Cast: Jessica Brown Findlay, Sebastian Koch, Felicity Jones, Julia Ormond, Peter Vaughan
Jonathan, Beth, Emilia, Joa
He is a “writer” too busy jacking off and browsing Wikipedia to find out why turkey ham is called “ham”. He really should take a leaf out of Franzen’s book (no pun intended) and disable the web on that computer of his!
The script is so desperate to be funny. Why cant British filmmakers just use images occasionally, and film silence for more than five seconds? It is cowardly, needy and immature to just talk without remittance for nearly two hours… and yet to say almost nothing of importance.
Jessica Brown Findlay is an atrocious actress… but it somehow just about works because she at least has unjustified confidence, and that is exactly what Emilia possesses.
The camera is madly in love with Brown Findlay, and follows her around like a lovelorn teen so desperate to make a connection. Alas, she is incapable of requiting the camera’s passion: every time we feel we are getting closer to her, she opens her mouth and severs the connection.
It is not entirely her fault. The character is a half-sketched botch job of clichés and romantic ideals with no human centre whatsoever. She is a sarcastic, gin-chugging myth that bears too fleeting a resemblance to anybody you have ever met before. She is not real, she is not ideal, she is not ethereal, she is a cheap contrivance.
- She runs headlong into the sea, fully clothed, just to – like – get away from society, man. She answers back to customers.
Another major issue is that Tamzin Rafn has catastrophically mistaken sarcasm for wit. Of course sarcasm is an essential part of the character, but it is also the only tool in Rafn’s arsenal and this becomes painfully clear within the first ten minutes of the film.
“Excuse me, I’m a vegetarian.”
“That’s not really something to boast about.”
“How do you write like that?”
“Well I found these long claw like appendages on the ends of my arms”
I vomited in my mouth.
The real star is the mother, Joa:
“Come on Posy, we need to get going if we’re going to really fuck your father off.” – taking her to ballet class against his wishes
“You’d slept with half of Basingstoke by the time you were her age.”
“Lucky FUCKING Basingstoke”
It flits along merrily, skating across a sleek and glossy surface. We feel secure in the knowledge that MacCormick will never take a deep breathe and plunge us into any mystery, subtlety, gravity, nuance, emotional drama, etc. And sure enough, he doesn’t disappoint… he just keeps right on skating.
It is manicured, never real.
Screaming at the ocean, discovering cargo from a shipwreck on the beach, it is just a long series of cosmetic ideas that the scriptwriter thought would be “cool”. So little of it really does anything to explore the characters. It is contrived and incoherent, and essentially cowardly because it is a film that is too scared to explore itself… “the unexamined life” and all that.
The central message, the arch of Emilia’s story, is that caprice and pretence are much easier to pull off than sobriety and honesty, but they will not get you very far in the long run. It is a painful irony that neither the director nor the screenwriter thought to shine this very light upon the film itself!
Felicity Jones provides her infectious pixie wonderment in the role of Beth. She is the prissy over-achiever who falls madly in love with the cocky rebel. Emilia tantalises her wanderlust and reveals the stepping stones towards independence and learning from your own mistakes. Jones is pitch perfect, portraying the complicated emotions of that first “friend” crush with wide-eyed, childlike wonder and a discerning frown. The fact that she does all of this with almost no help from the script or her fellow artists is a testament to her astonishing potential. The sooner she leaves our fetid shores behind, with our Chalet Girls and Albatrosses, the better.
The central issue, as is so often the case with British films, is the amount of bloody talking!! Nobody can shut up for two minutes in a British film, and I despair at the lack of silence, where images and expressions and unspoken words tell us everything we need to know. British scriptwriters would much rather talk and talk and bloody talk than take a back seat and let the story find a life of its own. Their incessant dialogue strangles actors and directors and, most importantly, the stories themselves. I for one would support a slash-and-burn technique, or even a government-imposed quota on dialogue in Final Draft.
Jonathan, Beth, Emilia, Joa
He is a “writer” too busy jacking off and browsing Wikipedia to find out why turkey ham is called “ham”. He really should take a leaf out of Franzen’s book (no pun intended) and disable the web on that computer of his!
The script is so desperate to be funny. Why cant British filmmakers just use images occasionally, and film silence for more than five seconds? It is cowardly, needy and immature to just talk without remittance for nearly two hours… and yet to say almost nothing of importance.
Jessica Brown Findlay is an atrocious actress… but it somehow just about works because she at least has unjustified confidence, and that is exactly what Emilia possesses.
The camera is madly in love with Brown Findlay, and follows her around like a lovelorn teen so desperate to make a connection. Alas, she is incapable of requiting the camera’s passion: every time we feel we are getting closer to her, she opens her mouth and severs the connection.
It is not entirely her fault. The character is a half-sketched botch job of clichés and romantic ideals with no human centre whatsoever. She is a sarcastic, gin-chugging myth that bears too fleeting a resemblance to anybody you have ever met before. She is not real, she is not ideal, she is not ethereal, she is a cheap contrivance.
- She runs headlong into the sea, fully clothed, just to – like – get away from society, man. She answers back to customers.
Another major issue is that Tamzin Rafn has catastrophically mistaken sarcasm for wit. Of course sarcasm is an essential part of the character, but it is also the only tool in Rafn’s arsenal and this becomes painfully clear within the first ten minutes of the film.
“Excuse me, I’m a vegetarian.”
“That’s not really something to boast about.”
“How do you write like that?”
“Well I found these long claw like appendages on the ends of my arms”
I vomited in my mouth.
The real star is the mother, Joa:
“Come on Posy, we need to get going if we’re going to really fuck your father off.” – taking her to ballet class against his wishes
“You’d slept with half of Basingstoke by the time you were her age.”
“Lucky FUCKING Basingstoke”
It flits along merrily, skating across a sleek and glossy surface. We feel secure in the knowledge that MacCormick will never take a deep breathe and plunge us into any mystery, subtlety, gravity, nuance, emotional drama, etc. And sure enough, he doesn’t disappoint… he just keeps right on skating.
It is manicured, never real.
Screaming at the ocean, discovering cargo from a shipwreck on the beach, it is just a long series of cosmetic ideas that the scriptwriter thought would be “cool”. So little of it really does anything to explore the characters. It is contrived and incoherent, and essentially cowardly because it is a film that is too scared to explore itself… “the unexamined life” and all that.
The central message, the arch of Emilia’s story, is that caprice and pretence are much easier to pull off than sobriety and honesty, but they will not get you very far in the long run. It is a painful irony that neither the director nor the screenwriter thought to shine this very light upon the film itself!
Felicity Jones provides her infectious pixie wonderment in the role of Beth. She is the prissy over-achiever who falls madly in love with the cocky rebel. Emilia tantalises her wanderlust and reveals the stepping stones towards independence and learning from your own mistakes. Jones is pitch perfect, portraying the complicated emotions of that first “friend” crush with wide-eyed, childlike wonder and a discerning frown. The fact that she does all of this with almost no help from the script or her fellow artists is a testament to her astonishing potential. The sooner she leaves our fetid shores behind, with our Chalet Girls and Albatrosses, the better.
The central issue, as is so often the case with British films, is the amount of bloody talking!! Nobody can shut up for two minutes in a British film, and I despair at the lack of silence, where images and expressions and unspoken words tell us everything we need to know. British scriptwriters would much rather talk and talk and bloody talk than take a back seat and let the story find a life of its own. Their incessant dialogue strangles actors and directors and, most importantly, the stories themselves. I for one would support a slash-and-burn technique, or even a government-imposed quota on dialogue in Final Draft.
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