Film Index PROFILE
MIRA NAIR Born 15 October 1957, Bhubaneshwar (India)
Background After starting her career as an actress, Nair turned to directing award-winning documentaries, including So Far From India. She made her feature film debut in 1988 with the Oscar- nominated Salaam Bombay!, before finding further acclaim for directing Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury in the inter- racial love story Mississippi Masala. Since then, she has directed the Golden Globe nominated hit Monsoon Wedding, as well as an adaptation of the William Makepeace Thackeray classic Vanity Fair starring Reese Witherspoon. What’s she up to now? Her new film is the biopic Amelia, which charts the attempt by legendary American pilot Amelia Earhart (played by Hilary Swank) to become the first pilot to fly around the world in 1937.
What she says about Earhart ‘I immediately became intrigued by her because despite being an icon in her lifetime she had this consistent humility . . . an almost goofy humility that I find quite un-American. It seemed to say that all she really wanted to do was fly, rather than cut ribbons or get medals.’ On why Earhart became an icon ‘She took chances and had a great style and flair while doing it. She really wanted to live beyond herself. She wanted to have meaning to more people beyond herself. When not flying . . . when on Earth she was a great activist, who lectured and went to the White House to ask for amendments to women’s rights. She engaged the world in a full-on way.’
Interesting fact Nair is currently preparing a Broadway version of Monsoon Wedding as well as a movie version of acclaimed novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist. (Rob Carnevale) ■ Amelia is out now on selected release.
54 THE LIST 19 Nov–3 Dec 2009
Michael Jackson’s This is It (PG) ●●●●● (Kenny Ortega, US, 2009) Michael Jackson. 111min. Compilation of interviews, rehearsals and backstage footage of Jackson as he prepared for his final tour. Unnecessary and largely tedious documentary cobbled together by Kenny Ortega the man who gave us the High School Musical films. General release. Mon Oncle (PG) ●●●●● (Jacques Tati, France, 1958) Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servatie. 116min. Working in colour for the first time, Tati presents Monsieur Hulot befuddled by the modern factory where his brother-in-law has given him a job, and by the all-mod-cons apartment where he visits his young nephew. Superb catalogue of sight gags centring around the dehumanising effect of the new technology. Part of French Film Festival. Glasgow Film Theatre.
✽✽ Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (PG) ●●●●● (Jacques Tati, France, 1953)
Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud, Michelle Rolla. 91min. M Hulot, the accident-prone bachelor arrives at a jaunty coastal resort and devastation very soon ensues. Comic timing at its most irresistible, as Tati gets away with a number of memorable, slow- burning gags, all undercut by the stabbing notion that we all have an uncle exactly like Hulot. Part of French Film Festival. Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Monsters vs Aliens 2D (PG) ●●●●● (Rob Letterman, US, 2009) Voices of Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie. 94min. Can a self-doubting but individualist team of monsters overcome a mob of self- confident, mass-produced aliens? Eye- popping to watch, leavened with self- referential humour that makes it easy to digest, but also playing things so painstakingly safe that any resonance evaporates the moment the end credits roll. Cineworld Parkhead, Glasgow; Cineworld Fountainpark, Edinburgh.
✽✽ The Mother and The Whore (18) ●●●●● (Jean Eustache, France, 1973) Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, François Lebrun. 217min. Eustache’s three- and-a-half hour epic uses dialogue garnered entirely from real-life conversations to provide a sharp-eyed look at supposedly liberated sexual relationships. Part of French Film Festival. Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh.
✽✽ My Little Loves (15) ●●●●● (Jean Eustache, France, 1974) Martin
Loeb, Jacqueline Dufranne, Jacques Romain. 123min. An unsentimental portrait of a young small-town boy’s coming-of-age when uprooted, and moved into the city. Part of French Film Festival. Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh. My Sister’s Keeper (12A) (Nick Cassavetes, US, 2009) Cameron Diaz, Alec Baldwin, Abigail Breslin. 109min. When the daughter of seemingly perfect parents Sara (Diaz) and Brian (Patric) requests not to carry on with the medical donations that keep her leukaemia stricken sister alive they are forced to deal with some deep moral and ethical questions. Tear jerking adaptation of Jodi Picoult’s popular novel. Part of Eugenics season. Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Nativity (U) ●●●●● (Debbie Isitt, UK, 2009) Martin Freeman, Marc Wootton, Ashley Jensen. 105min. See Also Released, page 50. General release from Fri 27 Nov. Neuilly Sa Mère! (12A) (Gabriel Laferrière, France, 2009) Samy Seghir, Denis Podalydès, Rachida Brakni. 90min. Mocking President Sarkozy’s pompous home-town of Neuilly-sur-Seine, this coming-of-age comedy centres upon a rebellious 14-year-old who is sent to the swanky Parisian suburb to live with his aunt and uncle. Part of French Film Festival. Glasgow Film Theatre. Night at the Museum 2 (PG) ●●●●● (Shawn Levy, US, 2009) Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson. 104min. Silly but enjoyable sequel to 2006 comedy. Ben Stiller’s night watchman joins characters from the first film in a battle to save the Smithsonian museum. Cineworld Parkhead, Glasgow. 9 (12A) ●●●●● (Shane Acker, US, 2009) Voices of Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer. 79min. A tiny, numerically named cloth doll voiced by Wood is the central figure in this rather exhausting dystopian animation, which never fully succeeds in delivering the emotion or personality required to provoke our empathy. Striking images are here let down by a lack of deeper resonance. Cineworld Fountainpark, Edinburgh.
✽✽ Numéro Zéro (15) ●●●●● (Jean Eustache, France, 1971) 110min.
Eustache conducts a personal interview with his grandmother Odette Robert, who
brought him up in the wake of his parents’ divorce. Part of French Film Festival. Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Parade (U) ●●●●● (Jacques Tati, France/Sweden, 1974) 89min. Master French comic Tati plays the genial ringmaster Monsieur Loyal in this, his final acting and directing escapade. Part of French Film Festival. Glasgow Film Theatre. Paranormal Activity (15) ●●●●● (Oren Peli, US, 2007) Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat. 86min. See review, page 50. General release. Park Benches (15) (Bruno Podalydes, France, 2008) Sabine Azema, Emmanuelle Devos, Chiara Mastroianni. 110min. With this typically Gallic comedy, Director Podalydes explores themes of urban solitude, depicting an office that is thrown into chaos when a banner is unveiled across the street. Part of French Film Festival. Glasgow Film Theatre.
✽✽ Playtime (PG) ●●●●● (Jacques Tati, France, 1967) Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Jacqueline Lecomte. 152min. Monsieur Hulot, tussling with the modern world as usual, follows a group of American tourists around a garish and hi- tech Paris of concrete and glass. Undervalued later Tati, with the actor Tati’s slapstick of old overshadowed by Tati the director’s masterly control of the widescreen frame. Part of French Film Festival. Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh.
✽✽ Please, Please Me! (15) (Emmanuel Mouret, France, 2009)
Emmanuel Mouret, Judith Godrèche, Déborah François. 90min. Slapstick comedy from actor and director Emmanuel Mouret about a woman who believes her partner is fantasising about another woman. In a bid to exorcise her man’s naughty thoughts, she forces him to sleep with the woman in question – the daughter of the French President. Part of French Film Festival. Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Producer’s Forum (E) (UK, 2009) 90min. Birds Eye View present a panel discussion with female producers on opportunities for women in the film industry. Panel members include Wendy Griffin, Claire Mundell and Karen Smyth. CCA, Glasgow.
Eugenics Season Who says scientific theory and cinematic endeavour are mutually exclusive? Certainly not the organisers of this weekend long Biomedical Ethics Film Festival, which delves
into the ethically fraught discussion of human perfection and our right to strive for it. This series of screenings and panel discussions starts on the Friday night with Swedish documentary Homo Sapiens 1900, about the birth and rise of the eugenics movement in the 20th century. This is followed by recently released tearjerker My Sister’s Keeper (pictured) starring Cameron Diaz (about childhood illness) and Andrew Nicol’s 1997 Brave New World rip off Gattaca. Things come to an end with documentary Who’s Afraid of Designer Babies? ■ Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 20-Sun 22 Nov