Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : 'Are you tired, old man?' Divorced writer-turned-day labourer, Paul ( Bastien Bouillon ) works for less than UK minimum wage in the French social drama, ' At Work ' ( À Pied d’Oeuvre ), adapted from Franck Courtès ’ 2023 autobiographical account by Gilles Marchand and the film's director Valérie Donzelli . Still courtesy of Diaphana Distribution (France)  We see a perfectly beautiful stretch of patterned wallpaper, red on white. Then a mallet bursts through. Before long, the wall of a room in a house is rendered into dust, the rubble swept up into plastic sacks, one of which is loaded onto a truck by Paul Marquet (Bastien Bouillon), a bespectacled 42-year-old, divorced day labourer who is the protagonist of French director Valérie Donzelli’s eighth feature film, À Pied d’Oeuvre ( At Work ). Adapted from Franck Courtès’ 2023 autobiographical account of his own switch from photographer to handyman, Donzelli and her co-writer Gilles Marchand fashion a fi...

  Pictured : Fifteen-year-old Emma ( Lila Gueneau , right) dances with her husband Paul (Thomas Doret) in a scene from the Swiss film,  À bras-le-corps ( Silent Rebellion ), co-written and directed by Marie-Elsa Sgualdo . Still courtesy of Salaud Morriset .  What is neutrality? A conscious effort to recuse yourself from responsibility? Allowing events take their course without consideration of the outcome? Neutrality is an illusion, a pretence, a position taken to avoid conflict with others by formally treating all parties the same but pragmatically engaging with some parties more than others. Neutrality is diplomatic acquiescence. It is how Switzerland conducted itself in World War Two (1939-45). Swiss film director Marie-Elsa Sgualdo sets her debut feature film Silent Rebellion ( À bras-le-corps ) in her native country - specifically a village bordering France in the Swiss Jura - in 1943. Co-written (with Sgualdo) by Nadine Lamari, it follows fifteen-year-old Emma (...

  Pictured : Best friends but unsuitable for marriage, cousins  William Rodney ( Jack Whitehall , left) and Katharine Hilbery ( Haley Bennett , right) in the film adaptation, ' Virginia Woolf's Night and Day ', scripted and produced by Justine Waddell and directed by Tina Gharavi . Still courtesy of Vue Lumiere (UK) Of all the films I have so far covered in this volume, Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day adapted by writer-producer Justine Waddell and directed by Tina Gharavi is by far the least satisfactory. I am loathe to describe it as a film, more a set of well-intentioned impulses that chew the cud in various corners of an enormously large field. Look over there, we have some suffragettes. Directly opposite, a suppressed same sex romance only acknowledged after one of the party has died. There’s a woman fascinated by the stars who wants to be admitted to the Royal Astrological Society and, when that doesn’t work out, applies to study at Oxford. There is a comedy subplot ...

  Pictured : 'It's the end of my world and I know it.' Nino ( Théodore Pellerin ) attends his surprise birthday party twenty-four hours after being told that he has throat cancer in a scene from writer-director  Pauline Loquès ' Paris-set film, ' Nino '. Still courtesy of Curzon (UK) Nino Clavel (Théodore Pellerin) the soon-to-be 29-year-old protagonist of French writer-director Pauline Loquès’ feature debut, Nino , faces his worst-ever birthday weekend. Visiting a Paris clinic on Friday to collect a sick note, he is told that he has throat cancer. Nino had complained of fatigue and a pain in his throat but did not expect the diagnosis of papillon carcinoma, the result of a sexually transmitted disease he contracted when he was younger.   However, he is being fast-tracked for treatment. He needs to have someone to accompany him on Monday morning for the first appointment. He is told that the treatment will not result in hair loss but will reduce his sperm count...

  Pictured :  Michal ( Milan Ondrík ) is prevented from rushing to the scene of a crime in a scene from Slovak co-writer-director  Tereza Nvotová 's third feature, Otec ( Father ). Still courtesy of Intra Films (Slovakia)   Some directors make incredible leaps between one movie and the next. Did we really expect Steven Spielberg to move from the cinema of suspense ( Jaws ) to that of wonder ( Close Encounters of The Third Kind )? Or George Lucas to move from redefining 1960s nostalgia in an apolitical way ( American Graffiti ) to creating a science fantasy franchise ( Star Wars )? Slovak writer-director Tereza Nvotová makes a similar progression from her second feature Nightsiren (released in 2022) to her third, Otec ( Father ), which she boldly stages the action in a series of single takes (the generic term is ‘oners’). Not only does Nvotová create a sense of unease from the opening moments, as she introduces the protagonist, publishing company boss Michal (...

  Pictured : New student  Choo Xin Yu ( Ranice Tay )  playacts rebellion before forming a gang of her own in the Singapore set adolescent saga, ' Amoeba ', written and directed by Siyou Tan . Still courtesy of Anticipate Pictures (Singapore) The Singapore-born writer-director Siyou Tan looks back on her teenage school days in her feature debut, Amoeba , a film set somewhere between 2005 and 2012, back when camcorders (customised with plastic jewels) rather than mobile phones were a thing and you could purchase a bra in school for ten dollars (until your size ran out). In those days, parents administered corporal punishment and people talked about Triad gangs in hushed tones. Maybe things haven’t changed that much on corporal punishment and triads in Singapore, a country 60 years young (proudly independent since 9 August 1965) but camcorder culture is yesters (if that’s a word); it’s yeast. Tan’s protagonist is Choo Xin Yu (Ranice Tay) whom we first meet being filmed in t...