In Contention

Tag: Andrea Riseborough

  • REVIEW: “W.E.” (*1/2)

    Venice Film Festival

    There’s such a bounty of ripe absurdities in Madonna’s sophomore directorial effort “W.E.” — an over-the-spectacles glance at the supposedly for-the-ages romance of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII, blending the story of “The King’s Speech,” the structure of “Julie & Julia,” the styling of “A Single Man” and the collected smarts of none of those films — that it seems positively ascetic to begin with the closing credits, but so I shall. Nestled in the final minute of a decidedly over-generous 120 comes the list of “Thank Yous,” upon which you may or may not be surprised to encounter the names John Galliano and Leni Reifenstahl (sic).

    The names may be there for perfectly fair reasons. Galliano is a genius fashion designer, and Madonna’s film is nothing if not well-dressed. Riefenstahl was a genius metteur en scène, and Madonna’s film is nothing if not — well, perhaps she just likes Riefenstahl’s films, even if any claim of creative influence would be on the tenuous side. The irony of thanking two prominent alleged Nazi sympathizers, mere minutes after “W.E.” goes to manful if unconvincing lengths to discredit any suggestions that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had similar leanings, is incidental, and perhaps a little cheap to pick on, but merely one small symptom of Madonna the Auteur’s astonishing lack of self-awareness.

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  • Madonna’s ‘W.E.’ joins Weinsteins’ scattered 2011 slate

    Having done all right with the last film to cover the romantic tribulations of King Edward VIII — it was called “The King’s Speech,” it won a few Oscars, you might have heard of it — The Weinstein Company clearly feels there’s an appetite among audiences for more on that chapter of British royal history, with Edward’s story center stage this time.

    So it is that that Harvey and his minions have bought the US distribution rights to Madonna’s sophomore directing effort, “W.E.” — a decades-spanning portrait of the affair between the one-time future King of England and Wallis Simpson, the American divorcée for whom he abdicated the throne, fused with a fictional modern-day story of a young New Yorker inspired by their romance.

    Starring Andrea Riseborough and James D’Arcy as the historical couple, and Abbie Cornish as the woman obsessed with their romance, it all all sounds suspiciously like “Julie & Julia” with crowns replacing the chef’s hats — which, combined with the novelty factor of the film’s celebrity writer-director, leads me to think the Weinsteins may view this more as a light commercial play rather than the hefty awards bait of their last monarchy biopic.

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  • IFC takes on ‘Brighton Rock’

    Way back in the autumn festival phase, it seemed like Rowan Joffe’s update of “Brighton Rock” might have some kind of awards presence, as praise trickled out of Toronto for breakout star Andrea Riseborough. Things went deadly quiet around the film, however, when no US distributor stepped forward.

    A month later, when it had its homeland premiere at the London Film Festival, I learned the reason for the silence: Joffe’s film is a badly botched attempt to recast Graham Greene’s stark moral thriller as a swinging youth nostalgia piece. I might have let my disappointment show a little in my review:

    [S]carcely a potential avenue for error has been left unexplored here, as the film’s self-conscious (and technically over-egged) noir stylings bristle against a clearly overworked script that fidgets to no effect with Greene’s plotting, with a cast that never coalesces floating somewhere amid the wreckage.

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  • LONDON: ‘Brighton’ hits the rocks

    The success of the London Film Festival’s annual Surprise Film screening isn’t exactly dependent on the surprise element: more often than not, the film’s identity can be pinpointed in advance simply by asking yourself which title you most expected to find in the festival lineup, and then didn’t.

    But even if pretty much everyone sitting in the Leicester Square theater three years ago knew they were about to see “No Country for Old Men,” that didn’t stop the keen applause, peppered with whoops of approval, when the title finally flashed on screen. Ditto the equally predictable-but-welcome selection of “The Wrestler” the following year. It’s a bit like actually getting what you asked for on Christmas morning: the unwrapping is a mere formality, but the result satisfies nonetheless.

    Festival director Sandra Hebron did pull a genuine surprise last year, when the consensus expectation of “Where the Wild Things Are” was dashed by the PSA-style opening of Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story.” Still, by last night, Twitter-abetted speculation had narrowed so conclusively around Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock” — it being the most conspicuously absent Britfilm at a British festival, after all — that anything else would have been a jaw-dropper. (To Hebron’s evident vexation, it was the first title shouted out when she played her annual “guess-the-movie” game with the audience.)

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  • TIFF: Riseborough on the, uh, rise

    As Kris mentioned earlier, reaction out of Toronto to Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock” has, so far, been on the guarded side, though it has found admirers — Time Out’s Tom Charity among them. Still, however the film lands, it does at least appear to confirm the arrival of Andrea Riseborough, the 29 year-old Brit who is something of a ubiquitous presence at this year’s fest, with supporting roles in “Never Let Me Go” and “Made in Dagenham” boosting her profile.

    It’s the plum role of Rose — the merits of which I discussed in Page to Screen — in the Graham Greene adaptation that is getting her noticed, however. You might remember that Kris had her in his Supporting Actress predictions until distribution doubts forced her out, but early notices suggest he was onto something. Writing for The Guardian, David Cox suggests that in Joffe’s adaptation, “Brighton Rock” emerges more as Rose’s story than anyone else’s, and that Riseborough carries the film mightily:

    [W]hether Joffé intended it to or not, Andrea Riseborough’s breathtaking performance as Rose soon overwhelms the drama. To say her achievement deserves an Oscar would be somehow to demean it.

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  • TIFF: ‘Brighton,’ ‘Virginia’ bow, ‘Super’ picked up

    At Toronto today, a hand handful of distribution-seeking films hit and one potential cult favorite found a home.  Let’s dig in…

    One film looking for a distributor that we’ve had an eye on as a potential awards play for supporting actress Andrea Riseborough is Rowan Joffe’s Graham Green’s  “Brighton Rock.” But The Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett largely criticizes a “bloated score” that he says “overwhelms” the narrative.  But he had nice things to say about Riseborough by noting that she “adds to the film’s appeal.”  (See a new clip from the film after the jump.)

    The Jennifer Connelly-starrer “What’s Wrong with Virginia,” from “Milk” writer (and Oscar-winner) Dustin Lance Black, also screened.  Jeffrey Wells “didn’t give a damn about the angry rurals in Black’s world” and walked out of the screening.  The Film Stage’s Jordan Raup, meanwhile, called it “Solondz-lite,” and despite good things to say about Connelly’s performance, said the film “didn’t really come together.”  And Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir found it to be an unstable mix of “American Beauty” and “Blue Velvet.”

    And in the acquisitions department, James Gunn’s “Super” (which was well received at a midnight screening Friday night) has been picked up by IFC Films for its IFC Midnight banner.

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  • PAGE TO SCREEN: “Brighton Rock” by Graham Greene

    Welcome to 2010’s first installment of Page to Screen, our summer series in which I spotlight the source material behind some of the year’s most notable forthcoming adaptations.

    After a spectacularly prescient 2009 season – in which I blew my load over “Chéri,” largely dismissed the awards potential of “Up in the Air” and didn’t even notice “A Single Man” hovering in the wings – I’m all set to further prove the vast creative chasm that can lie between paper and celluloid, amplified by the fact that this year presently looks shorter on prestige literary adaptations than most.

    When in doubt, however, it is best to begin with a classic – and if there are many 2010 titles adapted from classier sources than Graham Greene’s 1938 novel “Brighton Rock,” I am not yet aware of them.

    “An Entertainment” is the rather perverse subtitle Greene attached to his novel on its initial publication, thus distinguishing it from what he regarded as more serious literary output; he could be as snootily blasé about his own oeuvre as a studio-dabbling auteur. Certainly, the descriptor isn’t unmerited: “Brighton Rock” is a tight, terse little underworld thriller, easily devoured in a single day of reading, with a blatant view, even then, toward the mainstream movie-house.

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