Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train/Ceux qui m'aiment prenderont le train (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
Revered in his native France for his prodigious work as a director of theatre, opera and film, Patrice Chereau last year deservedly received the award for best director at the annual French cinema awards, the Cesars, for Ceux qui m'aiment prenderont le train. Taking an inordinately long time to reach here after its Cannes emiere premiere two years ago, this is Chereau's eighth feature film and his first since the 1994 La Reine Margot, the only other of his movies to achieve a release here. Literally translated as Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, the title of this involved and involving drama is the final edict of the domineering, abrasive and bisexual painter, Jean-Baptiste Emmerich who demands that his family, friends and former lovers make the four-hour journey from Paris to Limoges, his birthplace, for his funeral. Chereau named the character Jean-Baptiste after his own father, also a painter.
Almost all of the film's first half takes place aboard the rapid-transport SNCF train as characters from the dead man's past are thrown together and forced to confront their relationships with him and with each other. They include his anger-fuelled nephew (Charles Berling) and his wife (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), both of them recovering drug addicts who recently separated from each other: and the painter's emotionally damaged former student and lover (Pascal Greggory) who is caught up in a gay triangle with his own long-time lover (Bruno Todeschini) and a HIV-positive younger man (Sylvian Jacques).
The tense, enclosed atmosphere of the train is heightened immeasurably by Eric Gautier's dexterous handheld widescreen camerawork within such tight confines; whereas the great majority of movies set on trains have been shot in studios and embellished with establishing shots, Chereau and Gautier spent 14 days travelling back and forwards by train to shoot these sequences, and their dogged commitment to authenticity is richly rewarded in terms of realism, atmosphere and virtuosity.
The second, even more discursive, half of the film details Jean-Baptiste's funeral, and a long night of the soul as the protagonists are drawn into emotionally fraught confrontations, only a few of which are resolved. This raw, brooding drama astutely taps into the cathartic nature of gatherings such as weddings, or in this case, a funeral, which often uncomfortably reunite disparate yet inter-connected characters for unavoidable encounters with their pasts.
The acutely observed screenplay is both searing and revealing as it addresses a range of themes from family, paternity and separation to desire, loneliness and frustrations. It is performed by an exceptional cast which also features the magisterial veteran Jean-Louis Trintignant in the dual role of the deceased painter and his twin brother, and Vincent Perez, startlingly explicitly shown at one point as a transsexual.
- Michael Dwyer
U-571 (12) General release
Opening here more than two months after its UK release prompted howls of outrage from the British media, this second World War action drama has rather different resonances in the week that the deaths of the crew members of the Kursk were confirmed. At its best, U-571 is a gripping portrayal of the terrors of submarine warfare, at its worst it's a rather plodding actioner with cardboard characterisation and facile plotting.
As for the criticisms of cultural imperialism, the producers have tried to cover their backs in the final credits by listing several separate incidents, one involving American forces, on which they claim to have based their story (one wonders whether the US prints carried the same message). There's really nothing new about all this - the 1945 movie, Objective, Burma!, starring Errol Flynn, sparked a full-blown diplomatic incident over its implication that US troops won the Burma campaign, and the film was not released in Britain for several years.
Revolving around an attempt by Allied Forces to hijack a crippled U-Boat and capture the Germans' Enigma code machine at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942, Jonathan Mostow's film is populated with stock characters familiar from countless war movies of the 1950s and 1960s. There's the salty old seadog who's seen it all before (Harvey Keitel), the nervous young commander untested in battle (Matthew McConaughey), even that old favourite, the black cook (T.C. Carson). When belting full steam ahead on the major battle sequences, it all works perfectly well - Mostow does an excellent job of conveying the terror of being depth-charged, for example - but when the cast start opening their mouths, the whole enterprise sinks into cliche before you can say "Down periscope".
Given the ridiculous time-lag between the UK and Irish cinema releases, U-571 should be available on video very soon, which is probably the best time to catch it.
- Hugh Linehan
Shanghai Noon (12) General release
The rise and rise of Hong Kong martial arts star Jackie Chan to Hollywood A-list status continues with this amiable, unpretentious and rather enjoyable comedy Western, which at its best is more than a little reminiscent of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Chan plays an Imperial Guard from the 19th-century Chinese court, sent to America to rescue a kidnapped princess (Lucy Liu). Along the way, he combats train robbers, becomes an honorary member of the Sioux and shows a few new twists to the hapless locals in the obligatory saloon bar brawl. Teaming up with gormless outlaw Owen Wilson, who pronounces his name (Chon Weng) as John Wayne ("a stupid name for a cowboy"), Chan becomes a wanted man, and has to learn the arts of gunfighting and horseriding before the final showdown with the kidnappers.
As the title suggests, painful puns figure prominently in Shanghai Noon, and some of the humour is downright daft, but director Tom Dey handles proceedings with a light, breezy touch, and he has two excellent comic actors to see him through. Chan, after all, is widely credited as the inventor of comedy kung fu, and as he gets older he seems to be relying more on the laughs than the high kicks. Wilson, as the gunslinger whose inflated self-esteem is not matched by his abilities, makes a good foil, and the movie as a whole is surprisingly handsome-looking, making full use of the expansive Western landscapes.
- Hugh Linehan
