DRAMA
THE POPE’S TOILET (EL BANO DEL PAPA) (15) 98min om
Like the recent Couscous, The Pope 's Toilet works up a great deal of narrative tension out of what are very believable anxieties. lts strength is that it generates a plot out of real life and real concerns. Taking as its premise a visit Pope John Paul II made to the Uruguayan town of Melo. the film explores how the locals hope the visit will work a mini-economic miracle. Expecting many thousands of visitors to pour in from nearby Brazil, Beto (César Troncoso) and his neighbours all borrow heavily against the possibility of making a fast buck out of the visit. Beto and his family build a toilet that can be used by the hordes they're expecting. but will all go according to plan?
Directors Enrique Fernandez and César Charlone have made a film that is heavy on pathos and offers too many reaction shots to Cesar’s wise daughter looking at her parents' messy lives, but this is cinema with a purpose. a film that cranks up the tension as well as a thriller but with a decidedly more socio- political purpose. (Tony McKibbin)
I GFT, Glasgow 8. Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 5-Thu 17 Sep.
48 THE LIST 4—18 Sep 2008
DRAMA
THE BOY IN THE STRIPPED PYJAMAS
(12A) 93min 0
Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the nine-year-old son of a Nazi Commandant (David Thewlis). When his father is seconded to manage a concentration camp in a remote area of the Fascist empire. the lonely Bruno makes a new friend, Schmuel (Jack Scanlon). beyond the high wire. But will the innocence of their friendship survive the last panicked days of the Nazi Holocaust?
Based on John Boyne's bewilderineg successful novella this is the kind of badly acted. clumsily directed, liberal-guilt-monger-sweeping-cod- historical-nonsense that went out of fashion with Esperanto. Europudding and wonhy. endless issue- Ied US TV mini series' (usually directed by Marvin J Chomsky. go on look him up).
Adapted and directed with typical tedious forthrightness by Yorkshireman Mark Herman (Brassed Off, Lift/e Voice) this boring, unnecessary film is a strained. cynical step into the no doubt lucrative market of Holocaust pseudo porn.
(Paul Dale) I General release from Fri 72 Sep.
DRAMA/COMEDY ANGEL (15) 119min on
After years of gleeful, near bi-polar genre shifting, France’s greatest living film parodist, Francois Ozon (5x2, 8 Women, Sitcom), makes the film that every gay teenager, who has grown up in the latter part of the 20th century, would kill to make.
Based on the 1957 novel The Real Life of Angel Deverell by popular novelist Elizabeth Taylor and also inspired by the curious life of forgotten British novelist Marie Corelli (allegedly Queen Victoria’s favourite novelist), Angel is the campest rags to riches story you will ever see.
Naturally gifted but impoverished young writer Angel (Romola Garai, stunning) takes her scribblings to kindly publisher Theo (Sam Neill). Before long, her lurid romantic fiction has made her the toast of London, but Angel is a difficult and self-centred personality. As she accumulates wealth she becomes obsessed with Esme (Michael Fassbender), the brother of her dedicated personal assistant Nora (Lucy Russell). Artist Esme is a cad and a philanderer but Angel must have him at all costs.
With its stilted dialogue, Mills and Boon aesthetics and lavish mise en scene Angel should be a sugar-coated, nausea-inducing disaster. But it’s hilarious and thoroughly entertaining. It’s a celebrity morality tale with feathers and boas. Ultimately Angel is the kind of film you will love or despise with every core of your being. If you still remember the television series Lace with fondness or get a buzz out of reading the backs of Jackie Collins novels then this could be your film of the year, or any year. (Paul Dale)
I GET, G/asgow. Mon lS—Wed I 7 Sep.
HORROR EDEN LAKE (18) 90min I
For obvious reasons. youth violence has become a fav0urite theme of British horror films recently. It's strange that this trend seems to be going from strength to strength as none of the films, from Thomas Clay's 2005 shocker The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael to this year‘s Donkey Punch have been particularly good or done good box office.
Here. James Watkins. who wrote 2002 reality TV horror My Little Eye, makes his directorial debut with dire conseQLiences. Watkins' penchant for visceral and extreme horror diminishes any innovation he may have hoped to bring to the genre. Interesting and good looking character actors Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender blot their copybooks playing a couple on a romantic getaway that is fatally disrupted by a gang of urchins drawn straight from hysterical Daily Mail headlines. Technically and aesthetically Eden Lake is torturous, ridiculous and bloodily tedious. How films this bad get funding in the first place is the only real horror here. (Kaleem Aftab)
I General release from Fri 12 Sep.