Breach

A sort of post-modern tragedy — if that’s not a contradiction in terms — that is too faithful to the novel but will probably win lots of Oscars for it

Tea With Mussolini is, like so many other works by its director and co- writer (with John Mortimer) Franco Zeffirelli, for movie-goers with rather more of a sweet-tooth than I generally find I have. Adapted from Zeffirelli’s autobiography, it tells the story of a small Italian boy called Luca (played as a child by Charlie…

Gekko No Sasayaki or “Moonlight Whispers” is a brilliant little Japanese film, written and directed by Akihiko Shiota, about young love which suddenly spins out of control and becomes sexual perversion. Not a very promising subject, you might think, and the quasi-clinical dimension of the film, though it has a serious point to make, is…

The Center of the World, directed by Wayne Wang from a script written by Mr Wang and others under the pseudonym of Ellen Benjamin Wong, is a sort of parable—an attempt to be honest about the relations between men and women by portraying a very odd relationship indeed. A computer nerd called Richard (Peter Sarsgaard)…

Lucie Aubrac by Claude Berri (the great director of Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring), is another illustration of the use of cliché in great movie-making. Based on the true life events recorded in the memoir, Ils partiront dans l’ivresse by Lucie Aubrac herself, this film hits us over the head with its…

The best movie I have seen so far this year is Open Hearts, a Dogme 95 film directed by Susanne Bier from a script she co-wrote with the great Anders Thomas Jensen, who also co-wrote Mifune and The King is Alive, two other Dogme productions that are among the best films of recent years. The…