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The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Along Came Love review – l'amour, loss and lingering shame in eventful French relationship movie
The title of Katell Quillévéré's first movie, Un Poison Violent from 2010, was taken from Serge Gainsbourg's song Un poison violent, c'est ça l'amour, and the awful toxicity of love is a theme that has run through her work ever since. It is an underground stream that has become very much an overground stream in this new, heartfelt movie. It's robust and a little unsubtle, without the nuances and indirections that govern her best work, but handsomely produced and resoundingly performed, avowedly autobiographical and inspired by her grandmother. Quillévéré has said that her influences are Maurice Pialat for the tough realism and Douglas Sirk for the melodrama and the sense of buried shame. I wonder if there isn't some David Lean in there for the final scene at the railway station. Madeleine is a young single mother played by Anaïs Demoustier; working as a waitress on the Brittany coast just after the second world war, in a uniform requiring her hair to be tied up in a ridiculous white bow, she has a difficult five-year-old son, Daniel. She meets a shy, sweet, bespectacled young man, François Delambre (a performance as sturdily intelligent as Demoustier's from Vincent Lacoste), who is a postgraduate student in Paris, and from a wealthy local family, self-conscious about a limp caused by childhood polio. They fall in love and marry – poignantly, perhaps unconsciously drawn to each other by the fact that each has a secret. François is gay (in an era when this was a serious criminal offence), but with this new relationship has taken an earnest decision to put it behind him. And Madeleine's child was conceived through a relationship with a German officer during the occupation, for which she was shamed and head-shaved by jeering locals in her now abandoned home town – that notorious, ugly French phenomenon of the liberation in which the menfolk, to distract from their own more serious Nazi collaboration, took it misogynistically out on the women. As the 1950s turn into the 60s, Madeleine runs a bar and François pursues an academic career and they drift in and out of a somewhat underpowered folie à trois with an American GI called Jimmy (Morgan Bailey) – a narrative deadend. They become a bourgeois family with another child, a daughter, but François's self-hating homosexuality resurfaces, that part of him without which he paradoxically would not have found Madeleine, the genuine love of his life. Meanwhile, Daniel is angrily obsessed with his biological father, who probably died on the eastern front. This is a very eventful period film that covers a lot of storytelling ground and is acted with forthright confidence. And yet, despite or because of it being based on reality, I found myself not quite believing in the parts or the whole. But its fervency and its eroticism give the film its currency. Along Came Love is in UK cinemas from 30 May.
Irish Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Along Came Love review: Diverting melodrama just about delivers on early promise of knotty personal drama
Along Came Love Director : Katell Quillévéré Cert : None Starring : Anaïs Demoustier, Vincent Lacoste, Hélios Karyo, Morgan Bailey, Josse Capet, Paul Beaurepaire, Margot Ringard Oldra Running Time : 2 hrs 5 mins This diverting French melodrama, spanning decades of postwar French life, begins with a promising meld of fact and fiction. Archival footage shows us the sexual partners of now-repelled (or killed) German soldiers having their heads forcibly shaved before public shaming in the town square. We then meet Madeleine (Anaïs Demoustier), shot in matching black and white, evading the mob, before the film, now in idealised colour, meets her again as a waitress in liberated Normandy. Her family have ostracised her. She is raising a son who believes his father to have died in the war. He may well have done for all Madeleine knows. It is to director Katell Quillévéré's credit that she does not fret overly on any guilt Madeleine may or may not have about fraternising with the enemy. That was then and this is now. Survival is all. As most anybody would, she focuses on living from difficult day to difficult day. READ MORE Help comes in the form of a middle-class student named François (Vincent Lacoste). They fall in something like love and get married, but it soon becomes clear his sexual interests do not lie entirely – or even largely – with women. Fractious toing and froing takes us through France's uncertain 1950s and up into its turbulent 1960s. [ James Bond franchise owners seek more time to defend control of 007 spy's name Opens in new window ] The director does not connect much with wider politics. Anyone hoping for a social history of the times will be in for disappointment. This is the sort of film in which people happen upon news reports on the Vietnam War merely as way of clarifying which decade we have reached. Along Came Love is, rather, a saga of wavering emotional dynamics. The central encounter with a black GI really doesn't work – not least because his dialogue has that flat, disconnected quality you so often get when characters speak English in a film not otherwise in that language. Neither principal seems certain how much affection their character feels for the other in this necessarily compromised marriage. But the film does eventually find balance and power in later sections that confront the miseries into which different classes of ostracisation have forced both Madeleine and François. Along Came Love (which has a deceptive title) does not torture the emotion or tax the brain, but, well acted and easy on the eye, it just about delivers on its early promise of knotty personal drama. It also has important things to say – implicitly for the most part – about the unjust expectations placed on women in French society. In cinemas from Friday, May 30th
South China Morning Post
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Netflix K-drama Heavenly Ever After review: melodrama proves mawkish and confounding
This article contains major spoilers. Advertisement 2/5 stars Lead cast: Kim Hye-ja, Son Suk-ku, Han Ji-min, Lee Jung-sun Latest Nielsen rating: 8.35 per cent Deeply rooted in melodrama, Korean TV shows like to present broad worlds populated with a characters who, despite their apparent differences, will eventually discover a connection. Advertisement Leave any two K-drama protagonists on screen together long enough, and chances are they will fall in love or realise that they are related to one another.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Woman and Child' Review: An Unwieldy Iranian Melodrama Sustained by Great Performances and a Gifted Young Director
With four features under his belt, three of them ambitious and sprawling ensemble pieces, 35-year-old Iranian wunderkind Saeed Roustaee is the kind of director who takes a big swing for the fences with each new film. His 2019 drug thriller, Just 6.5, was like The French Connection meets The Wire in contemporary Iran. His 2022 family epic, Leila's Brothers — which, like his new film, premiered in competition in Cannes — had hints of both The Godfather and the searing social dramas of Asghar Farhadi, with some of the best acting in any movie that year. Roustaee attempts another big swing with Mother and Child, a grandiose modern melodrama filled with love, death, heartache, anger, jealousy, vengeance and possible murder. It's a lot to take in, and not all of it works despite some more great performances, including from regular leading man Payman Maadi (also an early Farhadi regular in About Elly and A Separation). The actor stars opposite a terrific female cast in a story that plays out like a 1950s Hollywood weepie, piling on the tears but not always doing it convincingly. Still, Roustaee's sheer talent comes through in several memorable scenes combining bursts of emotion with the chaos of family life. More from The Hollywood Reporter Cate Blanchett, Afghan, Syrian Creators on Fund for Displaced Directors Backing "Surprising Narratives" Kelly Reichardt on 'The Mastermind,' Josh O'Connor and What the '70s Have to Teach Us Today 'A Private Life' Review: A Delightfully Paired Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil Escape Injury in a Messy but Pleasurable Genre Collision It takes a moment to get oriented in the opening reels, which plunge us into the world of Mahnaz (Parinaz Izadyar), a widowed mother shuffling between nursing jobs and the care of her children, 14-year-old Aliyar (Sinan Mohebi) and 8-year-old Neda (Arshida Dorostkar). Sharing an apartment with her pesty mom (Fereshteh Sadr Orafaee) and younger sis, Mehri (Soha Niasti), the overworked Mahnaz still has time on the side to date Hamid (Maadi), an ambulance driver who desperately wants to marry her. While the film's primary focus is Mahnaz, the director cuts away early on to Aliyar, a lively but bratty teenage boy who can't help wreaking havoc in class. Roustaee's predilection for epic set-pieces is on display in school scenes involving hundreds of young extras populating manual workshops and overcrowded classrooms. At one point, cinematographer Adib Sobhani's camera cranes up above the schoolyard, showing students and parents separated by a fence that Aliyar accidentally locked. It's a powerful image and a preview of what happens next: Backed into a corner by Hamid, Mahnaz accepts to get their parents together to negotiate a wedding — because even a 40-something widow does not get to decide whom she marries. Mahnaz sends her kids to stay with their paternal grandad (Hassan Pourshirazi), but everything falls apart when Hamid realizes that he actually prefers the younger Mehri. If that wasn't already a big twist, Roustaee adds a much bigger one when, without warning, we learn that Aliyar has been rushed to the hospital, where he tragically dies. Not many directors could pile incident upon incident like this and make it work, but when Mahnaz storms into the emergency room to see her son pass away before her eyes, the emotional impact is jarring. And yet that scene, as well as the long mourning period Mahnaz goes through afterwards, is followed by several more melodramatic twists in a scenario that requires a certain level of disbelief. Compared to Roustaee's other films, which were steeped in realism, Woman and Child drifts too far into soap opera/thriller territory in its second half, even if the acting and direction are always top-notch. Without divulging too much, some of the twists involve Mahnaz getting back at both Hamid and the grandfather, the latter who she believes killed her son. Is she doing it out of desperation, or does she have reasons not to trust either man? Or does she feel responsible for Aliyar's death, having sent him and his sister away so she could arrange a marriage that never happened? The excellent Izadyar, who's another regular of the director's troupe, embodies these conflicts in a chilling turn which sees Mahnaz going through several states of grief, until she decides to take matters into her own hands. While this film is less focused on social issues than Roustaee's previous work, the effects of Iran's harsh patriarchal system are evident in how the story plays out. A woman and her child may be at the center of the drama, but they have little agency in a country where men set all the rules. Even if Mahnaz tries to fight back legally, the courts are completely stacked against her, leaving no other choice but to break the law herself. Ironically, she winds up emulating the very rebellious behavior she kept chastizing her son for, revealing how the two had a lot more in common than they imagined. Playing the male lead in a female-driven narrative, Maadi makes Hamid a down-on-his-luck loner who tends to bully all the women around him. He sees a good opportunity for himself in marrying Mahnaz, then an even better one in her younger sister. Why the lovely Mehri falls for such a loser — Hamid is one of the least charming grooms in recent memory — can only by explained by the lack of options available to her. Even if Roustaee lets the plot get carried away from him, especially in the last act, he gives certain scenes a deeper resonance by underlining the gender and class struggles his characters are all facing. The film's opening shot has Mahnaz sitting in a plastic surgery clinic along with dozens of other Iranian women, all of them wearing chemical masks to help them look younger or better. Other memorable images include a tracking shot over children's graves in the cemetery where Aliyar is buried, and an outdoor lot filled with parked ambulances that Mahnaz rents to unhoused families for the night. Such details elevate Woman and Child above your average drama, pinpointing how the crazy decisions made by Mahnaz and the others result from a society that's constantly pushing down on them. As unwieldy as some of this movie is, much of it proves that Roustaee remains a gifted young director who surely has more stories to tell. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Netflix's ‘Sirens' Will Be Your Summer Beach-Read TV Obsession
Sirens is the latest in what's become a long streaming-service line of glamorous beach-read melodramas. Like its predecessors, the series is at once enthralled with, and disgusted by, the well-off, whose lives are full of bizarre customs, unnatural social dynamics, and deep dark secrets that speak to their (supposed) malevolence. Based on her 2011 play, Maid showrunner Molly Smith Metzler's five-part limited series, premiering May 22, is so soapy that one would be forgiven for mistaking its early morning island mist for suds. Its corny frothiness is epitomized by its relentless and insufferable musical theme of choral singers going 'Ooooh aaaah ooooh.' Nonetheless, as far as sagas of the untrustworthy rich and famous go, it's an eminently watchable tale of greed, ambition, deception, and trauma (So. Much. Trauma.), aided in no small part by a big, bold, charming performance from Meghann Fahy. Arriving a month after she established her headliner bona fides with Drop, Fahy stars as Devon, a Bills-loving Buffalo native who upon leaving jail (where she spent the night thanks to another DUI) comes home to discover an Edible Arrangements delivery on her stoop. So infuriated is Devon by this gift from her MIA sister Simone (House of the Dragons' Milly Alcock)—who's left Devon in charge of caring for their dementia-addled father Bruce (Bill Camp)—that she hauls it 17 hours to the lavish Martha's Vineyard estate where Simone now works and lives. Upon arriving, she's stunned to learn that her younger sibling is the right-hand woman of the compound's matriarch Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore), whom she calls 'Kiki' and dotes on with a cheery intensity that, along with the general bonkers vibe, immediately makes Devon think that the place is a cult. Michaela is a soft-spoken kook who has a way of hypnotically entrancing those in her orbit. Though she was once a high-powered lawyer, she now spends her time running a wildlife sanctuary with a focus on peregrine falcons (like her favorite, Barnaby) and hosting opulent events like her upcoming Labor Day gala. Her employees, led by property manager Jose (Felix Solis), treat her every wish as their command, but they're a generally unhappy lot who have been silenced by NDAs and talk smack about Simone via staff-wide group text chats. In long flowy dresses and with a dreamily deranged expression affixed to her face, Michaela is a weirdo upper-cruster who exists in such rarified air that she appears to be suffering from oxygen deprivation, and she rules her roost like a gentle tyrant, all while doting disturbingly on Simone, whom she's so close with that, at one point, she sleeps with her in her bed. Devon arrives in this prim-and-proper pastel palace like an uncouth wrecking ball, cursing up a storm in her short mini-dress and work boots (Simone says, correctly, that she looks like a roadie). She promptly upsets Simone, who doesn't want the upcoming weekend spoiled by her big sister, and who immediately resonates as an ungrateful and off-putting twerp. That impression isn't altered by the subsequent revelation that Simone has really fled her dad, who in the wake of her mom's passing treated her so badly that she had to go to court to escape him. Devon and Simone's history of neglect, abandonment, and suffering is one of many mysteries teased by Sirens, with Metzler also introducing the idea that Michaela murdered the first wife of her husband Peter (Kevin Bacon), a hedge fund bigwig who rarely sees his two grown kids from his initial marriage and who seems only somewhat happy putting up with Michaela's elaborate whims and overbearing behavior. There's plenty of plot in Sirens, which additionally involves Simone's romance with Peter's wealthy best friend Ethan (Glenn Howerton)—which she's keeping from Michaela—and Devon's habit of dealing with stress by sleeping around, be it with a random ferryman, a landscaper, her married high-school ex Raymond (Josh Segarra), or hunky boat captain Morgan (Trevor Salter). Alcoholism, child abuse, suicide, depression, anxiety, and every other hang-up under the sun embellish this scenario, as does death, beginning with the untimely and crazy demise of Barnaby. In response, Michaela stages an over-the-top funeral for the bird that allows her female acolytes, all of whom dress in bright and sunshiny floral dresses, to demonstrate their fealty like the unnerving Stepford Wives they resemble. Sirens' title is an S.O.S. code word used by Devon and Simone, and yet even once they're together, they find that they're in various sorts of trouble and incapable—or unwilling—to help each other. Duplicity reigns as the gala nears, with everyone sneaking around and doing not-nice things behind each other's backs, as well as struggling to cope with past misery and slights that have bred lasting resentment. Metzler whips things up into a suitably dizzy frenzy. Moreover, she presents a collection of characters who are easy and fun to dislike, beginning with Michaela, an unabashed creep whose tab-keeping and mantra-repeating ('Hey Hey') marks her as a condescending and manipulative villain. Simone isn't much better, coming across as a sycophant whose adoration for Michaela is gross regardless of the fact that, you know, she's searching for a surrogate mom just like Michaela views her as the daughter she never had. Devon is the hot mess that ignites Sirens, and Fahy is so good as the chaotic protagonist—who gave up her own life to raise Simone and care for her dad, neither of whom appreciates it—that the material naturally, and fittingly, assumes her perspective. Metzler keeps things complicated enough that it's possible to root for any number of her characters, at least temporarily, but ultimately her tale falls back on a rather straightforward message about the value of selflessness and the concurrent ugliness and cruelty of putting shallow personal interests ahead of others' welfare. There is, of course, the usual hypocrisy of making Michaela and Peter's hoity-toity world as enchanting and ravishing as possible and then decrying it as empty and its inhabitants as selfish and repugnant materialists. Still, it's reasonably intriguing pulp elevated by its disparate players, whether it's Fahy's frustrated firebrand, Solis' cagey fixer, Segarra's jealous d----e, or Lauren Weedman's long-suffering chef Patrice. If it ran longer or had dreams of becoming a multi-season affair, Sirens might have quickly run out of steam. At a concise five episodes, however, it proves a satisfyingly juicy concoction fit for a summer binge.
