Featuring: Veerle Baetens, Jan Bijvoet, Johan Heldenbergh, Nell Cattrysse, Geert Van Rampelberg, Nils De Caster, Robbie Cleiren, Bert Huysentruyt, Blanka Heirman
Director: Felix Van Groeningen
Writer: Felix Van Groeningen, Johan Heldenbergh

2013-14 Lotterywest Perth Film Festival season dates:
Somerville: 10–16 Feb, 8pm
Joondalup Pines: 18–23 Feb, 8pm

Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: A strange and ultimately maudlin cocktail of genres, the best ingredient of which is the vibrant bluegrass music.

Story:
Tattooist Elise (Veerle Baetens) and her musician lover Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) live modestly and happily in the Belgian countryside. They have a passionate relationship that has yielded a gorgeous little daughter, and are members of a vibrant bluegrass band called The Broken Circle Breakdown. Then their daughter is diagnosed with leukaemia, and the near-idyllic life they share begins to fall apart.

Review:
This odd cocktail of musical, romance and tragedy (or melodrama, depending on your response) is more head-scratcher than tear-jerker.

It starts promisingly enough. Didier and Elise are in the early stages of their relationship, in lust with each other and life. He’s an interesting character, a banjo-pluckin’ bluegrass muso who lives in a trailer in rural Belgium. He’s an Americaphile, and indeed, his band sounds American, singing in English and belting out their bluegrass toons with gusto and conviction that would do any of his legendary US muso heroes proud. Continue reading The Broken Circle Breakdown Movie Review →

Featuring: Robert Redford
Director: J.C. Chandor
Writer: J.C. Chandor
Movie website: www.allislostmovie.com.au/

2013-14 Lotterywest Perth Film Festival season dates:
Somerville: 3–8 Feb, 8pm
Joondalup Pines: 11–16 Feb, 8pm

Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: Unrelentingly intense, incredibly convincing in its realism, and faultlessly performed.

Story:
An elderly solo yachtsman (Robert Redford) at sea in the Indian Ocean somewhere off Sumatra wakes to find his boat has collided with an adrift cargo container. He makes hasty repairs to a gaping hole in the hull, but further damage wreaked by big seas during a fearsome storm sound the yacht’s death knell. Forced into an inflatable life raft with meagre supplies salvaged from the sinking yacht and no radio, he is at the mercy of ocean currents. Using a sextant and nautical map to chart his progress, he realises that his only hope of survival is in drifting into a shipping lane and being rescued by a passing cargo ship.

Review:
The film opens with a voiceover of the Redford character (unnamed; henceforth ‘the sailor’) reading his final words, a message in a bottle he hopes his loved ones back home will eventually receive. He assures them that he did everything he could to survive, and apologises for failing. It’s a canny narrative strategy, charged with emotion, and setting up the expectation that all is, indeed, lost. Continue reading All Is Lost Movie Review →