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The Observer | 01. 1 0. 17 | THE NEW REVIEW 25

Burma for a new life in Thailand hits

many of the expected beats of stories

about the stat eless displaced. Even

so, the stylistically bold approach that

director Midi Z brings to the struggle

of Lianqing and Guo , the boy who loves

her, sets this apart. A combination of

tender details – the way Guo carefully

DVDS & DOWNLOADS

As implied by the title, the push-pull

sexual energy between captor and

quarry is a constant here, though

Palmer’s fi nely folded performance

keeps her character’s real desires

uncertain to the last.

Uncertainty is not an operative word

in Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s

Revenge (Disney, 12). Fourteen years

and fi ve variously lumbering fi lms

into Disney ’s high-kitsch, high-seas

franchise, no room is left for surprise

at the level of concept or execution.

It seems a lifetime ago that Johnny

Depp’s sticky, shticky, kohl-eyed Keith

Richards impression was once deemed

novel enough for an Oscar nomination.

Even with dollar signs written in his

dulled eyes, Depp is still the liveliest

thing about this boilerplate entry, with

its slimy digital brushwork slathered

all over the canvas and a plot that

takes a most convoluted of routes to

nowhere of consequence. The series

has had worse days, but is that a good

enough reason to continue?

In cinemas, the perfectly circular

aspect ratio of Feng Xiaogang ’s

jangling satirical melodrama I Am Not

Madame Bovary (Thunderbird, 12)

was a truly startling visual choice,

the frame aptly pressing in on an

already beleaguered protagonist: Fan

Bingbing ’s embittered provincial

divorcee, battling her ex-husband and

the bureaucratic patriarchy for what

she sees as a fairer new start in life.

On DVD, this funnel vision is rather

less eff ective: distancing rather than

mesmerically strange. That Flaubert-

The documentary market has,

inevitably, been fl ooded of late

by Syria-themed titles, almost all

of them worthy in a broad sense,

though some are more illuminating

and cinematically vital than others.

Matthew Heineman ’s City of Ghosts

(Dogwoof, 18) is among the most

essential.

Taking as its subject the intrepid

citizen journalists of Raqqa Is Being

Slaughtered Silently , a resistance

website set up to expose Islamic

State’s litany of atrocities and ensuing

misinformation to the outside world,

the fi lm achieves remarkable intimacy

with men and women whose self-

exposure has, even post-exile, put

them in mortal danger – fatal danger,

in some cases, as Heineman observes

with unblinking candour. (Be warned:

Heineman has no interest in protecting

viewers from the extremes of violence

faced and documented by his subjects.)

Unstably sheltered in Turkey and

Europe, they keep the site going with

the aid of undercover contributors

back in Raqqa – the “ghosts” of the title

could refer equally to the living or the

dead – but the fi lm makes a powerful

point of just how hard it can be for

them to communicate their message

even on notionally safe ground, with

western Islamophobia their second,

rising enemy.

Most fi lms are going to look a little

less harrowing after a viewing of City

of Ghosts, so that might be a safer time

to pop in Berlin Syndrome (Curzon

Artifi cial Eye, 15 ), Australian director

Cate Shortland ’s sleek, skin-prickling

abduction thriller, in which Teresa

Palmer ’s drifting, solitary backpacker

is chatted up in Berlin by cute, hunky-

dorky schoolteacher Andi (Max

Riemelt ), heads to his place for a night

of no-strings fun and wakes to fi nd

herself deliberately and inescapably

locked in his apartment. This is the

stuff of lurid exploitation pictures, but

Shortland, the intelligent sensualist

behind Lore and Somersault , has more

complex, confl icted horror in mind.

Bloody truths from the Syrian front line

Guy

Lodge

@GuyLodge

Home Again
(97 mins, 12A ) Directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer ;
starring Reese Witherspoon, Michael Sheen,
Nat Wolff

The debut feature from Hallie
Meyers-Shyer (daughter of Nancy
Meyers , who produced) continues
the family tradition for upbeat,
female-led escapism. Like The
Holiday , by Meyers Snr, this is both
unapologetically contrived and rather
satisfying, if unchallenging. Reese
Witherspoon stars as Alice, a recent
divorcee who has relocated to Los
Angeles and turned 40, only to fi nd
herself besieged by attentive men
in their 20s. After a boozy birthday
celebration, she ends up with three
attractive and obviously smitten
aspiring fi lm-makers living in her
poolside guest house (as if the fact of
having a poolside guest house alone
wasn’t wish fulfi l ment enough ). The
material is elevated by Witherspoon’s
resolutely perky appeal and Michael
Sheen’s impeccable beard grooming
and comic timing as Alice’s charming
cad of an ex.

Killing Ground
(88 mins, 15 ) Directed by Damien Power ; starring
Harriet Dyer, Tiarnie Coupland, Aaron Pedersen

Structured with a cruel precision,
written and acted with a persuasive
naturalism, this disturbing Australian
survival thriller won’t appeal to
everyone. The use (and abuse) of a very

young child in peril as a plot device is

something I approach with caution,

but in this case, without giving away

too much of the fi nal act, I feel it is

largely justifi ed by the story. It’s not an

easy watch, however. Pieced together

like a crime picture, but marked

with the bloody thumb print of the

horror genre, the fi lm tells of newly

engaged couple Sam (Harriet Dyer )

and Ian (Ian Meadows ), who discover

an abandoned tent and evidence

of a multiple murder. Although

not as overtly grisly as the outback

horror Wolf Creek by Greg Mclean ,

the two fi lms share a confi dently

uncompromising approach to pacing

and a deft hand when it comes to

cranking up narrative tension.

Zoology

(91 mins, 15 ) Directed by Ivan I Tverdovskiy ;

starring Natalya Pavlenkova, Dmitriy Groshev,

Masha Tokareva

You probably need to be Russian to

be able to fully unpack the layers of

satire and allegory in this defi antly

oddball tale of personal growth. But

the impact of the sheer weirdness of

a story of a middle -aged zoo worker

who grows a tail is universal. Natasha

(Natalya Pavlenkova ) is frumpy and

unprepossessing, the butt of cruel jokes

from her colleagues and the subject of

a lifetime of nagging attrition from

her mother. The tail that she

grows – unexplained by the fi lm

or by the medical professionals

referencing title could be passed

on to Belle de Jour (Studiocanal, 18) ,

Luis Buñuel ’s still-savoury study of

bourgeois prostitution, here given a

gorgeous restored reissue for its 50th

anniversary. Fifty hardly seems the

right age: this brisk, tart, perversely

comic tale of a middle-class Parisian

housewife amusing herself by day as

a sex worker may be quintessentially

clothed in mid- 60s chic, but its cool

sexual politics remain as fresh as a very

fragrant daisy.

Also half a century old this year:

Robert Redford and Jane Fonda’s

winning romantic partnership in

Barefoot in the Park, which is being

marked not with a restoration but a

reunion. In the unfortunately titled but

engagingly mellow Our Souls at Night ,

a new Netfl ix exclusive, Fonda and

Redford’s chemistry still proves frisky

enough to lift this autumnal romance

(another polite English-language

venture from The Lunchbox director

Ritesh Batra , following The Sense of an

Ending ) out of its beiger interludes.

They’re both widowed

midwesterners who have lived across

the street from each other for decades

without exchanging more than a

courteous greeting. When loneliness

gets the better of her and she knocks on

his door with a charmingly in-person

booty call, life shifts subtly for them

both. There are no harsh confl icts or

unwelcome surprises here, just the

pleasure of two great movie stars who

have always gone well together, still

going well together.

‘Th e images have a warm

familiarity’: Domhnall

Gleeson and Will Tilston in

Goodbye Christopher

Robin. David Appleby/Fox

Milne, who’s “had enough of making
people laugh – I want to make them
see!” – an ambition that Daphne views
as “perfectly horrid ”. As Christopher
Robin’s brittle mother ( “Are you
my manager? ”), Margot Robbie
draws the short straw; hers is an
unsympathetic role, rather un nuanced
in its opportunism. By contrast, Kelly
Macdonald wins hearts as Olive ( AKA
“Nou ”), Billy Moon’s Poppins-like
nanny who becomes both the moral
anchor and the emotional lightning
rod at the centre of the fi lm. As
the older Christopher Robin, Alex
Lawther raises later-life resentments
above the level of mere anti-parental
petulance – no mean feat.
Throughout, Carter Burwell’s

score tinkles and surges, employing

piano and harp to pluck mercilessly

at the heartstrings, assisted by Al

Bowlly’s 1939 recording of A Man

and His Dream. It says much about

Cottrell-Boyce’s script that the deeper

themes of betrayal and despair –

that Frankenstein-like feeling of

being overshadowed and undone by

one’s own creation – survive amid

the schmaltz.

In the end, however, it’s those dusty

shafts of optimistic light that endure,

bathing the fi lm in a reassuring glow.

Fittingly, Goodbye Christopher Robin

is dedicated to the late producer Steve

Christian, who died earlier this year,

and to whose wide-ranging legacy this

is a fi ne tribute.

‘Unfl inchingly

bold’: Kai Ko , left ,

and Ke-Xi Wu in

Th e Road to

Mandalay.

she visits – is hairless, pink and

obscenely phallic. It off ers, however, an

escape from the dour grey of Natasha’s

life. She enters into a relationship

with a younger doctor who seems to

be attracted to her just as she is. She

sails through the swirling superstitions

and rumours about a local “demon

woman” with her freshly coiff ed head

aloft, exuding new found confi dence.

Unfortunately, the confi dence seems to

be more closely linked to the boyfriend

than to the tail, a depressi ngly

prosaic conclusion to a pleasingly

unconventional story.

Th e Road to Mandalay

(108 mins, 15 ) Directed by Midi Z; starring Kai Ko,

Ke-Xi Wu

This potent drama about two migrants

who meet as they fl ee the civil war in

picks the fi bres from his girlfriend’s

skin after a gruelling shift at the factory

• and a strikingly surreal approach to
  a scene in which Lianqing prostitutes
  herself for the fi rst time makes this
  unfl inching picture a notable addition
  to the ever-swelling list of fi lms that
  deal with migration.

‘No interest in protecting viewers’: Matthew Heineman’s City of Ghosts. AP

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om

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‘Unfl inchingly

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Th e Roadto

Mandalay.

This potent drama about two migrants

who meet as they fl ee the civil war in