Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  A frivolously enjoyable if slight ‘odd couple’ romantic comedy, German writer-director Nicolette Krebitz’s fourth feature, A E I O U – Das Schnelle Alphabet der Liebe ( A E I O U – A Quick Alphabet of Love ) wears its subversion lightly. Ageing widowed actress Anna (Sophie Rois) reluctantly agrees to offer a juvenile purse snatcher, Adrian (Milan Herms) speech therapy to help him with an upcoming theatrical performance. The young man becomes obsessed and leads Anna into a life of crime on the French Riviera, until the law catches up with them. Krebitz, primarily an actress with more than sixty credits, doesn’t have a particularly satirical eye. At a certain point, she – and we – forget that her protagonist is an actress with a keen awareness of clich é , including the relationship in which Anna finds herself. There is some enjoyment in seeing an older woman find pleasure with a younger man, but at no point is the source of Adrian’s delinquency dealt with. The film begins with...

  There are those who believe that the Palme D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival should have been given to Toni Erdmann , a two-hour-and-forty-two-minute German comedy about an unusual father-daughter relationship. As many critics will tell you, comedies don’t win major prizes as they are assumed to be frivolous – not art. There are two recent exceptions. La Vita È Bella (Life is Beautiful) (1997) winner of the 1998 Best Picture Oscar featured a father (Roberto Benigni) fighting to convince his young son (Gioergio Canterini) that they are not in a concentration camp and that the adults around them are playing an elaborate game. Michel Hazanvicius’ The Artist (2011) winner of the 2012 Best Picture Oscar was also a comedy about an over-confident silent movie star (Jean Dujardin) lost in the sound era. Let’s not also forget that Robert Altman’s M.A.S.H. won the Palme D’Or equivalent at Cannes in 1970. As these films prove, a comedy can say as much as a serious film. This is c...