8 1GT Friday August 7 2020 | the times
Young Ahmed
90min
{{(((The redoubtable Dardenne brothers
(Rosetta, The Child) become unstuck
with this sophomoric and ultimately
silly drama about a radicalised Belgian
teenager who seems determined to
stab an infidel.
Idir Ben Addi gives an inscrutable
performance as 13-year-old Ahmed,
who, beguiled by the fiery words of
the local imam, decides to attack his
maths teacher with a steak knife
when she dares to teach the class
some Arabic songs (this is, apparently,
sacrilegious to Islamic extremists).
When that attempt fails, Ahmed is
sent to a junior detention centre,
where, despite his seemingly saintly
behaviour and the amorous attention
of a farmer’s daughter (who
inexplicably has the hots for his
mute, simmering self), he nurtures
even more murderous behaviour —
he shaves toothbrushes into shanks,
ready for the next mission.
The narrative unfolds in that
earnest semi-documentary (and
French language) style that the
Dardennes do so well. But it’s also
glib and unconvincing, and topped off
by a profoundly stupid ending. KM
Curzon Home CinemaBoy, this is sloppy and wooden
The script’s a mess,
the prosthetics are
creepy and the
plot has no heart,
says Kevin Maher
Pinocchio
PG, 125min
{{(((T
his movie should not be bad.
It’s directed and co-written
by Matteo Garrone, who
made the ingenious
Gomorrah and Dogman and
is the closest thing that Italian cinema
has to a sure thing. The sumptuous
production design is by Dimitri
Capuani, who was an art director on
Gangs of New York and here, with the
cinematographer Nicolai Bruel,
produces some of the most exquisite
frames that you’ll see this year. One
shot of the title character, hanging
from a tree at night, is breathtaking.
In his first sizeable role since 2005,
the Oscar-winning Roberto Benigni
(Life is Beautiful) plays Pinocchio’s
creator and father, Geppetto. And it isa faithful, non-Disney-fied adaptation
of Carlo Collodi’s 19th-century novel.
Most of all, according to Garrone, it is
“a great father-and-son love story”.
Then why is it such hard work? The
script, for a start, is a mess. There are
no rules or structure to this fantasy
universe. Pinocchio, played by the
Italian child actor Federico Ielapi
under heavy facial prosthetics, is
brought to life by Geppetto’s chisel.
To some in his tiny Tuscan village this
is a shock. “What do you mean he’s
made of wood!” a local gasps. Others
engage with our eerie automaton with
barely a flicker of alarm.
This lazy inconsistency dominates
every aspect of the narrative, with
characters such as Lumaca the snail
(Maria Pia Timo) and the Blue Fairy
(Marine Vacth) popping up randomly
to steer the slipshod story into ever
more digressive set pieces. Pinocchio
runs, he meets some tricksters, he’s
trapped, he’s freed, he’s trapped again,
he almost dies, he almost drowns, he
goes to school, he runs away again,
he almost drowns again. Faithful to
Collodi, yes, but deadening as drama.
It doesn’t help that the centralcharacter is mildly repugnant. The
prosthetics have nullified Ielapi’s
expressiveness and given us instead
a brattish, pint-sized Freddy Krueger.
Worst of all, the film’s message,
hammered home relentlessly, is
about compliance, conformity and
the benefits of subservience —
Pinocchio can only be a real boy if
he submits to the authority of an
abusive schoolmaster.
This was apparently Collodi’s point.
It alluded to the need for compliant
workers in an Italian nation that
was on the verge of an industrial
revolution when he wrote his novel
in the 1880s. But it’s sheer poison for
cinematic heroes, giving the film a
whiff of Soviet propaganda.
Benigni is barely in it either, so the
emotional basis for the father-son love
story is very tenuous indeed. In short,
it’s a disappointing effort that sets us
up nicely for the imminent live-action
Disney remake, in which Tom Hanks
is reportedly in negotiations to star
as Geppetto. Which will surely be
better than this.
Previewing in cinemas on Monday
and opening nationwide on August 14Hope Gap
12A, 100min
{((((A cataclysmic casting
decision combined with
consistently flabby
direction have conspired
to transform this low-
level divorce drama into
a titter-inducing dud.
The Oscar-nominated
stalwart Annette Bening
plays Grace, a poetry
enthusiast from East
Sussex who is struggling
to cope with her marital
split from her history teacher
husband, Edward (Bill Nighy), and
one of the worst English accents in
celluloid history. Not quite Dick Van
Dyke from Mary Poppins atrocious,
but it’s nonetheless a strange amalgam
of cockney and Sloane (“You don’t
have to talk” is transformed into “You
dan ave tsoo tssalk”) that becomes,
in every scene, fatally distracting.
What’s worse is that the veteran
writer-director William Nicholson
(Shadowlands) has created in Gracea random and unconvincing grab bag
of character traits — neurotic,
controlling, deeply unhinged — that
consistently unbalance an otherwise
self-consciously “meditative” drama.
As the characters discuss human
frailty and the existence of God, all
sympathy is cruelly freighted towards
Edward, and the narrative plods
glumly towards a foregone
conclusion. KM
Previewing in cinemas today, and
opening nationwide on August 28Snow Queen:
Mirrorlands
U, 84min
{{(((Marketed, rather dubiously, to UK
audiences as “the dazzling story that
inspired Frozen” (surely that’s Hans
Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen?),
this is actually the sometimes baffling
fourth instalment in a long-running
Russian animation franchise that has
here been delivered with a Z-list
English-language voice cast including
Laurie Hymes and Marc Thompson
(nope, me neither).
Hymes is Gerda, the star of the
series who, in this icy instalment, must
rescue her family from an alternative
yet equally icy dimension known as
the “Mirrorlands” before the world
is overrun by the evil King Harald
(Thompson), a despicable
19th-century villain who believes
fervently in rational science rather
than magic and gods (er, boo?).
There are, typically, chases and
snowy battles, with simple sub-Pixar
animation and some very weird lines
— “This is science and technology!”
nasty Harald shouts as he unleashes
his doomsday weapon. Still, it’s
mercifully short, and hints of a shared
Frozen universe might keep pre-teen
Disney completists entertained. KM
In cinemasPerfect 10
15, 83min
{{{{(The novice Scottish feature director
Eva Riley delivers a statement
debut with this hugely confident
coming-of-age drama. Frankie Box
stars as a teenage gymnast called
Leigh, whose life is upended when she
meets Joe (Alfie Deegan, below with
Box), the petty criminal half-brother
she never knew she had.
There are shades of Nil By Mouth
and Fish Tank as Riley’s shaky
camera follows Leigh around her
neighbourhood in Brighton, slowly
becoming seduced by the scooter
gang felonies of Joe and his recidivist
buddies. Alongside this, however, runs
a sweeter narrative of self-realisation
as Leigh’s recent failures in the gym
hall are linked to the loss of her
mother — who is absent from the
start, but presumed dead.
The film builds — softly and subtly
— to a dance climax that’s as moving
as anything in Pablo Larraín’s recent
and much showier Ema. Box,
meanwhile, is quite a find —
although she had no previous acting
experience she carries the film with
sullen looks and wounded sympathy.
And in the brittle, abrasive Deegan
she has the perfect foil. KM
BFI Player, Curzon Home CinemaAlida Baldari
Calabria and
Federico IelapiAnnette Bening
and Josh O’Connor