Past Programs
History - 2008
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Moliere
01/05/2008
Not so much a biopic of the famous French playwright but a fiction, in fact a farce -- Moliere style -- about a young playwright who is rescued from bankruptcy by a rich patron who wants to give him a makeover: teach him to act, dance, et cetera, and seduce a wealthy widow.
Fabrice Luchini plays the wealthy man, Laura Morante the widow, and Romain Duris, the current heart throb of French cinema plays, the playwright who is smuggled into the rich man's house as a priest (a la Tartuffe).
In other words, Laurent Tirard, the writer director of this film, is playing with some of the creations of Moliere in his farces. It's a romp, this film, and there are some wonderfully funny scenes, most of them stolen by Fabrice Luchini. But I don't think swashbuckler and farce is Romain Duris's best thing. I had difficulties with him as the lead character, and with the romance. It's fun, but falls a little short.
The Other Boleyn Girl
13/03/2008
This film draws on a bestselling novel by Philippa Gregory which upset many historians, but which also provided fascinating insights into the place of women in the power games of Tudor England.
Natalie Portman plays Anne Boleyn, and Scarlett Johansson her elder sister Mary, who did indeed become Henry VIII's lover, was exiled and bore a bastard son who may indeed have been Henry's. With a screenplay by Peter Morgan (The Queen, and The Last King of Scotland), it should have been another fascinating tale of regal power games. But in the hands of director Justin Chadwick the bite and depth is lost and it becomes a glamorous soap.
Sandy Powell, probably the best costume designer in the business, has so far excelled herself here that I became riveted by the giant sleeves worn by Eric Bana as Henry VIII: more like leg of elephant than leg of mutton. It's true the Tudors invented power dressing -- just think of the Holbien portraits -- but these costumes upstage the actors. See it as escapism, sumptuous but shallow.
Closing The Ring
06/03/2008
Recently widowed Ethel Ann (Shirley MacLaine) is contacted by a boy in Northern Ireland who's found her ring in the wreckage of a World War II plane. The phone call drags up memories of a lost love and we see flashbacks of a weepy, romantic wartime tragedy with Mischa Barton as the young Ethel. Telemovie fare from director Richard Attenborough.
