A Bigger Splash: DVD Review

There's nothing worse than a gatecrasher.

And in I Am Love director Luca Guadagnino's latest, a remake of the French 1969 thriller La Piscine, even though the gate-crasher is a tremendous Ralph Fiennes, the after effects of this arrival fail to really lift the so-called sexual thriller.

Swinton is Marianne Lane, a Bowie-esque rock singer, who's recuperating from throat surgery that's rendered her all but mute. While she's factored in some serious R&R with her current beau, Paul (a wearied and disconnected Schoenaerts), the peace is rudely shattered by the arrival of Lane's former manager and one time lover Harry (Fiennes), who shows with his newly-discovered daughter Penny (50 Shades of Grey's Dakota Johnson) in tow.

And it's not just the fragile peace that's ripped asunder with this visit, as old feelings between Lane and Harry simmer away; coupled with the Lolita-esque trappings of Penny as she eyes up Paul, nothing will ever be the same again.

It may be beautifully shot and evocatively dressed in the Italian countryside but Gaudagnino's latest is nothing more than an arthouse snooze-fest that does little to indulge the brain as much as it does to indulge the senses.

It's fair to say that were it not for Fiennes' overly boisterous and frequently hilarious (not to mention constantly naked) performance, A Bigger Splash would fall considerably flatter than it does.

Fiennes breathes life into the relative caricature of the man whose dancing to the Rolling Stones' Emotional Rescue proves that he does indeed have the moves like Jagger - albeit on the dad front. But Fiennes brings a positively lustrous and infectious energy to the screen that's missing when he's not there.

Swinton's a degree of class, giving her relatively mute songstress a sophistication that's needed and she manages to do so much with so little; equally, Johnson proves to have some cinematic balls giving her Penny the dangerous edge of flirtation that comes so often on holiday.

Unfortunately, Schoenaerts has neither the lustre or life to bring anything to the table as the damaged Paul - even in flashbacks, where Swinton's character comes alive, he brings hardly anything to the table, which ensures the denouement of this so called Dangerous Liaisons piece is lacking the emotional intensity which is required to ignite the powderkeg that's supposed to have been smouldering.

Instead, it's a damp fizzer of a film, that wallows wilfully and indulgently in its arthouse trappings and rarely rises above its jealousy soaked aspirations.

Comments

Train To Busan: Film Review

Train To Busan: Film Review Cast: Yoo Gong, Dong-seok Ma, Woo-sik Choi, Soo-an Kim Director: Sang-ho Yeon Despite starting off dangerously close to camp territory thanks to a resurrected road-kill, Train To Busan shakes off any silliness to provide one of the year's freshest and engaging takes on the zombie genre. In South Korea, there's a crisis - amid concerns of foot and mouth inside a quarantine zone, trouble's brewing. Thanks to a "tiny leak at a biotech district", chaos soon reigns and the region is over-run by a zombie virus, turning the masses into rabid feral biters, determined to take down anyone and anything in their way. Unaware of what's happening, Sok-Woo (Yoo Gong) is trying to get out of spending time with his estranged young daughter Soo-an (Soo-an Kim) because of work pressures. Separated from his wife in another district, Soo-an simply wants to board the train to Busan to go back to her mother, after her father failed to attend her recital....

The Magnificent Seven: Film Review

The Magnificent Seven: Film Review Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Byung-hun Lee, Peter Sarsgaard Director: Antoine Fuqua Rote and without a hint of much of his own style, The Magnificent Seven somehow manages to feel like a weaker carbon copy than a redo of the 1960s classic. This time around, Denzel Washington leads the pack as Sam Chisholm, a newly sworn warrant officer. Riding into town with nary a comment but with every head turning as a black man heads down their street, Chisholm is asked by widowed Emma Cullen (a largely underused but pleasingly effective Haley Bennett) to avenge her husband's death and free their mining town from the tyrannical grip of Bartholomew Bogue (Sarsgaard). Gathering up a motley crew of multi-racial misfits (one of the more revisionist edges that Fuqua gifts the reboot), Chisholm and his man saddle up for a fight. The Magnificent Seven is nothing in comparison to the...

The Angry Birds Movie: DVD Review

The Angry Birds Movie: DVD Review So, who remembers Angry Birds ? That game we were all so addicted to way back when and then it suddenly died a death overtaken by consoles, Candy Crush and other such time-sucks. Well, the film version of Angry Birds doesn't care that you've abandoned it, nor does it care that it's essentially got the feel of a one-shot and gone animation, aimed squarely at throwing all its eggs in giving you a cinematic take on the game's simple MO - destroy the towers. Long story short, Jason Sudeikis is Red, the original Angry bird, who's ostracised cos of his grumpy ways (even though he's lonely from having been bullied in his younger years). Sentenced to Anger Management by a judge after erupting during a hatchday party, he meets Josh Gad's hyper-active Chuck, McBride's explosive Bomb and Sean Penn's non-verbal Terrence. But his world - and along with all those other flightless ones on his homeland of Bird Island - is further ...

Movies Hut

Search This Blog