (Ricardo Darín) and Irene Menéndez Hastings (Soledad Villamil) gaze longingly at each other. The emotions they feel may have gone unspoken for years, but for anyone watching them together, it's pretty much an open secret. Primarily, however, The Secret in Their Eyes is a thriller, and here the title refers to the way a suspect gives himself away through the direction of his glance in an old photograph. Unfortunately, this is indicative of the rather contrived plotting that plays a part in undermining this classily made picture.
"I can't look back. Backwards is out of my jurisdiction," Irene tells Benjamín, but he can't help peering back into the past. In 1974, they were both investigators working on a brutal rape and murder case, and 25 years later, the now-retired Esposito is still haunted by the details of this crime, which he's hoping to incorporate into the novel he's writing. Campanella handles the parallel narratives that unfold in separate time periods with some grace, and The Secret in Their Eyes generally flows beautifully, with the director imposing a steady pace on the picture that benefits both the police procedural aspect of his tale as well as the slow-burning romance. That romance is given weight by the two leads as well, with the ever-excellent Darín and the entrancing Villamil sharing an onscreen chemistry that is one of the film's most notable successes.
Beyond the details of the main story, Campanella clearly intends The Secret in Their Eyes to have some larger resonance, with the events of the narrative acting as a metaphor for the climate of fear and retribution that festered in Argentina before the rise of the military junta. That's all well and good, but the film ultimately struggles to convince on a much more basic level. I'm not sure how strictly the director adheres to Eduardo Sacheri's source novel (presumably it is a faithful adaptation, with Sacheri being credited as co-writer), but much of the film is hobbled by the kind of thriller novel plotting that is often exposed on the big screen. The aforementioned identification of a suspect by his sideways glance in a photo is one particular groaner, and the further location of his whereabouts by his habit of constantly referring to players from his favourite football team is another. By the time the villain had been conned into a confession through a stupidly obvious interrogation tactic, I was starting to lose interest, but these developments have nothing on the climactic twist, which is laughable on a number of levels.
It seems to have worked for a lot of people, however. The Academy voters certainly fell for The Secret in Their Eyes in a big way, surprisingly awarding it the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar ahead of such big-hitters as A Prophet, The White Ribbon and Ajami. In retrospect, perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised, as it's exactly the sort of picture the Academy likes to choose in this category; stylishly made, with a surface sheen of complexity but resolutely old-fashioned and conventional at heart - it's 2010's The Lives of Others. There's no denying that the picture is beautifully made, with Campanella showing absolute assurance and confidence in his direction, and Félix Monti providing some outstanding cinematography, but I found precious little to get excited about.
There is one scene in The Secret in Their Eyes that really got my pulse racing, however. It occurs in a packed football stadium, where Esposito and his partner Sandoval (Guillermo Francella, bringing life to a thin part) finally come face-to-face with their target. The scene begins with a swooping helicopter shot before segueing seamlessly into a thrilling chase through the crowd and the stadium corridors, which is achieved through some extraordinarily inventive camerawork and faultless editing. It's an unashamedly flashy sequence, and one that threatens to draw attention to the technique rather than the content, but I found it dynamic and gripping and a real shot in the arm for the film. Unfortunately, this scene also feels like it has been parachuted in from a completely different movie, and as soon as it's over, the rest of The Secret in Their Eyes struggles futilely to match up to it.
Despite the best efforts of a talented cast and an ambitious first-time director, Beautiful Kate never rises above the dreary familiarity of its subject matter. The film is a rather strained tale of family strife in Australia, with Ben Mendelsohn starring as Ned, a successful author returning to the remote family home he grew up in for the first time in twenty years. There, he will have to face his tyrannical father Bruce (Bryan Brown), but the greater challenge for Ned is to face the ghosts that haunt this house, with every item reminding him of the tragedy that befell his twin sister, the eponymous Kate (Sophie Lowe), when they were both teenagers. Director Rachel Ward refuses to draw boundaries between the past and the present throughout the film, with memories of Kate intruding on Ned's consciousness at every turn. For Ned, there is no escape from the past.
This tactic of allowing the film to flow freely between different time periods is a daring one for Ward to employ, but it has the unfortunate effect of making things feel slightly aimless, whereas a director with a firmer hand may have given the picture more shape. Many of these flashbacks are shot from the point of view of young Ned (the well-cast Scott O'Donnell), although Ward drops that gambit around halfway through the film in favour of a more conventional and less distracting shooting style. Ned is haunted not only by his sister's death but by the incestuous relationship they shared the summer that she died, and Ward handles this difficult plot strand with skill and sensitivity, drawing fine performances from both O'Donnell and Lowe. Lowe gives an especially impressive turn as the enigmatic Kate, her vivacious presence and ability to handle sharp emotional shifts ensuring this character draws us in even as she remains intriguingly unknowable.
Ward is strong with actors on the whole, and their excellent work is crucial in propping up a film that occasionally threatens to lose its way. As Ned's sulky young fiancée, Maeve Dermody is short-changed by the thinness of her characterisation and by the unconvincing nature of her relationship with Ned, but she manages to give a sparky performance while the other three leads do the emotional heavy lifting. Rachel Griffiths gives solid support in a disappointingly small role, but it's Bryan Brown who really impresses as the dying patriarch still filled with rage and spite even as his body slowly wastes away.
For all of this ensemble's hard work, however, Beautiful Kate is ultimately lacking in the deep emotional impact a story like this is reaching for, and part of this is down to the directorial choices Ward makes. The cinematography by Andrew Commis is gorgeous in places, but the hazy style seems to keep us at an emotional remove from the drama, as does the ever-present and slightly grating score. The other problem Beautiful Kate has is that Ward misjudges the point where her tale tips over into melodrama, and the final revelation of a secret kept for twenty years is a real misstep, which gives the film nowhere interesting to go in its closing scenes. This is a beautiful and lovingly crafted piece of work, but it's also the work of a filmmaker struggling to find the balance between style and substance, and it ends up feeling like a rather empty endeavour.
"What's the worst that could happen?" That question comes up a couple of times in Splice, and it's usually the precursor to another unpleasant development. Vincenzo Natali's latest film is full of gory surprises, and while they may be unpleasant ones for his lead characters, they tend to be very enjoyable ones for the audience. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is the fact that Splice coheres as well as it does, given the fact that it's something of a hybrid itself, drawing on a variety of cinematic influences and blending disparate tones. Of course, from the moment scientists Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) begin mucking around with genetics in an unauthorised experiment, you know exactly how Splice is going to end, but you're still likely to have a lot of fun with the weird twists and turns that Natali takes en route.
Clive and Elsa (their names are one of many referential nods to Splice's horror movie precursors) are a married pair of hot-shot scientists at a genetic research facility, whose semi-celebrity status in the field has earned them a long leash. They work with creative autonomy and plentiful funds, and we are introduced to them just as they are on the verge of a real breakthrough. Our first glimpse of the pair actually comes from that breakthrough's point of view, when the lengthy opening credits sequence ends with a light shining at the end of some kind of birth canal, where Clive and Elsa await with outstretched arms and excitement in their eyes. "He's so cute!" Elsa proclaims, although 'Fred' is little more than an ugly, fleshy and weirdly phallic creature to objective eyes, and his chief aim is to produce potentially life-saving proteins when he's partnered with his similarly unattractive mate ('Ginger', naturally). It's a major scientific leap forward, but Elsa already has her eyes on phase two.
She wants to start splicing human DNA into the mix, and when the powers that be say no, she decides to defy the cautious Clive and run a few little experiments outside of office hours, which is where things start to get interesting. The result of Elsa's experiment, which she names Dren, has odd facial features, elongated legs and a scorpion-like tail, but she's recognisably human enough for the childless Elsa to form a strong attachment to her. She begins coddling Dren and dressing her in baby clothes, much to Clive's unease, but even he finds himself feeling protective towards their dirty little secret as the film progresses. The unnaturalness of Clive and Elsa's paternal feelings for Dren gives Splice a queasy fascination and a moral complexity that elevates it beyond its B-movie setup. The strong performances from Brody and a particularly excellent Polley also help in this regard, with both actors bringing a conviction to their roles that keep the film rooted in something real.
The most extraordinary performance in the film, however, comes from Delphine Chanéac who, after Dren grows at an accelerated rate, embodies the fully developed creature. A film like Splice really stands or falls on the quality of its monster, and Dren certainly is a memorable creation, which Chanéac plays with a childlike curiosity that segues seamlessly into alarming bouts of rage or an unnerving seductiveness. That seductiveness comes into play late in the film, resulting in a hilarious reaction shot, and one of Splice's chief pleasures is the way Natali embraces the ridiculousness of much of his film, leavening the shocks and gore with a well-judged note of black humour. Natali's previous features Cube and Cypher both made the most of their modest budgets through the director's inventive storytelling and sharp direction, and it's pleasing to see that working on a larger canvas hasn't robbed the director of his idiosyncratic approach.
Or has it? Splice has everything going for it right up to the climax, which is where Natali rather throws things away. It's not an awful ending by any means, but it feels so rote and conventional, tacked onto a film that has hitherto been gleefully subversive. The climax feels like it could have fit any number of lazy horrors, and I can't help feeling that this picture really deserved better, with the final twist in particular feeling like a first-draft idea that's too obvious to hold any impact. Still, Splice succeeds in its aims more often than not, and in the current film landscape, it stands out as an unusual and imaginative take on an old story. It may be a hybrid, but until the final reel, it's an extremely effective one.
