"The Confessional" (15) Light, House, Dublin
The renowned Quebecois theatre and opera director, Robert Lepage makes a highly ambitious, remarkably assured and wholly, cinematic film debut with the complex and multi layered but immensely rewarding psychological drama, The Confessional. Its achievements mark out Lepage as Canadian cinema's most exciting discovery in years and suggests that he may well rank with the leading Canadian film makers of today - David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and Denys Arcand - with whose work his film shares a preoccupation with the darker and stranger sides of sexuality.
The Confessional cuts regularly and skilfully between the years 1952 and 1989 as it gradually reveals a series of sinister secrets. In 1989, the movie's narrator, Pierre (played by Lothaire Bluteau, the impassive star of Jesus Of Montreal) has returned to Quebec, after three years spent painting in China, to attend his father's funeral.
Tracing his only surviving relative - his adopted brother, Marc (Patrick Goyette), who was the illegitimate child of Pierre's aunt - Pierre discovers that Marc is working as a prostitute in the gay massage parlours of the city. As the brothers delve into the past to find out who was Marc's father, the film becomes a quest for identity which plays like a detective story, complete with Hitchcockian red herrings.
In 1952, shortly before the births of Pierre and Marc, Alfred Hitchcock was in Quebec, shooting I Confess, the story of a priest played by Montgomery Clift who hears a murderer's confession but cannot divulge what he has been told - even though he is himself a suspect in the case. The filming of I Confess generated a great deal of public interest in Quebec, and Pierre notes that he attended a screening of the movie while in his mother's womb.
Robert Lepage's richly allusive movie refers pertinently to I Confess and to several other Hitchcock films, including Psycho, but these are far from being movie references purely for their own sake. The Confessional goes on to explore how we perceive things in cinema, what we are and are not allowed to see, and the consequent misconceptions which may arise. Lepage takes this inquiry further by probing how such a selective distribution or absorption of in formation in life itself bears upon the recurring theme of his own film - how the past haunts the present until the problems from that past are resolved.
The Confessional is a cool, contemplative and stylish film suffused with Catholic guilt although not without some unexpected outbreaks of humour, and it is ultimately moving. It is artfully devised and executed and particularly strong on atmosphere. The expressive central performances by Lothaire Bluteau and the unfamiliar but equally impressive Patrick Goyette head a fine cast which also features Kristin Scott Thomas, Jean Louis Millette and, as Hitchcock, Ron Burrage.
"Fargo" (15) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
"This is a true story," declares an opening pre credits statement in Joel and Ethan Coen's cargo. "The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred."
However, repeated efforts by the Minnesota media to unearth any vaguely similar real life case have proved entirely unsuccessful - and suspicions that this could be another coy artifice from the Coen brothers are heightened by Ethan Coen's introduction to the published screenplay of Fargo (Faber and Faber, £7.99 in UK), which concludes that the movie "aims to be homey and exotic, and pretends to be true.
Such are the abundant pleasures of Fargo, the finest film from the Coens since Miller's Crossing, that it hardly matters whether it is founded in fact or fiction. It deservedly received the best director award at Cannes last week for Joel Coen; Ethan, the younger of the two brothers, produces their films and the symbiotic pair collaborate on the screenplays.
A gloriously droll thriller, Fargo brings the Coens back to their roots, being set in their home state of Minnesota and in form and content recalling their auspicious first feature, Blood Simple. It features William H. Macy as Jerry, a debt ridden car salesman who concocts an elaborate scheme to squeeze money out of his wealthy, tight fisted father in law (Harve Presnell), who treats him with contempt.
Jerry hires two amoral thugs (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife and offers them a share of the ransom money he expects his father in law to pay without question. Naively convinced that he has concocted the perfect crime, Jerry looks on helplessly as one misguided move leads to another and his wan features turn even more glum and despairing as he and the kidnappers get swallowed in a whirlpool of desperation.
Marge (Frances McDormand), the local police chief, has little experience of serious crime, but undeterred by that - or by the fact that she is seven months pregnant - she immerses herself in the case with all the sharpness of her wits. The consequences, which involve characteristically free wheeling detours by the Coens, are thoroughly unpredictable in this teasing, intriguing, and very witty movie which is inventively and precisely plotted, populated by engagingly quirky characters and laced with laconic humour.
Although set against a snow capped landscape, which is impeccably captured by lighting cameraman Roger Deakins, Fargo is much the warmest of the Coens' movies, and that feeling is enhanced by another gorgeous score from their regular composer, Carter Burwell.
This gem of a movie wisely takes some of American cinema's best character actors and puts them centre frame to form a formidable cast, especially Frances McDormand who is subtle and strong as the methodical and tenacious Marge; William H. Macy, a veteran of David Mamet's stage and screen work and a regular (as Dr Morganstern) in ER, coiled up with edginess as the hapless Jerry; the prolific Steve Buscemi and Swedish actor Peter Stormare reeking of sleaziness as the low life kidnappers; and making a cinema comeback after 25 years away, Harve Presnell as the brusque and domineering father in law.
"The Most Desirable Man" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
The most successful indigenous production for many years at the German box office, Der Bewegte Mann (The Most Desirable Man) was savaged by the British media when it opened in London earlier this year, with one review after another claiming that the notion of a comedy from Germany was an impossible contradiction in terms. Both the German and the British responses have been rather extreme in relation to what is essentially an amiable and amusing farce.
The storyline deals with the snowballing confusions which ensue when a handsome and promiscuous waiter (Til Schwieger), thrown out by his girlfriend, moves in temporarily with a lonely gay man. Based on popular comics by Ralf Koenig and directed by Sonke Wortman, this breezy romp could and should have been pushed to further limits as, Pedro Almodovar, for one, would have done had he gotten his hands on such ripe material.
Helen Meany adds:
Grumpier Old Men (12s) Savoy, Omniplex, UCIs
As the old men get grumpier, their appeal to women seems mysteriously, to grow. We're into the realm of fantasy here, with the beautiful - and funny - Sophia Loren turning up in a Minnesotan backwater, opening an Italian restaurant and taking a shine to Walter Matthau, the crankier of the two sparring partners first seen three years ago in the comedy by numbers, Grumpy Old Men.
Now that John (Jack Lemmon) has found himself a wife (Ann Margret) and his son (Kevin Pollack) is getting married, Max is finding life a bit slow, but consoles himself with spying on his next door neighbours, until Maria, (Loren) turns up with her alarming Sicilian Mama (Ann Guilbert).
It's not saying much, but this sequel, by a new director, Howard Deutch, is better than the original; it's still strictly video and cocoa territory - Maria: Mamma mia!, Max: Holy Moley! - but the script, again by Mark Steven Johnson, has a slightly more sardonic edge and, while it all unrolls at an extremely leisurely pace, the performances from Lemmon and Matthau are less perfunctory. Perhaps it's the presence of Loren that has woken them up.
. To mark the centenary of cinema in Ireland, Sunday is National Cinema Day at all 132 cinemas in Ireland, north and south of the Border, and the admission price for all screenings on Sunday will be just loop each.
. Rejected by the Irish film censor, Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn opens today at 16 cinemas in Northern Ireland - in Belfast, Glengormley, Yorkgate, Coleraine, Derry, Newry and Armagh. It has an 18 certificate.
