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DRAMA- ROMANCE. COMEDY SEX AND THE CITY (15) 145min 000
As Carrie Bradshaw might say — ‘I couldn't help but wonder how four ageing divas were going to resurrect Sex and the City: The Brand'. Is it possible that Charlotte. Samantha. Carrie and Miranda COuld pull off the same level of attraction that they did when they were footloose and fancy free. now that the more mundane developments of marriage and children have caught up with the pin- ups. for single women everywhere? The answer is a cackling yes. And these women still cackle. a lot. The plot boasts few surprises but what is a welcome revelation is that the movie is not an extended episode down the catwalk streets of New York City. The characters are fleshed out. the preened edges have worn down somewhat and the individual angst of each woman (apart from Charlotte. who is in essence a pretty. vacuous doll) is realised enough to engage even the hardened cynics. The actresses for once embrace their age and their insecurities rather than covering it up with expensive foundation.
Like life the film isn't perfect. The beginning recap is clumsy and overdone. the ending is rushed and too neat. and the version of feminist power and female solidarity the film peddles is slightly simplistic. but then
we're not here for reality. A few years it lRIlt FR DRAMA Affleck as writer (with Aaron Stockard) and director on from packing away the series in a GONE BABY GONE is a revelation. Gone Baby Gone is a work of tissue filled shoebox. thousands of (15) 113mm .... relentless, scuzzy, indubitable tone and style that women have been waiting for SATC to suggests that Affleck the actor may just have been return to give them hope in possible Ben Affleck’s long delayed (because of the Madeline taking notes over the last decade and a half. With its love and impossible fashion. Well, the McCann case) child abduction crime drama finally dense, dark script so full of slang, alliteration and shoe still fits and the wait has been stumbles in to British cinemas. Based, like Clint allusion (which owes a debt to my much of the writing worth it. (Georgina Wilson-Powelli Eastwood’s 2003 film Mystic River, on a novel by Irish on brilliant TV series The Wire, on which Lehane was I Out now on general release. Bostonian Dennis Lehane, Gone Baby Gone is another one of the team of writers), fantastic performances = v raw tale of abuse, pride, poverty and a very particular and intuitive direction Gone Baby Gone evokes Paul form of unhinged Massachusetts nobility. Schrader’s overlooked 1979 underworld drama When beautiful young girl Amanda (Madeline O’Brien) Hardcore and the early, less rigidly formalised work of goes missing in a run down area of Boston, local Gus van Sant. private investigator Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and his The husband and wife team at the centre of Gone girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan) are hired for their Baby Gone gives this film a strange but compelling knowledge of the neighbourhood. Before they know it dynamic and even when the film begins to crack under they find themselves having to deal with patronising the weight of a ridiculous denouement there are local police captain 00er (Morgan Freeman), Amanda’s enough interesting questions about the morality of the addict mother Helene (Amy Ryan) and two old school decisions we make to keep one thinking and watching. police detectives (John Ashton and Ed Harris). Things (Paul Dale) are, of course, not what they seem. I General release from Fri 6 Jun.
DRAMA UN SECRET (l 5) 106min .0.
Veteran French writer-director Claude Miller tGarde a Vile. La Petite Vo/eusel revrsits France's traumatic experiences under German Occupation during World War II in this polished and suspenseful melodrama. Adapted from Philippe Grimbert's semi-autof)iogr'aphical novel. U/l Secret begins in the mid-1980s. with the psychologist Francois ttvlathieu Amalrici worried by his elderly father's sudden disappearance and remembering his own sickly and anxrous childhood in Paris some three decades eariier.
Miller and his editor Voronigue Lange artfully shift between the film's three time-periods. wrth the contemporary scenes shot in black-aiid-white and the past hanr‘lsomely photographed in colour. Although documentary images. such as the newsreel Holocaust footage which Francois is made to watch at school are thoughtfully interwoven into the story. the emphasis in Un Secret is on the indiVidual's subjective experience and memory of history. We see the confusing adult world from child's point-of-view and we Witness how feelings of guilt and shame are passed down between generations. And in a strong ensemble cast. there are some fine performances. espeCially from Ludrvrne Sagnier who plays Maxrme's doomed first Wife. (Tom Dawson)
I Film/rouse, Edinburgh from Fri Iii-Wed 18 Jun.
13—19 Jun 2008 THE LIST 53