Jules (2023)

A spaceship has crashed in my back yard and has crushed my azaleas. Milton Robinson (Ben Kingsley) is a 79-year-old widower living on his own in his small town of Boonton in Western Pennsylvania. He regularly attends city council meetings where he asks the same questions every weeks and makes the same comment about the town’s slogan phoning home. He receives regular visits and help from his daughter Denise (Zoe Winters) a veterinarian locally. One day, a UFO lands in his backyard and a small humanoid alien (Jade Quon) crawls out. Milton attempts to get help, calling the police and his daughter and bringing it up at the city council meeting but is brushed off as senile. Milton brings the alien, who is nonverbal, a rug to keep him warm but after seeing he’s cold outside on the back stoop, coaxes him inside the house and treats him as a regular houseguest, providing him with a tray of assorted food but discovering that his guest only drinks water and eats apples. Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris) an acquaintance from the meetings, stops by and discovers the alien, telling Milton that they should keep it a secret for its own safety. Joyce (Jane Curtin), another elderly woman from the meetings irritated that Milton has been keeping company with Sandy also discovers the alien when she doorsteps them. Jules, the alien, begins repairing his ship but does not appear to be making quick progress. Milton’s daughter hears about her father’s antics and schedules him for a mental evaluation at a local facility where a neurologist Dr North (Anna George) says his faculties are quickly diminishing and that they should consider assisted living. The idea that he might have dementia upsets Milton and he storms out. Sandy, who is attempting to start a programme to connect with the youth of the neigbhourhood, is robbed by Danny (Cody Kostro) a young man she invites in to her home after he’s called her up on seeing the poster around town. After she states that she will call the police, the man tackles and attempts to strangle her. However the alien (whom Milton and Sandy have named Jules but Joyce insists on calling Gary – is there a certain singer in mind? His birthday is tomorrow, fact fans!) receives a vision of the events and telepathically causes the assailant’s head to explode. This raises the suspicion of the National Security Agency since they are conducting an ongoing search for the crashed spaceship. Milton, Sandy and Joyce finally figure out from Jules’ regular cat drawings that he needs dead cats to power his ship, so Milton and Sandy go out to find some but Milton continues to be troubled by thoughts of his declining faculties. Meanwhile, they are unknowingly followed by police who observe their strange activities … I’m not sure what to do. This hasn’t happened to me before. At first the screenplay by Gavin Steckler seems like a blend of Cocoon and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (the situation plus verbal nods are more obvious than meta) but this witty portrait of pension-age life also hits dark notes with ease and bats them away as quickly – in one case in an act of astonishing violence, albeit offscreen. His eyes are very understanding. There are some fun running jokes – Milton walks everywhere and curses the lack of a crosswalk; his repeated requests at the local council meetings; and each time he says he’s got an alien living with him, it’s received with the same query – An illegal alien? How three very different elderly adults deal with this extraordinary situation is treated with kindness and humour – while Joyce insists on performing If I Leave Here Tomorrow a 70s song that recalls her wild days and nights once upon a time in Pittsburgh, Jules’ empathy is such that he sees that Sandy is on the verge of being killed and does the necessary as Joyce warbles away beside him. That’s some juxtaposition. He’s very friendly, he’s undemanding, he watches whatever I watch. Companionship, the ignorance of adult children getting on with their own lives and the patronising misperception of the elderly’s capacities to cope are part of the emotional tapestry being enacted here – against the backdrop of a grand science fiction scenario. It is quite literally a study of alienation. I don’t see why we should prejudice him with our fearful thoughts. This meditation on ageing and friendship has a serious subject at its heart and that’s our loss of control when our faculties start misleading us. But this has the happiest of outcomes, all thanks to an alien who has the power to explode the head of a marauding raping home invader. Aside from the references to Milton’s beloved CSI on TV three times a day, there’s a knowing nod to the Men in Black who are in pursuit of the gentle non-verbal alien in their midst. You’ve seen the movies, you know what happens to these guys, deadpans Milton. A droll, witty, assured and heartfelt paean to friendship and the ironies of people on their home patch where they wind up being treated as idiots once they hit a certain age. The performances are pitch perfect from all concerned and Joyce is right about Gary/Jules – those eyes really are understanding. Quon is remarkable in the role of listener as these seniors pour out their worries. A low key left field joy! Directed by veteran producer Marc Turtletaub. You’ve got to enjoy your life, not worry it away

All Of Us Strangers (2023)

How do you cope? London, the present day. Lonely screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) is flirted with by his drunk tower block neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal), whom he rebuffs. He visits his unoccupied former childhood suburban home in Croydon and finds his parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) there. They died in a car accident when he was twelve (Carter John Grout). Returning to his London flat, he reciprocates Harry’s interest and they have sex. Adam comes out as gay to his mother, who accepts him but reacts with concern. He has sex with Harry again, and then Harry describes his own feelings of distance from his family. Adam talks to his father during his next visit, who accepts him for who he is and tearfully reconciles with him over the bullying he faced as a child. Adam and Harry go clubbing and do ketamine together, causing Adam to imagine a long-term relationship with him, then black out and wake up in his parents’ house on Christmas. Unable to sleep, he gets in bed with them and tells his mother about how he was sent to stay with her mother after her death but they are interrupted by Harry appearing in bed with them. Adam wakes on a train and pursues Harry onto another, seeing a vision of his younger self screaming in the reflection of the window before waking in his bed, Harry having taken him home after he panicked while high. He tells Harry about how his father died instantly but his mother lingered for several days, though his grandmother kept him from seeing her, and how their deaths grew into a great terror of being alone. He decides to show Harry his parents but finds the house empty, though Harry catches a glimpse of them as Adam breaks a window to get in … I’m not a proper writer. I write scripts. Writer/director Andrew Haigh’s quasi-autobiographical exploration of his past is actually derived from a 1987 Japanese novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada previously adapted for the screen as The Discarnates (1988). The time-slip structure gives this fantasy a generic mode that fuses the present-day concerns of a man coming to terms with his past not just in terms of grief but of having grown up gay in the Eighties. Haigh integrates his own life into the story, even using his childhood home as a location so that this is imprinted with concerns that echo throughout his aesthetic process. Much of Adam’s frame of reference is provided by the band Frankie Goes to Hollywood: their sound and imagery pervade the story. A man preoccupied with the life of the mind and imagination, Adam’s ability to conjure his parents acts as a salve to all the questions that remain unanswered in his life and in the lives of his parents who get the opportunity to catch up with the son they would never see grow into his adult self. He explains to them that his loneliness is not due to his sexuality: things have changed in ways they could never have imagined. His father heard him crying at night but never hugged him. Now he can do so. Harry erupts into Adam’s life and with what gusto. That look of lust on Mescal as he first approaches Adam is something else – he surprises himself. And he rests his face on the door jamb with what – shock? Pleasure? It’s hard to tell. It’s exciting. The juxtaposition of life in the tower block with its Ballardian foreboding and alienation made solid alternates with the warmer cosy low-slung Eighties semi-dee where Adam reconciles himself to who he is with the backing of parents who are younger than he is now. Our boy’s back home. Elevators, windows, door and hallways, colour palettes and soft furnishings, these are the stuff of architecture but they have a telling effect on experience and perception. Scott offers a tour de force performance in a film that is audacious in its normality – as though this were possible, occupying two times simultaneously. This is real, Adam tells himself. In this realm we enter the idea cinematically that the mind plays tricks on a character in order to save himself from himself. But also, Everything is different now. The pressure of finally becoming disinhibited means Adam loses himself in Harry’s presence – which has unintended consequences for this man he barely knows (in every sense of that expression). This is sublime filmmaking, moving, intense, an exhilarating ride through emotions expressed through sheer craft. A modern masterpiece of love and loss that lingers long in the mind. I suppose we don’t get to decide when it’s over

Kings of the Road (1976)

Aka Im Lauf der Zeit (In the Course of Time). How do you live? While travelling his route along the rural border between East and West Germany, solitary film projector repairman Bruno Winter (Rüdiger Vogler) meets depressive paediatrician and linguist Robert Lander (Hanns Zischler) when the latter attempts suicide by driving his car into a shallow lake following the breakup of his marriage. The two form a genuine friendship as Robert accompanies Bruno on the road to fix equipment in deserted and dilapidated cinemas. They discuss the decline of German film, the hegemony of America culture and their challenging relationships with women. Robert stops at his home where he discusses his unhappiness about his mother’s death eight years earlier with his printer father (Rudolf Schundler) whom he believes disrespected her. Bruno and Robert then encounter a third man (Marquard Bohm) whose wife drove their car into a tree the night before. They stay with him until the repair service turns up. Bruno decides to break off from his work to go to his childhood home on the Rhine and he and Robert take a motorbike with sidecar and a boat to get there but Bruno cannot bring himself to spend the night in the house. They return to the border where they ultimately part ways, with Bruno from his truck watching Robert on a train as their paths cross on the railway line. Then Bruno talks to a woman (Franziska Stoemmer) whose father refuses to screen new films at his cinema because he believes modern work exploits people … For the first time I see myself as someone who’s something in a certain time and that time is my history. Perhaps the quintessential Wim Wenders film, this road movie is an inky black and white portrait of the psychological state of Germany thirty years after the war, which has never really ended in its impact – empty roads, filled with signifiers of a depressed and separated nation and a people whose heads are singing along to American songs while contemplating suicide. The film ends at a border sign. For Wenders this is both an American-style film filled with air and space and music and occasional political references (including a funfair’s cigarette lighter made from a cast of Hitler’s head); and a conversation about the boundaries between geography and cinema, a dialogue about the colonising of the German consciousness, which he allows a character to state explicitly. This reflexive iteration gives the form a new European stamp, bringing it all back home, accidentally on purpose, colonising the ultimate American film form. In the end, film yields to the reality of geopolitics with American-ness a permanent inhabitant even if the troops are mostly dispersed and the Soviets are entrenched, at least for the time being. They are out of sight except as newspaper headlines. Hearts and minds:  the perverse antithesis to tourism as the uninvited guest lingers in ways that cannot be explained, only imagined. There are things that might shock, such as when Vogler defecates in the open air (an image that once seen is never forgotten) and the general sense of masculine despair. The third of Wenders’ road trilogy. Shot by Robby Muller with music by Axel Linstaedt. The Yanks have colonised our subconscious

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

My interest is energy – transference of energy. Humanoid alien Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) comes to Earth from a distant planet on a mission to take water back to his home planet,which is experiencing a catastrophic drought. He uses the advanced technology of his home planet to patent many inventions on Earth, and acquires tremendous wealth as the head of a technology-based conglomerate, World Enterprises Corporation, aided by leading patent attorney Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry) who carries out all the interactions with people. His wealth is needed to construct a space vehicle with the intention of shipping water back to his home planet. While revisiting New Mexico he meets lonely Mary-Lou (Candy Clark) who works as a maid, bell-hop, and elevator operator in the small hotel where he’s staying. He tells her he is English. Mary-Lou introduces Newton to many customs of Earth, including church-going, alcohol, and sex. She and Newton live together in a house Newton has built close to where he first landed in New Mexico many years earlier. Womanising college lecturer Dr. Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn) lands a job as a fuel technician with World Enterprises and slowly becomes Newton’s confidant. He senses Newton’s alien nature and arranges a meeting with Newton at his home where he has hidden a special X-ray camera. When he steals a picture of Newton it reveals alien physiology. Newton’s appetite for alcohol and television becomes crippling and he and Mary-Lou fight. Realising that Bryce has learnt his secret, Newton reveals his alien form to Mary-Lou. Her initial reaction is one of pure shock and horror. She tries to accept what she sees but then panics and flees. Newton completes the spaceship and attempts to take it on its maiden voyage amid intense press exposure. However, just before his scheduled take-off, he is seized and detained, apparently by the government and a rival company while Farnsworth, is murdered. The government had been monitoring Newton via his driver and he is now held captive in a locked luxury apartment, constructed deep within a hotel. He is kept sedated with alcohol (to which he has become addicted) and continuously subject him to rigorous medical tests, cutting into the artificial applications which make him appear human. Eventually, one examination, involving X-rays, causes the contact lenses he wears as part of his human disguise to permanently affix themselves to his eyes … It happened literally overnight. Paul Mayersberg’s adaptation of Walter Tevis’ 1963 novel is rigorous and finely attuned to the surreal. Bowie was living on milk and cocaine at the time, if his own admissions are to be believed, and his detachment and appearance are central to the success of probably the greatest science fiction film of the Seventies, an exploration of fragility and trust and rotten human behaviour. And it’s also about the alien nation of America, alienation and sex, feeding into contemporary paranoia about the political establishment. The flashbacks to Newton’s home and family are strange and lovely, his arrival in the nineteenth century simply dramatised for extra effectiveness in a narrative based on juxtaposition of the modern and the unknowable. Beautifully constructed, shot (by Anthony Richmond) and edited (by Graeme Clifford), this may well be director Nicolas Roeg’s greatest achievement with a wondrous soundtrack co-ordinated by John Phillips and featuring compositions by Stomu Yamashta. Stunning. I realise you’ve made certain assumptions about me

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

I’m not in love with you any more. Ex-litigator Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) leaves his three gifted children in their adolescent years and winds up in prison for fraud then returns to them after they have grown, falsely claiming he has a terminal illness when he’s thrown out of the hotel whose bills he cannot meet. He insinuates himself back into the family home where his archaeologist wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) is dating accountant Henry Sherman (Danny Glover). Maths whiz and business genius Chas (Ben Stiller) is a widower who survived the plane crash that killed his wife the previous year and moves his sons Ari (Grant Rosenmeyer) and Uzi (Jonah Meyerson) back to the family home convinced their apartment is too dangerous. Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a depressive playwright who hasn’t had a play produced in seven years. She is married to older neurologist Raleigh St Clair (Bill Murray) who doesn’t know any of her secrets. Formerly successful tennis player Richie (Luke Wilson) is on a neverending world cruise following a disaster on court. When he realises he’s in love with Margot, his adopted sister he contacts their neighbour Eli Cash (Owen Wilson) a lecturer and popular novelist who himself starts romancing Margot but dabbles in drugs. Royal’s arrival coincides with each family member enduring a crisis that seems insurmountable and living together again brings things to a head …  This illness, this closeness to death… it’s had a profound affect on me. I feel like a different person, I really do. Flat symmetrical compositions with intricate production design and little camera movement. Ironic soundtracks. Blunt wit. At first glance Wes Anderson’s films might feel too contrived:  highly stylised yet with an inimitable tone, destined forever for the shelf labelled Quirk. This is reminiscent of Salinger with its NYC setting, big brownstones, a dysfunctional family full of supposed eccentrics and is openly influenced by Le feu follet and The Magnificent Ambersons. At first glance it’s rambling and lacking construction. But at the centre of it is a performance of paternal dysfunction by Gene Hackman that’s genuinely great – but even that appears to deflect from the roles played by his children.  They are a prism by which this deceitful man’s life is viewed. Hence the title.  It was written for him against his wishes, says Anderson. There is an undertow of sadness reflected by the repetition of Vince Guaraldi’s theme from TV’s Charlie Brown series (and what an extraordinary soundtrack underpins this bittersweet comic drama, with everyone from The Clash to Elliott Smith busy expressing those sentiments the characters refuse). It’s a determinedly literary experience with Alec Baldwin’s voiceover ensuring that even if we miss the beautiful Chapter Titles (because this is based on a non-existent book…) we are always anchored in a sprawling narrative with its endearing cast of characters. In truth these are people who are unsuccessful adults, mired in grief, lost in unrequited love (inspiring two suicide attempts), depression and psychological problems, constantly beset by memories of childhood achievements they cannot reproduce in the real world.  Faking it. It is a work of profound sadness and understanding. Just look at the pictures. Written by Anderson and Owen Wilson. I wish you’d’ve done this for me when I was a kid

The Sheltering Sky (1990)

We’re not tourists. We’re travellers. In the late Forties American expats Port Moresby (John Malkovich) and his wife Kit (Debra Winger) are trying to inject their tired marriage with adventure in North Africa. They are accompanied by their friend George Tunner (Campbell Scott) and fall in with some loathsome English expats, the Lyles, a mother (Jill Bennett) and her son Eric (Timothy Spall). When the city hems them in they journey through the desert. Port sleeps with a prostitute while George starts an affair with Kit and now there is a complicated love triangle unfurling in difficult circumstances because Port becomes ill … No matter what’s wrong between us there can never be anyone else. Bernardo Bertolucci’s romantic interpretation of Paul Bowles’ debut novel about alienation plugs into its erotic and dramatic intensity and wisely avoids any attempt at expressing its overwhelming interiority, with astonishing performances by the leads (particularly Winger), mesmerising cinematography of the sweeping desert landscapes by Vittorio Storaro and an utterly tragic dénouement to this unconventional marriage of fine minds and wild desires that feels utterly confrontational. It’s a staggeringly beautiful work that is as decorative as it is despairing, resonant, mystifying and depressing by turn. It’s a plot that promises melodrama but is more consequential in the symbolic realm yet it also boasts a harsh lesson – that white people will always be strangers in this strange land of seductive images and grasping locals with their own motives. The haunting score accompanying this epic tale of love and death is composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Richard Horowitz. Written by Bertolucci and Mark Peploe. Bowles hated it – and he’s in it. My only plan is I have no plan

Elephant (2003)

Get the fuck out of here, shit is going to happen. John (John McFarland) is being driven through the suburbs to school by his drunken father (Timothy Bottoms). Alex (Alex Frost) is a talented pianist being bullied at Watt High School, Oregon. He and his best friend slacker Eric (Eric Deulen) play video games, watch a documentary about Nazis, have sex in the shower and load up on guns. On their way into the building wearing camo gear and carrying black bags, Alex warns John not to go in. Elias (Elias McConnell) goes round the hallways photographing other students before going to the school newspaper office to develop his pictures. Nathan (Nathan Tyson) leaves the football field with girlfriend Carrie. Bespectacled outcast Michelle (Kristen Hicks) runs through the corridors and escapes to the library to avoid sports. Three bulimic girls gossip and end up in the Ladies’ Room. When the boys fail to explode propane bombs and prowl the corridors and library shooting everyone on sight, Acadia (Alicia Miles) freezes and Benny (Bennie Dixon) helps her escape through a window … Damn, they shot him. Gus Van Sant’s meditative exploration of the moments leading up to a Columbine high school-like massacre looks and feels less assured than it did upon release. Perhaps because unlike its source material (Alan Clarke’s BBC film Elephant, which was about sectarian politics in Northern Ireland) it is politically rootless unless you regard teenage alienation as justification for genocide and the inclusion of a TV documentary about Nazism adequate as rationale for unleashing senseless violence upon your contemporaries. Perhaps that is the point – that children and guns are just not a good mix, teenagers are unknowable and basically ungovernable, allowing them too much time on their own is a really bad idea because literally anything could happen in those burgeoning adults. The over the shoulder tracking shots down the school corridors and their repetitive nature bring us back to the same moments again and again giving the narrative a poetic rhythm and spatial familiarity, as does the auditory track which occasionally lapses into silence and then white noise, particularly when Alex is sitting in the cafeteria and we get a hint of the killings to come. There is no doubt that the very boring nature of the scenario and the real-time pacing lends an incremental tension to the situation. The biggest problem here is that the affectlessness of the protagonists means a conventional drama cannot be constructed and a moral is hard to discern while the filmmaker is attempting to get into these boys’ brains. That is the core of the story: there are things that people simply cannot get to grips with. The moment when a teacher approaches a student who’s just been shot dead at a classroom door and treats it as if it’s normal is simply staggering. Screenplay by Van Sant with controversial ‘memoirist’ JT LeRoy and Diane Keaton credited as producers on a project that started life as a documentary. Most importantly, have fun

Interiors (1978)

I can’t seem to shake the real implication of dying. It’s terrifying. The intimacy of it embarrasses me. Interior designer Eve (Geraldine Page) and her husband, narcissistic corporate attorney Arthur (E.G. Marshall) split after decades of marriage and it comes as a shock to their three adult daughters when Eve attempts suicide:  tightly wound poet Renata (Diane Keaton), struggling Joey (Mary Beth Hurt) and actress Flyn (Kristin Griffith). Arthur’s new romance with vivacious artist Pearl (Maureen Stapleton) whom he wants to marry, introduces new tensions to the daughters’ own relationships – Joey’s with Mike (Sam Waterston), Renata’s with writer Frederick  (Richard Jordan) and there is a rift over Renata’s position as the family favourite. Arthur’s wedding at Eve’s old summer home brings everything to a head… She’s a vulgarian! Woody Allen’s first serious drama as writer/director is a mixed bag of influences, most obviously Chekhov, O’Neill and Bergman (and the scene slashed with the Cries and Whispers scarlet flourish is one of anguish). It’s a rumination on marriage, romantic behaviour, parenting and late-life desperation. There are moments of performance that are truly brilliant – the penultimate scene between Hurt and Page is astonishing. Stapleton is literally the story’s lifesaver. The end is shattering. You’ll live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to 

The Accused (1988)

There’s a whole crowd. Twenty-four year old Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster) hangs out at The Mill bar where her friend Sally Fraser (Ann Hearn) is waiting tables. She is gang-raped on a pinball machine by three men who are egged on by a gathering of onlookers, one of whom Ken Joyce (Bernie Coulson) runs out to a phone booth to call the police. In hospital Sarah meets Assistant DA Kathryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis) who prosecutes the case but agrees to a deal which will ensure they serve time because she fears Sarah’s history and her drinking on the night in question will make her a poor witness. However Sarah is angry and rams the car of one of the men who led the cheerleading during her rape and Kathryn feels guilty, deciding to go after the men who encouraged the crime … She put on a show, pure and simple. Inspired by the notorious 1983 gang rape perpetrated upon Cheryl Araujo, this controversial film has lost none of its power. Foster is stunning as the ornery, spiky, confrontational yet eager to please working class girl while McGillis is solid as the prosecutor who feels guilt at betraying her client and then pushes for a fresh trial of the men who cheered on the violent crime. Screenwriter Tom Topor was hired by producer Dawn Steel when the Araujo trial became a national talking point and he interviewed dozens of victims, rapists, prosecutors and doctors to hear their stories and point of view. The inclusion of the reenactment is the difficult issue that remains – and it’s a tough one to decide whether it is necessary:  perhaps the depiction proves the point that nobody ever believes the woman and those who do are never going to admit it much less say they are the guilty parties. It is playing this card that actually gives the film its authority and resonance not least because a point of view camera is involved and Foster’s vulnerability is paradoxically exploited. More than that, the film tackles the immediate and impersonal aftermath of reporting a rape, the portrayal of rape in the press, the acceptance by women (it’s truly terrible when the friend turns a blind eye and runs out of the bar), the inevitability of victim blaming and shaming and the overwhelming stench of testosterone in the male-controlled world that sees women as lucky receptacles whether they like it or not. This collision of plain pictures and words speaks truth to power. Directed by Jonathan Kaplan, who has such empathy for young people and such a gift for establishing time and place:  after all, this is the guy who made Over the Edge, probably the greatest film about teenagers. It was Foster’s first film after graduating Yale and if it hadn’t been a success she intended retiring from acting. She won the Academy Award for her magnificent performance. I kept saying No

Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997)

Aka Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow.  The devil assumes many forms. Copenhagen police say otherwise, but amateur scientist Smilla Jaspersen (Julia Ormond) who studies ice crystals in a university lab thinks her young Inuit neighbour Isaiah (Clipper Miano) was chased by an adult before he fell to his death from the roof of their apartment block. The daughter of an Inuit who spent her childhood in Greenland, Smilla learns that the boy’s father died while working for Dr. Andreas Tork (Richard Harris) in Greenland who heads a mining company and she is directed by former accountant Elsa (Vanessa Redgrave) to get an Expedition Report from the firm’s archive.  She asks her father Moritz (Robert Loggia) for help interpreting the information but has to deal with his young girlfriend who resents her interference in their life. After sharing her murder theory with a mysterious neighbour called The Mechanic (Gabriel Byrne) who never seems to go to work, she pursues her suspicions and her life is endangered as the impact of a meteorite hitting Greenland in 1859 is revealed in a reanimated prehistoric worm which proves toxic to human organs … Why does such a nice woman have such a rough mouth? Peter Høeg’s novel was very fashionable in the Nineties and encompasses so many issues – identity, language, snow and ice, ecology and exploitation, friendship and bereavement, medical issues, astronomy, being far away from home, being motherless … that you can quite see how difficult it would be to fillet from this a straightforward thriller which is what the cinema machine demands. Ann (Ray Donovan) Biderman does a good job streamlining the narrative threads which form an orbit around Ormond who has a tremendous role here but director Bille August doesn’t really heighten the tensions  sufficiently quickly that they materialise as proper threats. What works as a literary novel seems rather far-fetched on screen when stripped of all those beautiful words. Nonetheless it’s a fascinating story and it’s a shame Ormond’s feature career never had the momentum it once seemed to possess. Costuming by Marit Allen. The way you have a sense of God I have a sense of snow