Festival Review: Diary Of A Chambermaid / Journal d’une Femme De Chambre (2015)
★★★☆☆
A handsome adaptation of Mirbeau’s novel, Benoît Jacquot’s Diary Of A Chambermaid is a vibrant celebration of fin-de-siècle style.
★★★☆☆
A handsome adaptation of Mirbeau’s novel, Benoît Jacquot’s Diary Of A Chambermaid is a vibrant celebration of fin-de-siècle style.
★★★☆☆
From pimp to karate teacher, Rosa von Praunheim’s Härte paints a portrait through documentary and drama of a life of violence after a childhood of abuse.
★★★☆☆
Putting an unhappy life under the microscope, Ole Giæver’s Out Of Nature is an acute but glum excursion into first world problems.
★★★★☆
With brilliant performances from Rampling and Courtenay, Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years is an intense observation of a lifetime of marriage unravelled in one week.
★★☆☆☆
A bombastic wannabe epic about desert explorer Gertrude Bell, not even Kidman and Franco can save Werner Herzog’s The Queen Of The Desert.
★★☆☆☆
A sober portrait of the woman accompanying Heinrich von Kleist into the hereafter, Jessica Hausner’s Amour Fou isn’t quite as mad as it should be.
★★★☆☆
Shifting the story from polar explorer Peary to his wife, Isabel Coixet’sNobody Wants The Night offers a distinctly female slant on colonisation.
★★★★☆
Did video kill the radio? Nicolas Philibert uncovers the mystery of the medium in his warmly human documentary La Maison de la Radio.
★★★★☆
A beautiful adaptation of Vera Brittain’s bestselling memoir, James Kent’s Testament Of Youth is a bitter tale of love in wartime for the 21st century.
★★★★☆
If this is a man. Claude Lanzmann’s The Last Of The Unjust recuts unused Shoah interviews to reveal the controversial figure of Benjamin Murmelstein – Europe’s last Jewish Elder.
★★★★☆
Dramatisation of Stephen Hawking’s life from gifted university student and romance with the woman who became his wife, to international acclaim as a physicist and the break-up of his marriage.
★★★☆☆
Horror story which begins as schoolchildren and their teachers are evacuated from London to a deserted house in the remote countryside in World War II.
★★★☆☆
Friends since childhood, Kon-Tiki directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg sail through their Norse saga of adventure, friendship and trust with a handsome parable on film-making.
★★★★☆
Going back to the future through interviews with Switzerland’s first gay married couple, Stefan Haupt’s half-documentary The Circle reveals a postwar openness ahead of its time.