Mama Mia! (2008)

I walked into this with free tickets and no idea what the movie was about, other than it features ABBA songs and Meryl Streep. Not planning to write a full review, lazily linking the NY Times instead.

What I’d like to do is go on record to say that this might be the most fun I’ve had in a cinema, and if you watch it, it’s best not to take it too seriously. As someone wrote, this is the closest you get to see A-List actors doing drunken karaoke.

Time to dig up my dad’s ABBA greatest hits compilation now!

A fan girl's findings: insights into MA

"To say that this movie is historically irresponsible or politically suspect is both to state the obvious and to miss the point...beneath its highly decorated surface is an examination, touched with melancholy as well as delight, of what it means to live in a world governed by rituals of acquisition and display."

"We know how this story ends, and Ms. Coppola refrains from showing us the violent particulars, or from sentimentalizing her heroine’s fate, preferring to conclude on a quiet, restrained note that registers the loss of Marie’s world as touchingly as the rest of the film has acknowledged her folly, her confusion and her humanity."

A lonely petit four of a queen (NY Times review)

"Drift and dislocation are second nature to Coppola. They were the main themes of her previous films, The Virgin Suicides (also starring Dunst) and Lost in Translation.... Whatever the film's structural failings and historical gaps, it's great to see such a distinctive directorial vision coming out of Hollywood.... Few directors, of either sex, are capable of making a costume drama about 18th-century monarchs that feels so exasperatingly contemporary."

There’s something about Marie (Telegraph review)

"Coppola has created one of the most compellingly watchable historical dramas in recent cinema precisely by doing what her critics accuse her of doing; playing loose with the historical and temporal facts for the sake of making a good movie.... Coppola does what a good storyteller should do; She stays true to her subject as an artist by filtering the story through her own sensibility."

"Coppola does what any director in her right mind must do to make a very good movie; She empathizes deeply with her protagonist, finds a way to bring her audience into the queen's gilded cage and allows us to look into her unknowable heart."

(blog entry on The Back Row Manifesto.)

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Director: Sofia Coppola
Starring: Kristen Dunst
Length: 123 mins
Tagline: Let them eat cake

Oh Marie! Tragic, beautiful Marie. What a gripping life story you have! Its entanglements, scope and obscuring libelles would make it a daunting task to film. Yet, Sofia Coppola has done very well in humanising this much maligned queen, and she does so with a unique, feminine grace and vision.

The resulting movie is a bold, innovative one and like Marie, the director attracts both passionate haters and defenders. Because of Coppola's membership in a privileged, film-dynastic family, some critics have gone so far as to dismiss her interpretation as a quasi-autobiographical one, while others have likened it to an extended music video or fluffy coming-of-age teen movie. But while it's true that you wouldn't be able to pass a history test after watching this movie, that's because it was never meant to be a rigid, historical period piece. Besides, you should be studying your textbooks instead of watching movies if you want to pass that test.

What this movie does is to bring us into the beautiful, cocooned world of Versailles, where the outside world has little presence. Each shot is filled with eye candy for the viewers to feast on - exquisite fashion, flamboyant architecture and gorgeous confectioneries flit in and out of the frame against a contemporary soundtrack that makes it all feel refreshingly relatable. Yet, despite its glittering, glamourous surface, the movie is far from being superficial. It succeeds in rising above being a mere poor little rich girl tale by giving Marie Antoinette more dignity than that. Ultimately, it is about a young woman living in a gilded cage of suffocating protocol and restrictions trying to cope in the only way she knows how to. Yes, her life may revolve around the superficial pursuit of temporal pleasure, but she is shown to go about it in a poignant and sympathetic light.

There are some controversial decisions that are worth mentioning: the director's decision to use a multi-national cast and have them keep their accents is a bold one that works out well most of the time, but occasionally I found Kristen Dunst's very, very American twang to be jarring. Man, I can almost swear that some times she sounded like she was playing it up.

Another controversial aspect involves the film's historical inaccuracies. Now, I would be prepared to close one eye to most of them - the wrong champagne glass shape, a ball in a venue that wasn't built at that time, a fourth child of Marie's that was left out, the wrong sister-in-law gives birth and etc. However, her affair with a certain Count Fersen has never been supported by most historians, and I feel that it should have been left out as it gives a significant but misguided impression of the queen. Perhaps Coppola put it in because she wanted to show that Marie wasn't frigid and wanted to experience a greater emotional and sexual intimacy than what her curiously asexual husband could provide.

Oh well. It's just a comment, not a complaint. Marie Antoinette is a wistful, delightful and personal portrait of the doomed queen of France and her glorious heydays and to borrow the words of AO Scott, this is a movie that I am perfectly happy to lose my head over.

Watched Tuesday, 15 April

My Blueberry Nights (2007)

Director: Wong Kar Wai
Starring: Norah Jones, Jude Law, Rachel Weiz & Natalie Portman
Length: 90 mins

"At the end of every night, the cheesecake and the apple pie are always completely gone, the peach cobbler and the chocolate mousse cake are nearly finished, but there's always a whole blueberry pie left untouched."

"So what's wrong with the blueberry pie?"

"There's nothing wrong with the blueberry pie, just people make other choices. You can't blame the blueberry pie, it's just... no one wants it."

But shrugging off the rejection of a loved one is not as simple as that, is it? So Elizabeth, our heroine, goes on a road trip from New York, to Memphis, Las Vegas and then back to New York after having her heart broken. At each stop she meets people whose stories illustrate the brittle, painful side of love - the cafe owner who is still waiting for the woman who walked out his life to come back, the alcoholic cop and his beautiful wife who yearns to be freed from her intense love-hate relationship but is terribly torn by the price of her freedom, and finally the hard, confident gambler who has her carefully-constructed front torn down by the finality of death.

Easily the most accessible of Kar Wai's films, My Blueberry Nights is like the dessert it features - sweet, visually appealing and a satisfying fix. And as the movie ends on a hopeful note with Lizzie back in the little New York cafe she started out from, you can't help but believe in second chances.

Watched: Wednesday, 27 March

In the Mood for Love (2000)

Director: Wong Kar Wai
Starring: Tony Leung & Maggie Cheung
Length: 98 minutes

The end title reads "That era has passed. Nothing that belongs to it exists anymore." And so it has, leaving behind the scent of loss in it's wake, much like the original Chinese title, "Our Glorious Years Have Passed Like Flowers".

Elusive and bittersweet, this wistful movie mourns for the past, immortalising single moments through lingering, repetitive shots, much like a lover reliving cherished memories. This allows the viewer to be immersed into the agonised, repressed world of the leads, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, who play neighbours who after being driven to seek solace in each other, disallow themselves from falling in love with each other.

This film, being mood-driven, as opposed to plot-driven, has sparse, restrained dailogue and long periods quiet, which requires effort on the viewer's part to meet it on it's own terms instead of being led by the hand to a predetermined conclusion. Some will find this task a strange and somewhat formidable one. But the experiential payoff is well worth it.

Watched: Thursday, 21 March