Change Your Image
ozladbulgakov
Reviews
Clubland (2007)
So-so film with a few good performances
Well, Blethyn delivers an reliably entertaining performance, if a little derivative of both her "Secrets and Lies" and "Little Voice" characters. Khan Chittenden's boy is endearing with his very real, but barely articulate tenderness for both family and new girlfriend - very Australian male. I thought Emma Booth's character quite unsympathetically written, and some gratuitously drooling shots of her arse in panties added to the general feel of soap-teen-bitch for her. For me, she exhibited very little natural charm with which to overcome these disadvantages.
But for me the most enjoyable aspect of this film was watching Rebecca Gibney, the real "lady" of Australian television, playing a sozzled best-friend tramp... She did it REALLY well, deglamourising herself in the way the Liz Taylor and Bette Davis did mid-way through their careers, and I wish someone would give her a juicy film role...
Overall, this was more a character study than a narrative film, but the characterisations and interactions were not always plausible. See it for Gibney's slumming and Blethyn's rendition of Nutbush City Limits at the end...
Napola - Elite für den Führer (2004)
Deserves Wider Release
I saw this as part of a German film festival programme which is touring Australia. It treats the experiences of an adolescent boy, Friedrich Weimar in one of the Third Reich's elite military schools. The film is excellent, but will probably be overshadowed by its German contemporary "Downfall", which also deals with the Third Reich, but with a more historically central subject in Hitler's last days.
Image-wise it IS idealised to some extent - so many of the frames are beautiful, breathtaking to watch, much more beautiful that the real-life experience would have been, surely. In general, though, the PEOPLE are only pretty for the purposes of the story. Friedrich's "Aryan" beauty is part of the dramatic scheme of the film. Many others, especially the teachers/officers, idealise his good looks and his perfect physique as an incarnation of the racial superiority they believe in. Especially telling is the way that the father of Albrecht, Friedrich's best friend, shows far more interest in Friedrich than in his own son.
There is fine acting all round, and Friedrich's ultimate disillusionment is brutally believable, born of extreme grief. The film is by turns wrenching and wryly funny but always convinces in its portrayal of real human beings in real situations.