Notting Hill (12) General release
As formula entertainment it's as canny as anything screenwriter Richard Curtis has produced, and as a snapshot of the way Britain chooses to see itself in the late 1990s, it's fascinating. But is it any good? Well, if you found the upper middle-class schtick of Four Weddings and a Funeral faintly nauseating, but reluctantly admired its skilful comedy, then you'll likely find yourself once more submitting to Curtis's well-honed writing skills (auteur theorists may care to note that Roger Michell, who does a competent enough job, is strictly a jobbing director here).
It starts badly - with Elvis Costello crooning Charles Aznavour's old chestnut, She, over a montage of glamour shots of Julia Roberts, looking typically insipid as her fictional alter ego, movie star Anna Scott - and it gets worse, with Hugh Grant doing his patented English stammer in a voice-over intro to the London neighbourhood which gives the film its title (of which more later).
Things pick up considerably as we get into the swim of things. Grant, the not-very-successful proprietor of a travel-book shop in Notting Hill, is nonplussed when Roberts walks into his premises. The next time they meet, he spills orange juice all over her, and the stage is set for a typical will-they-won't-they romantic comedy.
But making one of the protagonists a movie star allows the film to veer off into productively satirical subplots - one sequence (perhaps designed to soften the hearts of curmudgeonly film critics) accurately parodies the tedious banality of movie press junkets, another has fun with the idea of what happens if you show up unannounced at a family dinner with the world's most famous movie star on your arm.
It's a shrewdly calibrated concept. After all, received wisdom has it that romantic comedy appeals more to women than men, who'd rather be watching Mel Gibson shooting people. But going to bed with a famous movie star surely ranks rather high on most male fantasy wish-lists, so you can almost hear Curtis having his cake and eating it, while poking some fun at the currently very fashionable subject of celebrity. Roberts is much better and more likeable here than she has been in most of her recent roles, and Grant is adequate, even if there's a distinct lack of on-screen chemistry between the two.
It's in the contrast between Roberts's jet-setting lifestyle and Grant's humdrum existence that the movie runs into some difficulty. It's already been pointed out in some quarters that the Notting Hill of Notting Hill is rather removed from the reality, particularly in the absence of any non-white faces from the movie. More serious for the film's internal dynamics is the sheer unbelievability of Grant's dowdy friends and family. These people are supposed to be well down the social pecking order, so how come they're all living in wonderful houses in central London? One can understand why the producers didn't want to call their film Slough or Croydon, but the depiction of such characters as Grant's dizzy, New Age sister (Emma Chambers), or his hygiene-unfriendly, sex-obsessed flatmate (Rhys Ifans) veers uncomfortably into sitcom territory. The unexpected appearance in the closing scenes of a restaurant-owning pal who hasn't been seen since the first five minutes indicates some frantic post-production hacking at the problem.
The Inheritors (Members and guests only) IFC
Described by its director as an "Alpine Western", Stefan Ruzowitzky's richly-textured rural epic, set in Austria in the early 1930s, touches on such classic themes as greed, jealousy and dispossession, doing so with a confident voice that blends humour with tragedy in a style reminiscent of some of the better German films of the 1970s.
The heroes of Ruzowitsky's story are seven peasants, led by Lukas (Simon Schwarz), who inherit the land of a murdered farmer and decide to tend it themselves, much to the displeasure of the neighbouring landholders. Their conflict with the landowners, led by the malevolent Danninger (Ulrich Wildgruber) gradually escalates, as dark secrets from the past are revealed and long-held hatreds rise to the surface.
The Western reference is understandable, given the story of a small community fighting against brutal, overwhelmingly powerful opponents, but Ruzowitzky has a very European eye for the absurd and the surreal, and he skillfully unfolds his gripping narrative against a backdrop which effectively evokes the grandeur of the rural landscape without ever sentimentalising the harshness of the lives he depicts.
Night of the Hunter (Members and guests only) IFC
Charles Laughton's only film as a director gets a welcome reissue in a new print, offering the chance to see this quasi-expressionist, Southern gothic masterpiece in all its glowing, moonlit glory. Mitchum gives one of his most memorable performances as the psychopathic preacher with "love" and "hate" tattooed on his knuckles. Showing for one week only, it's the first in an extensive list of repertory titles showing at the IFC over the next few weeks.
