Reviews: The Big Picture, The Princess of Montpensier, and Cell 211

Lies, lies and yet more lies: that sums up the films I saw recently on a less than summery summer’s day off. The films were: The Big Picture, The Princess of Montpensier, and Cell 211.

The Big Picture
Based on a novel, this film is engrossing as you watch it, even as the lead character conjures only your revulsion. Romain Duris (surely France’s best young actor) is the rich, successful lawyer, driver of a BMW 5 Series, owner of a boat, and husband to a beautiful wife and father to two loving children – cue collapse into midlife ennui, jealousy, and unexpected violence – and the latter’s equally unexpected opportunities. To reveal any more would spoil the story.
Duris absolutely nails his character’s paranoia, and the shifts that his ensuing actions both enforce upon him while opening up new and dreamed-of vistas of opportunity.
I presume the source novel is responsible for the ‘throwing in the kitchen sink’ approach as Duris’s journey becomes ever more implausible.
And yet, and yet… Duris is so convincing that you end up forgiving the script’s ridiculous twists. Needless to say, it’s not until he finally faces death that he can emerge from his lie of life, and face the greatest adventure with renewed vigour.
Score: 7.5/10

The Princess of Montpensier
This Bertrand Travernier costume drama was one I missed at last year’s London Film Festival – and, upon reflection, I don’t regret that decision.
The film is frequently beautiful, and throughout perfectly-well acted, but it hinges on one single conceit that singularly failed to enthral me.
The conceit? That the four male leads (among them the charismatic Gaspard Ulliel, and France’s equivalent of Morgan Freeman, Lambert Wilson) in the film should all fall hopelessly in love/lust/awe of the female lead, played (again perfectly well) by Melanie Thierry as the eponymous princess, just didn’t ring true.
As all my friends know, I am a lover of French actresses – beautiful, brilliant, intelligent, complex, many-flavoured, regularly naked etc – but I’m afraid Melanie Thierry simply fails to convince as the one true love of at least two of the four male leads. While Thierry’s princess lives a lie for much of her on-screen life, so I couldn’t help but feel lied to.
Of course, this being medieval France, all manner of calamities and coincidences bedevil the key five characters. Were it not played as a tragedy, its many overly contrived coincidences mean it could be mistaken for a Shakespearean comedy.
Strictly for Francophiles, I’m afraid.
Score: 5/10

Cell 211
This Spanish prison drama is almost the anti-Shawshank, examining male friendships in group dynamics with ice-cold precision even as tempers run hot.
Alberto Amman (a deadringer for Keanu Reeves) is the ‘innocent’ caught up in a prison riot. How he ends up in this predicament hinges upon a positively Hitchcockian coincidence, but once you get passed that, Amman’s Juan Oliver is one of cinema’s born survivors, adapting to his surroundings and fellow inmates with surprising intelligence and tenancity.
The riot leader is essayed with calm charisma by Luis Tosar, a coiled spring of rage and righteous rage against the uncaring authorities. The relationship between Tosar’s Malamadre and Ammann’s Oliver is the film’s core.
The story makes many twists and turns, which are both contrived yet believable at the same time. The growing tension is founded upon the lies Oliver has told, and how long for and by whom those lies will be believed.
Director Daniel Mozon directs with panache throughout, never flinching from the script’s grittier aspects, but also delivering the emotional beats with much skill.
Some will attempt to compare this with last year’s Un Prophet, but that would be foolish – the only thing they have in common is the prison setting.
Even as I was watching Cell 211, I was thinking: “Hollywood’s going to pick this up and remake it.” I checked on imdb.com and what do you know: there’s a US remake mooted for 2013 with either Ryan Gosling or Ed Norton in the lead role…
This is muscular, bruising ‘entertainment’, and if you can live with the coincidence upon which the script entirely hangs, then be the first to sample world cinema’s new breakout star: Alberto Ammann.
Score: 8/10