| U.S. NEW-RELEASE ROUNDUP : Millions (Mar 11) and Dear Frankie (Mar 4) |
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| Saturday, 26 February 2005 | |
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MILLIONS : [6/10] : UK (UK/US) 2004 : Danny Boyle : 97 mins Though set during the run-up to Christmas, Danny Boyle's Millions takes place in a Britain so sunny and temperate-looking you wonder whether the action is taking place after the climate has been radically altered by global warming. In fact, the time-frame (though unspecified) is in one way decidedly futuristic: in Frank Cottrell Boyce's script, the UK is about to finally ditch the pound and join the Euro, at the time of writing such an unlikely prospect that any fictional treatment of same should surely involve teleportation, robots and holidays in space. No matter - this is only the first of several leaps of faith required by a picture whose fairytale-ish atmosphere is the polar opposite from Boyle's previous feature, the gore-soaked quasi-zombie hit 28 Days Later. Nine-year-old Anthony Cunningham (Lewis McGibbon) and his seven-year-old brother Damian have just moved into a newly-built house with his father Ronnie (James Nesbitt) when Damian stumbles across a bag containing £229,000. What we know, and Damian doesn't, is that the money is on its way to be incinerated as part of the currency change-over, and that it's part of the booty in an elaborate heist planned by unseen villains. One of whom (Christopher Fulford) soon turns up searching for the missing cash. By this stage Anthony and Damian have expressed differing positions about what their next move should be: materialistic Anthony is all for blowing it on pricey luxuries; the more pious Damian - who regularly "chats" with the saints - wants to donate it to good causes. Adding a further complication is the arrival on the scene of Dorothy (Daisy Donovan), a charity fund-raiser who ignites passions dormant in Ronnie since the death of his wife (Jane Hogarth). Millions soon establishes a bouncy, engaging, amiable atmosphere, just the right side of cute and deploying some nimble CGI effects - there's a house-building sequence early on that trumps anything in Witness, while the beguilingly low-key appearances of the various saints sees each of them haloed by a smoky nimbus: "Martyrs of Uganda, 1881!" exclaims the hagio-savvy Damian. This is, of course, fundamentally a kiddies' morality tale building up to the not-so-shocking revelation that "the money just makes everything worse" - compare and contrast this with the refreshingly amoral conclusion of Finnish variant Pearls and Pigs, if you get the chance. Though not exactly the most fluent young actors in the world (viz. the kids in Shane Meadows' pictures) young McGibbon and, especially, Etel, make for a winning twosome and Nesbitt wisely underplays in what's largely an in-the-sidelines role. The energy level does dip somewhat around the half-way stage, when the Bad Guy's thrillerish appearances suddenly drag us towards the dreaded territory of the Children's Film Foundation, but Boyle and Boyce get things back on track with the finale - quite literally so, as a railway line is the setting for the climax in which the late Mrs Cunningham makes a brief, moving "appearance". And that's not all - impish cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle may be having a little fun with the way he films a child standing in front of a fire that's burning between the railway tracks, an almost exact visual quotation from the end of Michael Haneke's Time of the Wolf. Boyle's upbeat, infectious optimism couldn't be much further removed from Haneke's apocalyptic dourness, of course - Millions is a proper all-ages crowd-pleaser which will no doubt become a TV Christmas fixture for many years to come - who knows, it might even be still on when Britain finally does get round to taking the Euro-plunge. But don't put any money on it. by Neil Young 26th October, 2004 [seen 8th October : Odeon, Nuneaton : press show - CinemaDays event] DEAR FRANKIE : [3/10] : UK 2004 : Shona Auerbach : 104 mins The only surprising thing about Dear Frankie - apart from how rubbish it is - is the absence of Shirley Henderson among the cast. Currently one of Britain's most talented actresses, Henderson often finds herself in dire would-be comedies such as Once Upon a Time in the Midlands and Wilbur (Wants to Kill Himself), the film which Dear Frankie most closely resembles. Both films take place in a desperately bittersweet-quirky version of modern-day Scotland which exists only in screenwriters' imaginations, their characters, dialogue and plot ringing tinnily false at almost every stage, unconvincing in both their overall conception and their specific details. Dear Frankie is a clunky variation on the idea handled with much more skill in Good Bye Lenin! and taken to another level in the French/Georgian variation Since Otar Left, whereby relatives end up going to implausibly elaborate lengths to withhold a painful truth from a vulnerable family-member. Here the 'innocent' character is Frankie (Jack McElhone), a deaf nine-year-old who lives with his mother Lizzie (Emily Mortimer) and Lizzie's mother Nell (a gratingly OTT Mary Riggans). The family is constantly on the move as Lizzie still terrified of Frankie's dad, a violent thug who caused his son's deafness years before. Frankie has no memory of his father, and Lizzie wants to keep it that way - so she spins a yarn about him going off to sea on a particular ship. Frankie plots the vessel's progress around the world's oceans, and is delighted when he finds its next port of call is the city where he's living. This isn't such good news for Lizzie, who in desperation hires a man - unnamed, and billed only as 'The Stranger' (Gerard Butler) in the end credits - to impersonate Frankie's dad. Complications ensue. When Dear Frankie had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival, the official brochure noted that it had "met with [disfavour] from the critics" when featuring in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. "But then, at the end of the day, this is not a critic's film" states the brochure - as if critics were incapable of appreciating anything other than challenging, arthouse fare. What they mean to say is that this isn't a film for "critical" audiences - i.e. viewers who expect the films they see to hang together, to be convincing, to satisfy. Dear Frankie falls short on every count. The basic problem isn't the uninspiringly flat direction, nor is it the a predictable MOR soundtrack choices featuring the likes of Damien Rice and much tinkly piano. More troubling is the nagging artificiality that hangs over the whole enterprise - Auerbach (working from Andrea Gibb's script) goes to such strenuous lengths to (pointlessly) hide her Greenock locations, inventing a very fake-looking local newspaper ('The Tribune') and even obscuring the destination displays on buses and the 0141 dialling-code on estate agents' signs. Instead Lizzie and Frankie live in the fictional 'Port Howat,' complete with 'PH' postcode. The only flashes of real-world solidity come courtesy of Butler in the tricky role of the strong-and-silent Stranger. Once spoken of as a potential James Bond (until his misbegotten Phantom in Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera) he does his valiant best to inject a bit of grit and intrigue into what is otherwise a thoroughly phonus-balonus would-be-tearjerker. by Neil Young click HERE for our full coverage of the 2004 Edinburgh Film Festival |
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