Posts Tagged ‘Clement Sibony’

The Walk

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Charlotte le Bon, Ben Kingsley, Clement Sibony, Cesar Domboy, James Bade Dale

Joseph Gordon-Levitt attempts a dubious French accent as Philippe Petit a High Wire Artist who is hell bent on walking across a tightrope between the newly constructed Twin Towers in New York City.

Director of Castaway and Flight, Robert Zemeckis’s film The Walk is both captivating and thrilling as he takes audiences on a journey of Philippe and his outstanding feat of walking a tightrope between the Twin Towers just as they are being completed back in 1974. What is more fascinating is that Zemeckis uses The Walk as a cinematic memorial to the infamous towers which came crashing down in the terrorist attacks in September 2001, without making reference to their eventual downfall twenty seven years later.

Whilst The Walk is set in Paris and New York, Zemeckis does not fall into the trap of ending the film with a line about the devastation of the World Trade Center Towers, but rather uses the film to pay tribute to the fantastic engineering feat of these twin towers during the 1970’s and the inspiration they gave to the crazy, obsessive French man Petit, exuberantly played by Gordon-Levitt who, with the help of a motley crue of accomplices pulls off the illegal stunt of crossing between the iconic skyscrapers one morning in May 1974, despite a multitude of setbacks.

Unimaginatively titled, The Walk is not a perfect film and the only criticism is that of Petit’s character narrating his story directly to the cinema audience, but the film nevertheless remains light as a crazy and nostalgic look at one man’s determination to follow his dreams, knowing that if he achieves this feat he would become infamous and garner considerable media attention.

Thankfully the rest of the cast are French including Charlotte le Bon as Petit’s patient girlfriend Annie and Clement Sibony, both last seen in the charming film The Hundred Foot Journey as Jean-Louis, Philippe’s photographer friend who is given the task of capturing all of Petit’s tightrope antics including an earlier performance of walking between the towers of the Notre Dame in Paris.

Gordon-Levitt, whose slim build and natural onscreen energy is perfectly cast as the ambitious Philippe Petit and Oscar winner Ben Kingsley (Life, Gandhi, Sexy Beast) is cast as the Czech highwire artist Papa Rudy who Petit befriends at the Circus to assist him with some much needed acrobatic training.

For all its daring bravado and not to mention his obvious lack of a fear of heights, Petit’s triumph is of making the performance of being a high wire artist truly spectacular. The Walk is a fun-filled captivating story about one man’s ambition to perform the impossible act, caught at a specific moment in history when skyscrapers were still a novelty on any city’s skyline.

The Hundred-Foot Journey

Director: Lasse Halstrom

Cast: Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Charlotte Le Bon, Manish Dayal, Clement Sibony, Amit Shar

Chocolat and The Cider House Rules Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom and scriptwriter Matthew Knight bring the charming and utterly delicious tale, The Hundred-Foot Journey based on the novel by Richard C. Morais to the big screen, a gorgeous film which traces the journey of an Indian family who move from Mumbai to London and then to the Continent.

The Kadam family after a near fatal accident on a French country road, the family headed by the incorrigible Papa played by Om Puri decide to set up roots in a small French town to start an Indian Restaurant and do what they do best – cook. The only problem is that a 100 feet away is a Michelin Star Nouvelle Cuisine restaurant headed by the strict and snobbish, Madame Mallory wonderfully played against type by Oscar Winner Helen Mirren (The Queen, The Madness of King George).

With a flourish the Maison Mumbai is opened in direct competition of this Michelin star restaurant which generates fierce culinary rivalry between the two establishments pointing to a much deeper prejudice about foreigners in Europe exemplified in the xenophobia displayed by Chef Jean-Pierre played by Clement Sibony (The Tourist). Inspired by his mother’s sea urchins, the young Hassan, an aspiring cook soon studies all the bibles of French cuisine and naturally is quite enchanted with the sous chef Maguerite played by French actress Charlotte Le Bon, hinting at a potential romance.

As the characters develop and the story unfolds, Madame Mallory soon entices the young chef Hassan played by Manish Dayal to come and work at the French Restaurant which with a liberal dash of exotic spices soon earns the Restaurant another Michelin star attracting all the Parisian culinary offers. Hassan travels to Paris where he works in a top Nouvelle Cuisine restaurant overlooking the Eiffel Tower creating exotic fusion combinations which soon earns him fame and respect. This is food porn on acid, with some luminous shots of many exotic dishes being prepared in sleek industrial Parisian kitchens, think Babette’s Feast for the 21^st century.

With the current trends of TV reality shows like Master Chef sweeping the Global, The Hundred-Foot Journey should definitely find a niche audience and points to a growing hybrid cinematic genre in the tradition of A Million Dollar Arm, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Slumdog Millionaire of Hollywood films with a distinctly Indian influence, adding an exotic tinge to the Western dramas.

With producers Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, The Hundred-Foot Journey is as delightful as it is sumptuous to watch with glowing cinematography provided by Swede Linus Sandgren (American Hustle) with a narrative beautifully accentuated by a superb on screen chemistry between Madame Mallory and Papa complimented by the developing romance between the young lovers Hassan and Marguerite.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is recommended viewing for foodies, chefs, romantics and lovers of genteel cinema. This is a gorgeous spicy cinematic dish, served with all the necessary garnish and flavour to make it palatable and appreciated.

The Tourist

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck stylish comic thriller The Tourist is more a film to showcase some European and British talent than it is a blockbuster for the two major American stars, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.

Jolie and Depp shine as the leading couple especially in a wonderful scene at the Hotel Daniela in Venice, when Jolie who plays Elize Ward tells Frank (the Tourist) that after a dinner out, he has to sleep on the couch in the deluxe suite. Frank imagines the glamorous Elize undressing in the next bedroom, as he curls up on the crimson sofa with his spy novel.  The next morning Frank is suddenly escaping Russian gunmen on the rooftops of  Venetian villas and falls victim to the idiosyncrasies of the Italian police force when questioned about his supposed pursuers.

Venice is a much a character in The Tourist as the rest of the cast, and the ancient Italian city built on water is murky with a seductive intrigue whilst von Donnersmarck shows off this superb location, from wide-angle shots of the Piazza San Marco to subtle references in the script. One of the characters a cameo by Rufus Sewell even says if this intrigue had happened someplace else it would not be the same as it happening Venice.

The Tourist is a tribute to sophisticated comedies of the fifties and sixties complete with gorgeous costumes, a dash of intrigue and a beautiful location to match. Depp and Jolie are a wonderful pair as foils to each other’s deceptions. There is obvious tribute to the James Bond films in the Tourist, from Moonraker and Casino Royale both set in Venice, to Timothy Dalton as the head of M16 and a sinister impressive performance by Steven Berkoff, playing the billionaire gangster Shaw, reprising the role of the villain as he did with menace in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy.

The Tourist is a heady cocktail of intrigue, deception, humour and glamour letting the audience feel that like the title, they too have travelled on holiday to an exotic location and discovered a world unfamiliar to their own.

Director von Donnersmarck won the 2007 Oscar for best Foreign language film for The Lives of Others and is clearly enjoying making a less serious more glossy cinematic production whilst not compromising on the European style and sophistication of The Tourist‘s main locations, Paris and Venice.

Which always begs the question, why would a maths teacher from Madison, Wisconsin in the American mid-West be traveling alone on a TGV from Paris to Venice?