Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : 'Who's that chair?' Jazz pianist Olivier ( Mamoudou Athie ) bonds with his ex-girlfriend's parting gift, a one-of-a-kind wooden chair, unaware that it contains the soul of a middle-aged woman, Camille ( Juliette Lewis ) in a scene from one-of-a-kind writer-director Amanda Kramer 's film, ' By Design '. Still courtesy of Music Box Films (US), Bulldog Film Distribution (UK) Some directors don’t court commercial success but instead plough their own artistic furrow. An example is American Amanda Kramer (born 1981). With a succession of films – Paris Window , Ladyworld , Please Baby Please - she has blazed her own trail, attracting actresses of independent persuasion, including Demi Moore, Maya Hawke and Andrea Riseborough, to collaborate with her. Her films are highly stylised and, by her admission, not set in any particular era. She makes use of production design, voiceover narration and dance to create a metaphor-filled mise-en-scene. While she...

  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...