ICELAND'S drearier, less tourist-friendly locales provide the suitably downbeat setting for Jar City, an intricate detective thriller from 101 Reykjavik director Baltasar Kormákur. The grizzly murder of an old man with dubious interests – a copy of L
olita and pornography are found in his home – is the plot kicker that leads depressed, chain-smoking detective Erlendur (Ingvar Eggert Sigurösson) on a journey into the past thanks to a clue found at the scene that links the murdered man to a young girl who died from a rare brain disease 30 years earlier. Police corruption, a criminal gang and rape may also be connected, so too might the recent death of another girl from a similar brain disease. A subplot finds her grieving father obsessed with the shady practices of a local genetics facility, a development that the film works towards connecting with Erlendur's case and which also supplies the film with its title.
The unusual close-knit setting makes the police procedure at the heart of story seem fresher than it is, as does the character of Erlendur, a man dealing with having a pregnant, drug-addicted daughter as well as a disturbing appetite for eating sheep's heads.
ANGEL (15)
DIRECTED BY: FRANÇOIS OZON
STARRING: ROMOLA GARAI, SAM NEILLFRENCH filmmaker François Ozon makes a shaky English language debut here with a campy adaptation of a 1957 novel by Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that one). It's the story of Angelica "Angel" Deverell, a romantic novelist in the Edwardian era who churns out screeds of atrociously written romantic fantasy as a way of escaping her meagre upbringing as a grocer's daughter in a grimy industrial town. Actually "escape" is the wrong word: she has already convinced herself she belongs to the aristocracy, so her novels are really her way of writing her own version of reality into existence. This comes to pass when a canny London publisher (Sam Neill) spots the commercial potential of her aspirational purple prose.
Her subsequent success allows her to fund the lifestyle to which in her head she has long been accustomed, but when she falls for the artist brother of her biggest fan and confidant, things go awry as she discovers her talent for manipulation doesn't extend to willing true love into existence.
As he did with his musical 8 Femmes, Ozon shoots this in the style of 1950s Douglas Sirk-style melodrama, but the pastiche has little purpose, neither illuminating Angel's interior life nor teasing out deeper themes.
EDEN LAKE (18)
DIRECTED BY: JAMES WATKINS
STARRING: KELLY REILLY, MICHAEL FASSBENDER, JACK O'CONNELLWHY are Brit filmmakers so bad at making exploitation flicks? Granted, they're not supposed to be works of art, but an increased level of gore shouldn't be the only thing that differentiates them from looking like a bad ITV drama. Seemingly designed to reinforce the fears of Daily Mail readers everywhere, this visually inept, flatly written hoodie horror flick has neither the heightened luridness its ripped-from-the-headlines story demands nor the substance its dreary attempts at gritty authenticity requires.
Consequently, its conception of middle England as a gated community-fixated hellhole under threat from lower-class teens and their irresponsible parents is thoroughly hateful and poisonous. Primary school teacher Jenny (Kelly Reilly) and her Land Rover-driving boyfriend Steve (Fassbender) are the smug middle-class couple who come a cropper when a romantic weekend camping under the stars at the titular lakeside spot is interrupted by ASBO-flouting, animal-torturing locals who get their kicks hunting yuppies with barbed wire and Stanley knives. It's toxic stuff, with a scene that actually shows a little boy being immolated particularly objectionable.
THE WOMEN (12A)
DIRECTED BY: DIANE ENGLISH
STARRING: MEG RYAN, ANNETTE BENING, EVA MENDES, DEBRA MESSING, JADA PINKETT SMITHTHOUGH forgettable in most respects, this long-in-the-offing update of the old Joan Crawford/Rosalind Russell comedy at least remains true to the original's gimmick of never showing a man on screen: there's neither beefcake for our heroines to drool over, nor an effete costumier accessorising their wardrobes. Instead, we follow an exclusively female circle of friends within Manhattan's fashion and publishing industries – bitchy editor Bening, designer Ryan, mumsy Messing and one-stop instant updater Pinkett Smith, playing both black and lesbian – brought together by a revelation of infidelity.
The leads bicker and bond acceptably, but the funniest thing here – as she was in Sex and the City – is Candice Bergen as Ryan's mother, describing a rival's facelift thus: "She looks like she's re-entering the atmosphere". Still, while wittier than most of its girls'-night-out rivals, there's still the usual acquisition-equals-happiness nonsense to sit through, and no-one needs to know this much about fashion magazine editorial policy.
Any substantial attempt at sisters-are-doing-it-for-themselves feminism is undermined by a cut from Bening turning down cosmetic work with a booming "This is my face; get used to it!" to whatever the heck it is currently going on with Meg Ryan's mouth.
The full article contains 868 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
