Damsels in Distress

Damsels in Distress is a odd little movie. I mean, obviously – it’s a Whit Stillman film. He appears to specialise in quirky little films about the posh and privileged speaking eloquently, showing their little oddities and hypocrisies, and dealing with little moments of lasting consequence.

When Lily (Analeigh Tipton) transfers to Seven Oaks, she is immediately taken under the wing of Violet (Greta Gerwig), Heather (Carrie MacLemore), and Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke). While living together, they discuss boys – primarily the ‘Romans’ of a nearby frat house and the men Lily seems to get entagled with – and how to live life. Though there is a mock battle, a couple of break-ups, a sanity-restoring bar of soap and even a dance number or two, everything remains resolutely low-key.

The thing is, even though, say, several of the performances are slightly mannered, the way the characters speak is often lofty and unrealistic and even the moments of high comedy appear with quotation marks, none of that feels wrong for the characters in the film. They appear artificial often because they are, attempting to develop deep profundities and life lessons in a way very familiar to anyone who has spent time around a university. The embrace of the superficial as necessary and the necessary as superficial gives the film an odd sensation, but is also startlingly accurate.

The overall result is left appreciating the film for being good, but also with a head-scratching ‘what did I just watch?’ As Violet, Greta Gerwig feels like she’s channeling Chloë Sevigny, playing a young woman of firm, off-kilter beliefs who manages to turn even the polite acceptance of criticism into a compliment. As a slight counter to her distinct performance of an artificial person, Analeigh Tipton’s role as Lily seems to be one of pliant politeness, as her initial role as the new girl who asks questions slides into merely being pleasant. Her reactions drive a lot of the film, and yet she’s not asked to do much.

It’s just an odd duck. Quite charming, and amusing, and the reaction it evoked felt intentional – but perplexing, nonetheless.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits

The Pirates! confronting danger.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits, as an Aardman Animation film, is what you’d expect – a very silly, charming trifle. The humour has a British tinge of whimsy (and a couple of throwaway moments are quite dark, as befits pirates) and everything is a light frothy mix that effortlessly entertains.

The plot, such as it is, involves the Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) trying to win the Pirate of the Year award. Involving his game and loyal crew, all given only descriptors for names like The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate and The Pirate Who Likes Sunshine and Kittens, the plot revolves around a Pirate King, Charles Darwin, Queen Victoria and the last remaining dodo. There’s action, adventure and laughs, all sprightly and fun.

I could have done with the Pirate Captain being a little less stupid at times, but Hugh Grant makes him charming all the same, even with his vanity and obliviousness. Martin Freeman, as the second-in-command Pirate With A Scarf, is well-experienced with the long-suffering second banana who provides the voice of reason. There’s even a non-ironic use of a Flight of the Conchords song.

Not quite as good as Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit or Chicken Run, but still well worth seeing.

Carnage

The cast in happier times, aka at the very start of the movie.

Carnage, based on the play God of Carnage written by Yasmina Reza, couldn’t be any simpler in concept. Two sets of well-off parents meet to discuss how their sons got in a fight, and one hit the other with a stick. On stage, the way the conversation progresses – and degrades – is propulsive, engaging and often very funny. On film, however, it all falls flat, despite the best efforts of a top-notch cast.

It’s hard to pinpoint how it manages it, but it’s as if the film was specifically designed to magnify all of the play’s flaws. I’ve seen a couple of her plays, and Reza’s characters can occasionally feel like they’re merely delivery systems for barbed opinions of the world. Onstage it’s less noticeable, but in Carnage it feels much more obvious, less of a peeling back of civility and more of a sharp turn towards the dramatic. Onstage, the way the allegiances shift in the second half of the play felt organic and interesting, but on film it just felt forced and muted. Onstage, the histrionics felt almost completely earned; on film, it’s like Jodie Foster is going out on a limb and there’s no reason for it.

There just was something missing – maybe a sense of lightness, or a required sense of intimacy. The audience should have been pushed to laughter through catharsis, but the couch was silent. Perhaps in opening it up, however minimally it was done, took away from the impact. It certainly provoked one of my friends to get quite annoyed with how close Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz would get to leaving the apartment, and yet still getting pulled back in; on a stage, there’s more of an anchor to the living room, as that’s the only place you can see, and the moving camera takes that away. So I suppose Roman Polanski’s direction is to blame, no matter how minimal it is.

A waste of a great cast – none of Kate Winslet’s big moments land, Jodie Foster feels like she escalates way too quickly, and I couldn’t help but wonder how James Gandolfini would have been in John C. Reilly’s role, as he was on Broadway. None of it felt as organic as it did onstage, which really undercut the impact it should have. It was just a disappointment.