quiet trickster

Cheerfully lo-fi Z-movie, by another woman director, Rona Mark, whose credits also include the delightfully titled The Final Days of the Ministry of Tea. It’s a nifty concept, two girls who refuse to communicate except to each other, and who are more than ordinarily determined to stop anyone who thwarts them.

Moderately gory, there’s some slightly stodgy writing and some atrocious acting. But it’s saved by the central performances, sympathetically portraying the evil twins (evil ginger twins: I’m pretty sure there are organisations that protest about that sort of thing :), and some nifty visual touches (heightened colour in the girl’s fantasies).

I don’t know that I have much to add to my tweet on this - Tiramisu is cute but insubstantial.

A film by the Dutch director Paula van der Oest (and while it’s always nice to see women directors, it’s depressing that this is still surprising). It’s not bad, by any means, with very strong central performances, particularly from Anneke Blok as an aging actress struggling to pull her life together.

And I don’t have any particular problem with the style - comedy drama, in which the comedy is never so broad as to be farce, and the drama never so strong as to be melodrama. The film never gets as sickly sweet as the title suggests, and neither comedy nor drama feels forced.

It’s just that, well, it’s not the first film about an aging actress struggling to pull her life together, or suffering in the presence of younger actresses. Nor is it the first odd couple seen on screen (in this case, the actress and her straight-laced accountant). It won’t be the last. And honestly, I really just don’t care that much. And while the comic and dramatic moments never feel forced, they also never feel entirely fresh - there is nothing particularly original about them, and this lends a slight air of inevitability to the whole thing.

I really didn’t dislike it. I enjoyed watching it. Am I being to harsh here? I guess I want to laugh harder at my comedies and feel more intensely for my dramas, and don’t feel either needs to be compromised in comedy drama.

The action of the film is intercut with excerpts from the play in which the lead character is performing - an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (I so didn’t have to look that up). I suppose it’s to counterpoint the film, but I felt that watching the play would have been more interesting.