Everything Went Fine (2021)

Aka Tout s’est bien passé. This is our story. Novelist Emmanuèle Bernheim aka Manue (Sophie Marceau) receives a call from her sister Pascale (Géraldine Pailhas) informing her that their retired businessman and art collector father André (André Dussollier) has suffered a stroke. She rushes to the hospital in Paris where she sees the ill effects of this cardiac event: his face is horribly stricken, falling to one side, his speech is affected. She looks at the catscan of his brain on her computer at home. Manue is a devoted visitor despite the cruelties inflicted upon her in her childhood when he called her ugly, constantly berating her for her huge appetite (she is patently beautiful and thin). She used to fantasise about killing him. She is stunned when he asks her to help him die. It’s still illegal so Manue debates the situation with Pascale and then pays a discreet visit to a lawyer for advice and contacts a Swiss clinic run by a woman doctor (Hanna Schygulla). Their mother, his ex-wife (Charlotte Rampling) is a sculptress in the throes of arthritis, Parkinson’s and depression who doesn’t care a fig for him. She is already devastated by her own loss. She reminds her daughters that her parents didn’t attend their wedding because they warned her she was marrying a homosexual. His lover Gérard (Grégory Gadebois) creates a row in the hospital and the women have to stop him visiting. He says he’s getting the great watch he was promised by their father. As Andre gets better Manue is convinced he has forgotten about the whole idea but he tells several people including a cousin and regularly reminds her to make the arrangements. Then someone rats the women out to the police ... I want you to help me end it. Adapted from the titular autobiographical novel by Emmanuèle Bernheim by writer/director François Ozon, who regularly collaborated with the late novelist (she died in 2017), this difficult and highly emotive subject is treated in such a matter of fact realistic way and yet with a sure lightness of touch it becomes a remarkable viewing experience, decorated with stunning acting that nonetheless doesn’t feel like competitive performance. The unsentimental approach to a fraught scenario, dripfeeding backstory into the well managed narrative, subverts any potential for melodrama. Don’t tell your sister, but this story would be great for one of her novels! By turns desperate, petulant, pleading, sorrowful, distressed, enthusiastic, Dussollier is majestic as the playful monster, the gay dad whose bonkers lover has to be banned from visiting – until Manue sees them in a tender moment and eventually Gérard gets the Patek Philippe watch and it is clear the end is nigh. Manue is the daughter whom he treated disgracefully but whom he secretly adores as her sister clearly realises. Everything’s coming together. He wonders randomly when informed of the cost of the Swiss solution how poor people do it. They wait to die, shrugs Manue. This wealthy industrialist reminds her to get his Legion of Honour ribbon. We are in the world of the superannuated bourgeoisie for whom money is no issue but ill-health is the great leveller and financial comfort cannot stop the indignities of the loss of bowel control and the need for 24/7 care. As the moment nears and subterfuge is required the only person keeping a truly clear head is the man who sees only one option rather than succumb to the dreadful infirmities that will encroach upon him as further incidents will surely occur given his prognosis. He recognises his great life, his entitlement, his privilege and now his destruction. Amid all the superbly constructed tension there is great humour, telling detail, laughter, tears. A rich and timely drama, fair in every possible way. Mesmerising. You know, he’s a bad father. But I love him

The Life of David Gale (2003)

Rape. Murder. Death Row. Very intelligent guy. David Gale Kevin Spacey) is a former philosophy professor on death row in Texas. With only a few days until his execution, his lawyer negotiates a half-million dollar fee to tell his story to Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet), a journalist from a major news network. She has a reputation of keeping secrets and protecting her sources and has herself served a jail term for just such an infringement in defence of someone producing kiddie porn. With four days before his presumed execution Bitsey arrives at his prison and his lawyer Braxton Belyeu (Leon Rippy) diverts her intern Zack Slemmons (Gabriel Mann) and Gale tells her his story in a series of flashbacks: In 1994, Gale is a successful public intellectual and the head of the philosophy department at the University of Texas at Austin. He is an active member of DeathWatch, an advocacy group campaigning against capital punishment. At a graduation party, he encounters Berlin (Rhona Mitra) a graduate student who has been expelled from the school that afternoon and who earlier asked him to up her grades in exchange for sex. When Gale gets drunk, she seduces him and they have rough sex. She then falsely accuses Gale of rape. The next day, he loses a televised debate with the Governor of Texas when he is unable to name any innocent people executed during the governor’s term. Gale is arrested, but the charge is dropped when Berlin disappears. However, his marriage, career and reputation are all destroyed, his home is sold and he struggles with alcoholism after his wife Sharon (Elizabeth Gast) takes their little son Jamie (Noah Truesdale) with her to Spain and disallows contact. Constance Harraway (Laura Linney) a fellow DeathWatch activist is a close friend of Gale who consoles him after his life falls apart. However, Harraway is discovered raped and murdered, suffocated by a plastic bag taped over her head. An autopsy reveals Gale’s semen in her body and that she had been forced to swallow the key to the handcuffs, a torture technique known as the secure top method which Gale previously wrote about in a journal article. The physical evidence at the crime scene points to Gale, who is convicted of rape and murder and is sentenced to death. Now Bloom investigates the case in between her visits with Gale. Gale maintains his innocence, claiming he and Harraway had consensual sex the night before her murder. Bitsey comes to believe that the apparent evidence against Gale does not add up. She is tailed several times in her car by Dusty Wright (Matt Craven) an alleged one-time lover and colleague of Harraway, whom she suspects was the real killer and who has been trailing Bitsey and Zack. Wright slips evidence to Bloom that suggests Gale has been framed, implying that the actual murderer videotaped the crime. Bitsey pursues this lead until she finds a videotape revealing that Harraway, who was suffering from terminal leukaemia had committed an elaborate suicide made to look like murder. Wright is seen on the videotape, acting as her accomplice, implying that they framed Gale as part of a plan to discredit the death penalty by conspiring to execute an innocent person and in its aftermath ultimately releasing evidence of the actual circumstances. Once Bitsey and Zack find this evidence, only hours remain until Gale’s scheduled execution and they enlist Nico the Goth Girl (Melissa McCarthy) who now resides at Constance’s old home to restage her death … Name one innocent man that Texas has executed during my tenure. Urgency is inscribed from the first frame when Bitsey is running down a country road. After a series of flashbacks and contemporary interview scenes we rejoin that particular scene at 114 minutes in and the finale unspools. The screenplay by Charles Randolph resulted in a uniquely polarising critical reception for what transpired to be the late and lamented Alan Parker’s final production. Hate’s no fun if you keep it to her she just wanted to help other people avoid it. It’s a cunningly contrived drama, giving Gale a fully established private life and then turning his choices in a very different direction on the basis of one bad decision at a party with a sexpot which throws his life into disarray. You’re not here to save me, you’re here to save my son’s memory of his father. In this race against time narrative, the plot construction necessarily revolves Bitsey chasing her tail a little – we are to some degree in Silence of the Lambs territory when she talks to David in prison so that the ultimate manipulation of this conscientious journalist makes more sense in retrospect. Part of the dramatic problem is Winslet’s performance – it doesn’t ring entirely true: yes, she’s been carefully selected for the job of ‘saving’ David Gale on the basis of her fearsome reputation for journalistic ethics but somehow she doesn’t seem entirely serious in her profession as it’s presented here. Winslet overacts somewhat particularly in the more emotive setups. Where this should perhaps have engaged more with the idea of the role of journalists in promoting a point of view and the machinery of the news industry in shifting or controlling social perspective on crime and the death penalty becomes a more personalised tale about the lengths activists go to in order to make meaningful change – and in the State of Texas, which has a very high annual body count when it comes to Death Row. The final twist is probably a move too far in a film which thrives on every kind of sensation, good and bad. It is however very interesting on several levels, including performance. Ironically, in view of the criticism, this was allegedly inspired by a true story. Co-produced by Parker and Nicolas Cage. Let’s not throw a pity party and sit around reading Kafka

Air Force (1943)

Don’t talk – shoot! On December 6, 1941 nine B-17 bomber sets off on a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii en route to the Philippines. The Mary Ann is commanded by pilot ‘Irish’ Quincannon (John Ridgely). Bombardier Tommy McMartin (Arthur Kennedy) has a sister living in Hawaii and his co-pilot Bill Williams (Gig Young) is sweet on her. Cynical rear-gunner Joe Winocki (John Garfield) is intent upon leaving the air corps. They arrive at Hickam Field on the morning of December 7, just as the Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor and other military facilities. As Roosevelt announces the US’ entry into the war, all of the men prepare to face the enemy, including Winocki whose bitter attitude changes quickly in the course of combat in the Pacific … What kind of lunatics do I have in this air corps anyhow? Don’t any of you know what’s impossible? With a screenplay by Dudley Nichols (and a deathbed scene written by an uncredited William Faulkner), this Howard Hawks film is an indelible picture of a cross-section of American society at the helm of a bomber, made at the height of WW2 and based around an actual incident when a flight of B-17s journeying to reinforce the defence of the Philippines flew into the attack on Pearl Harbour. The characters are based, more or less, on people Hawks met while consulting with Lt. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, Commander of the Army Air Force, in Washington DC and the production was made in conjunction with approval of the War Dept. Originally scheduled by producer Hal Wallis to be released on Pearl Harbour’s first anniversary, the shoot was repeatedly delayed and WW1 aviator Hawks’ insistence on altering dialogue led to him being temporarily replaced by Vincent Sherman who then remained as assistant when Hawks returned. Garfield’s outsider character is the barometer for everything that occurs as he becomes integrated into the group and he is paid tribute by Tarantino in Pulp Fiction. There are historical inaccuracies but it packs an emotional punch in its vivid, electrifying violence and humour and Jeanine Basinger says it is “perhaps the purest combat film ever about the air service … It is like some hideous wagon train west, with problems of supplies and hostile forces constantly attacking the wagonload of heroes. It fits perfectly with the tradition of American films, and yet it is a unique and original film, not quite like any other.” Shot by James Wong Howe, Elmer Dyer and Charles A. Marshall, this is a bona fide classic. We’re gonna start a war, not a fight!

The Company You Keep (2012)

We all died. Some of us came back. Decades after an ill-fated robbery in which an innocent man was killed, a former member of the Weather Underground Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) is on her way to turn herself in to authorities when the FBI arrest her at a gas station after her phone is tapped. While covering the story and digging around, reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) discovers that recently widowed human rights lawyer Jim Grant (Robert Redford) was also a member of that particular group and is really a man called Nick Sloan since the real Jim Grant died in 1979. Sloan slips by the FBI led by Cornelius (Terrence Howard) who are following him when he goes on the run, from Albany through the Midwest and beyond, hoping to track down his former lover, Mimi (Julie Christie), who’s still underground and fighting for the cause. He leaves his young daughter Isabel (Jackie Evancho) with his doctor brother Daniel (Chris Cooper) and his wife. Meanwhile, Ben encounters a police officer Henry Osborne (Brendan Gleeson) who knew Nick back in the day and meets his his adult daughter Rebecca (Britt Marling) who is a lot older than she initially seems and Ben figures she is somehow connected to Mimi and Nick ... Everybody knew somebody who was going over or somebody who wasn’t coming back.  Adapted by Lem Dobbs from the titular 2003 novel by Neil Gordon, Robert Redford directed and produced this film which of course nods to that period in his own life when he was politically attuned and making films which spoke to the zeitgeist. Partly it’s about the state of journalism and Ben’s role of the ambitious journo who isn’t looking beyond the headlines, as Nick/Jim declares to him, Well that pretty much sums up why journalism is dead. It’s a pivotal statement because this is all about ethics – Sharon’s self-justifying, his hiding away, the times in which people live and endure their families being destroyed by violence, homegrown or otherwise (and millennial corruption is everywhere evident as Ben gets information with the passing of greenbacks to everyone he encounters). LaBeouf is good as the questing young writer – and looking at his screen career perhaps it’s the company he keeps that improves his impact because he’s surrounded by a great ensemble doing very fine work, including Nick Nolte who shows up as another member of the group. This is a serious work about a complex time which clarifies why historical crimes demand more than cursory payback and jail time. It’s well-paced, a drama of conscience, guilt and retribution. Now that’s context. They did unforgivable things but you’ve got to admire the commitment.