-
A Foreign Affair
Billy Wilder has a filmography like none other. Between the mid-forties and early 60s, he directed such classics as Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, The Seven Year Itch, Witness For the Prosecution, Some Like it Hot, and The Apartment. Born 1906 in a small town near Vienna, Wilder spent eight years as a…
-
The Worst Person in the World
Norway isn’t generally associated with romantic comedies, and the fact that the film features some genuinely upsetting moments for its characters might belie the categorisation, but Joachim Trier’s film delivers on the genre promise due to a sparkling performance by Renate Reinsve as Julie (echoes here of Strindberg’s Miss Julie), a character that at times…
-
Love Affair
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and then… Often cited, most famously in Sleepless in Seattle, this instant hit was twice remade: in 1957 with Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Cathleen Nesbitt; and in 1994 with Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Katherine Hepburn. McCarey, who directed the first two, was a key figure in 1930’s Hollywood, mainly…
-
Le Week-End
A couple spend a weekend in Paris to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. Their relationship is flagging and they hope to rekindle it. Will the Parisian experience have the desired effect? ‘This is a beautifully executed, fearlessly truthful and droll film on the emotional politics of reinvention.’ The Telegraph
-
Amour
In this two-hander, played by French acting legends Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, Georges and Anne are two retired music teachers who have been blissfully married for at least 6 decades. When Anne suffers two strokes, Georges lovingly assumes the role of carer but their love is tested in the face of the demands falling…
-
Like Water For Chocolate
An adaptation of a novel by Laura Esquivel, ‘Como Agua Para Chocolate’ (Like Water for Chocolate) is a Latin American expression which refers to the near boiling temperature of water for use in the making of chocolate, and is, figuratively, a reference to passion. In this tale of early 20th century, pre-revolution Mexico, a family…
-
Chico and Rita
This is an utterly seductive animated tale of historical accuracy, set in 1940s Cuba, Las Vegas and New York. The story unfolds through flashbacks as Chico remembers a distant past when, as a young aspiring jazz pianist, he met the beautiful and exceptional singer Rita. Music and romance pull them together but, in true star-crossed…