World Cinema

Directed by celebrated painter Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the remarkable tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the 43-year old Parisian fashion editor and playboy who, at the zenith of wealth and success was paralysed by a stroke and suffered from “locked in syndrome”, where he is alive and conscious but unable to communicate with the world.

Bauby wakes up in hostpital from a coma to find himself paralysed from head to toe and unable to speak. The only part of his body he can move is his left eyelid, which he uses to communicate. The pretty speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze) recites the alphabet in the order of most frequently used letters, and Bauby chooses a letter by blinking. Thus, letter by letter, blink by blink, he ‘dictates’ his extraordinary memoir on which this film is based.
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An unmarked video tape that kills you seven days after you’ve watched it is the focus for this psychological thriller, based on the Japanese horror film of the same name. More eerie than grotesque, The Ring is bound to send more than a few Hallowe’en shivers down your spine this Friday.

Naomi Watts plays Rachel Keller, a Seattle-based newspaper reporter who is asked to investigate the sudden and mysterious death of her niece. Rachel discovers that three other teenagers also died that day, and that all four had watched a mysterious, grainy video exactly a week earlier. But once she manages to track down the offending VHS the budding journo can’t help but take a peek, and begins to fear that her curiosity could get the better of her. Determined not to be fooled by an urban legend, Rachel enlists the help of her reluctant ex-boyfriend Noah (Martin Henderson) and intuitive son Aiden (David Dorfman) to get to the bottom of the mystery. But one death threat later and Rachel is fighting to save her own life and those of her family. The clock is ticking…
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In this handsomely executed adaptation of Thomas Harris’s sequel from director Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Gladiator),  Lecter is now living in freedom as a curator in Florence. Ten years have passed since he escaped from custody; ten years since FBI agent Clarence Starling interviewed him in a maximum security prison. Despite her unspoken promise not to pursue him, Clarice, having been exiled to a desk job after a botched drug raid, finds her self lured by Lecter himself, who writes to her from Italy, confident in his pseudonym “Dr Fell”.

It turns out that Clarice and the FBI are not the only ones with an eye on the Doctor - billionaire and convicted child molester Mason Verger (played by a very heavily made-up Gary Oldman) remembers Lecter too. After using his wealth to escape a jail sentence several years ago, Verger was ordered by the court to attend therapy sessions… with none other than the celebrated Baltimore psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter…

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Lyrical and expressive, The Road Home represents a significant shift from more analytical and politically charged films concerning the period of Chinese history which preceded the Cultural Revolution. Dealing with the relationship between city and country, old and new, the film portrays love pursued in youth and fiercely remembered in old age. It is a tale of constancy and devotion against the odds in which the past represents the stability of family values and village customs; political tension is also hinted at, and occasionally bubbles to the surface. The present, on the other hand, is cold and uncertain. The young have moved away from the villages, and the old traditions are dying out. Traditional skills perfected over a lifetime are rejected for commercialism. The adage ”Know the past, know the present” resonates with inreasing sentiment as it is repeated throughout the film.

Zhang Yimou, who also directed Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, and The Story of Qiu Ju, was formerly a cinematographer, and he is adept at stirring up emotions with his mastery of colour and mood. He possesses an intense awareness of the natural world, revealing in his camerawork the glory of the changing seasons, the weather and the gorgeous landscape of towering mountains, crisp snow and lush, golden fields. San Bao’s impassioned soundtrack, reminiscent of James Horner’s theme music for Titanic, represents a full-blooded escape from the political heavy-handedness that dogged Zhang’s earlier Mao-era features, lending this elemental love story an emotional grandeur.

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Named after the sticky mixture of lemon, sugar and water that is used as an alternative to leg wax, Caramel is an ensemble comedy set in and around a Beirut beauty salon where the women struggle to make the best of a society which so often limits their options.

Director Nadine Labaki plays thirty-something salon owner Layale. The daughter of Christian parents, Layale is in the throes of an ill-advised affair with a married man.

Her Muslim co-worker Nasrine (Yasmine Al Masri) is about to be married to the man of her dreams, but goes to desperate measures to hide the fact she is not a virgin from her conservative in-laws. Rose (Sihame Haddad), the seamstress from upstairs, would llove to be in a relationship, but must spend all her spare time caring for her senile older sister.

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The beguilingly titled Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is based on writer/director’s Dai Saijie’s best-selling autobiographical novel of the same name. Set in the Chinese Cultural Revolution during the 1970’s, the film centres around two adolescents who have committed the sin of being born to “reactionary” parents – doctors who dared to suggest that Chairman Mao might not be entirely perfect. On account of their background, the boys are sent on a rural “re-education” camp where they are to learn the virtues of Maoist thinking and hard work, which includes much lugging of human excrement up a hill.

However, their gruelling stay is brightened by meeting the captivating daughter of the local tailor, known simply as the Little Seamstress (the boys never bother to find out her actual name). An uneducated peasant, the two bourgeois city-boys seek to open her mind through forbidden Western novels which they have stolen from another member of the camp — classics from the likes of Dickens, Flaubert and, yes, Balzac, the Little Seamstress’ favourite. The boys also read “The Count of Monte Christo” to the old grandfather, which inspires him to add many elegant details to his garments.

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Nothing is quite what it seems in Laetitia Colombani’s creepy romantic thriller He loves me… he loves me not. The film opens with promising art student Angelique played by Audrey Tautou (Amelie, The Da Vinci Code) entering a flower shop and sweet-talking the manager into giving her a single rose to send to her loved-one, the handsome cardiologist Loic (Samuel Le Bihan). Next we see Loic sniffing the flower, evidently touched.

Loic is in fact married, with a pregnant wife, but this doesn’t seem to bother Angelique in the slightest. She confidently informs her concerned friend Héloïse (Sophie Guillemin) that Loic is sure to leave her so they can settle down together, and from what we see of their relationship, it could be true.

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A departure from the gargantuan historical epics such as Farewell my Concubine and Temptress Moon for which director Chen Kaige made his name, Together With You is an unashamedly sentimental tale of love between father and son which faces strong, raw emotions like love and ambition head-on. Warning: invest in a large box of tissues before viewing.

The film centre on Liu Xiaochun (Tang Yun), a 13-year-old violin prodigy who lives in a provincial town with his father Liu Cheng (Liu Peiqi), a cook. Cheng is determined that his son’s talents not be wasted, and, stashing his meager savings in his red peasant hat, he travels with Xiaochun to Beijing for a competition which Cheng hopes will give the boy the big break he needs. As it happens, Xiaochun has no chance of winning, since the corrupt judges are swayed by contributions from rich parents, but, determined not to be defeated, Cheng persuades the eccentric professor Jiang (Wang Zhwen) to teach his son.

Jiang, a heartbroken recluse who lives in a hovel surrounded by stray cats and dirty laundry, teaches Xiaochun to play with his heart. Meanwhile Xiaochun teaches Jaing some self-respect and the two form a close bond. However Cheng soon feels it’s time to move his son onto a better teacher – the famous Yu Shifeng, played by director Chen Kaige himself.

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Italian for beginners is a touching and enduring romantic comedy set in a dreary suburb of Copenhagen. It portrays the lives of six lonely thirty-somethings looking for love and a sense of purpose who enroll in a beginners’ class in Italian run by the local council. Written and directed by Lone Scherfig (On Our Own), the film follows the guidelines of Dogma 95, the ascetic filmmaking code advanced by Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg and others which forbids expensive and spectacular special effects in order to focus on the purity of storyline and script.

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Recently, police in Japan arrested Tatsuko Horikawa, a 58-year old woman who had secretly moved into a man’s flat without him knowing; she had hidden in a cupboard and emerged during the daytime whilst the owner was at work. The 57-year-old man who owned the house became suspicious after food kept disappearing from his fridge, and so he set up a surveillance system, filming the woman as she walked around in his absence.

According to police, she had dragged a mattress into the small space and slept there for nearly a year. French news agency AFP quoted a local police spokesman as saying. “She told police that she had nowhere to live… She seems to have lived there for about a year, but not all the time.”

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