Movies at Home: An Ideal Husband, Lust, Caution and Campbell's Kingdom

 

For American audiences, Cate Blanchett pushes her way to the front of the poster for An Ideal Husband when really it should be the main star Rupert Everett. Based on the  Oscar Wilde play of 1895 and directed by Oliver Parker, it has the cast to die for. Minnie Driver, Julianne Moore, Jeremy Northam and others. Even Simon Russell Beale. The plot concerns a story of blackmail, but it's the scenery that I liked best. The shots of carriages in West Wycombe Park and even at Waddesdon Manor. Even RAF Halton in winter. 

I loved the first half of Lust, Caution. Ang Lee is one of my favourite directors, it was just a shame his adaptation of Zhang Ailing's novel had to (maybe) stay faithful to the book for the violence later on. The film starts in Shanghai under Japanese control in 1942 where a group of wealthy women, are playing Mahjong. But within minutes we are back to Hong Kong where Chia Chi is at university and joins a drama club. There is "a typical director, never listens to anyone else". (This is Ang Lee having fun). Here Chia is drawn into a plot to assassinate a main collaborator with the Chinese, a Mr Lee played by Tony Leung. 

But what I really enjoyed were all the exterior scenes, the marvelous locations, the crowds and the costumes. The cinematography is exceptional. However, the story is centered on the relationship between Chia and Mr Lee as the group need her to set him up to be assassinated. This is when I became less than impressed with how this is portrayed, their relationship is almost abuse. There are graphic scenes that seemed out of place, and I never got to grips why the director wanted to show these. 

Then we are back in Shanghai those three years later, the same women playing the same Mahjong. We wondered why at the very beginning, and now here she seems well off when all along she wasn't. A new plan as here again is Mr Lee. Only for the ending, maybe true to the book, is not a happy one. And that will stick in the memory rather than all those wonderful images from earlier. There were awards for the movie. At the BAFTA's of 2008 it was nominated for best foreign film and best costume design. There were more for the Golden Globes, but it was the the Venice Film Festival where it won best film and best cinematography. It did not even get nominated at the Oscars.

The poster for Campbell's Kingdom is so old fashioned, befitting a film from 1955. One of the first films I saw at the cinema when I was ten. Top drawer British acting talent was on display with Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, Barbara Murray and the ubiquitous James Robertson Justice. however it has not worn well, all pretty hammy to say the least.