Movies at Home: A Very Long Engagement, Drive My Car and The Innocent

 

A French film from 2004 that was nominated for an Oscar for Best Art direction and Best Cinematography. Co-wrote and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet it follows a search for a lost soldier of WW1. Audrey Tatou is re-united with the director from Amelie. This is a film that should be seen on the big screen, the exterior shots are incredible. Sam Mendes must have been inspired by the filming of the trenches. We see the stupidity of the infantry attacks as they charge across no man's land. We are given some background of the five soldiers who are eventually to be executed for self harming. Audrey Tatou's Matilde is on a quest to find out about her lost fiancée Manech. We find her at home after the end of the war. I thought I saw a change in the photography to a sort of bucolic softness. So the scenery, sets, costume etc are all superb. Just a shame that the story falters until it again takes off with the introduction of almost unrecognisable Jodie Foster as Elodie. There is one unforgettable tracking shot in a Paris market that includes cabbages being tossed across the camera. Impressive.

A famous Japanese actor and director seeks solace from the death of his  wife with a chance to direct Uncle Vanya for a festival in Hiroshima. When he arrives he finds he is not allowed to drive due to insurance requirements. His driver is a very young woman, but an excellent chauffeur. He has to be ferried backwards and forwards to his hotel on the banks of an island. The photography is outstanding. It's the exterior shots f the landscape that make this film Otherwise the story that at first involves casting and later rehearsals is pretty mundane. Which was a shame.

Not to be confused with The Innocents from 1961 that is selected for "Have Yo Seen ...., or other films of the same name, this 1993 film is directed by John Schlesinger and was shown on the TV channel Talking Pictures. It was only watching the credits at the beginning that I found it was adapted from the Ian McEwan novel that I read many years ago. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Isabella Rossellini in their younger days, along with Campbell Scott playing a naïve young man in post war Berlin. His expertise in telephone communications is invaluable to the allies bugging the opposition. 

But it is his relationship with an attractive German woman that leads to an affair. He is warned by his superiors and his English downstairs neighbour to keep his professional and social lives separate, but his infatuation leads to scandal and murder. I didn't feel that McEwan did the film any favours in his own screenplay. The dialogue was poor and the story suffered as a result.