list.co.uk/fi lm Reviews | FILM

EROTIC THRILLER THE HANDMAIDEN (18) 156min ●●●●●

DRAMA THE SENSE OF AN ENDING (15) 108min ●●●●● COMEDY TABLE 19 (12A) 87min ●●●●●

Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) follows his exceptional English-language debut Stoker with a return to his native Korea for this typically elaborate adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith. Infusing the source material’s sapphic intrigue with his own inimitable, escapist style, The Handmaiden is an initially beguiling film whose heavy-handed love scenes undermine its dramatic power. Park moves the action from Victorian England

to 1930s Korea during the period of Japanese occupation. Lowly thief Sook-hee (brilliant newcomer Kim Tae-ri) poses as a maid to wealthy Japanese heiress Hideko (Kim Min-hee) in order to convince her to marry cruel confidence trickster Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo). But when the women discover a mutual passion, plans soon change.

This is bravura filmmaking, not least in terms of its explicit lesbian sex which is presented as an artistic portrayal of love but unfortunately plays like male- gaze porn. It presents a world in which everyone is wearing a mask of respectability, and where lust, violence and depravity lie hidden behind the most chaste of exteriors. Still, amid all the duplicity and artifice, the emotion between Sook-hee and Hideko is vibrant and real. (Nikki Baughan) Selected release from Fri 14 Apr.

Based on Julian Barnes’ Booker-winning novel, this somewhat wilted English rose of a drama from Indian director Ritesh Batra finds a curmudgeon retreating from the irritations of his present in favour of the agony and ecstasy of his past. Jim Broadbent plays grumpy old git Tony, who’s inspired to revisit his schooldays after being bequeathed the diary of schoolmate Adrian (played as a young man by Joe Alwyn), though the item itself eludes him.

45 Years showed in heartbreaking detail how obsessing over what once was can poison what you have, but this feels like standard ‘memory lane’ fare. The slightly hokey conceit will hook you for a while, with the diary acting as a Hitchcockian McGuffin. However, despite forceful work from charismatic newcomer Alwyn, Adrian is a fleeting figure and the mystery that surrounds him doesn’t grip as it might. In fact, very little feels adequately established and there’s a nagging sense that it may have played out better as a BBC miniseries. Still, it’s nicely cast and pleasantly wistful and the fractious familiarity between Tony and his ex-wife (Harriet Walter) is to be treasured in a film that’s handsome enough but never more than politely probing. (Emma Simmonds) General release from Fri 14 Apr.

As joyful as they’re meant to be, weddings can be emotionally fraught affairs. Jeffrey Blitz’s comedy Table 19 tries to capture this, with only semi- successful results. Landing somewhere between the laddishness of Wedding Crashers and more sweet-natured fare like The Wedding Singer, the film suggests that at the back of any reception, there’s always a table of singletons and oddballs.

Anna Kendrick plays Eloise, who was due to sit

on the top table until she’s dumped by her boyfriend (Wyatt Russell), the brother of the bride. Relegated to the outer reaches of the room, she’s looking to mend her broken heart. Joining her on Table 19 are a teen on heat (Tony Revolori), an ex-con (Stephen Merchant), an argumentative married couple (Lisa Kudrow and Craig Robinson) and the bride’s stoner nanny (June Squibb). Scripted by Mark and Jay Duplass, the film is more formulaic than their own directorial efforts, with director Blitz (Rocket Science) struggling to give this lift-off. The 80s nostalgia feels cheap and the relationships are too engineered. Where it does score is in the casting of Kendrick, yet even her effervescent presence isn’t enough to save this from mediocrity. (James Mottram) General release from Fri 7 Apr.

ANIMATION MY LIFE AS A COURGETTE (PG) 66min ●●●●●

There’s a moving sequence early on in Swiss director Claude Barras’ Oscar-nominated stop-motion animation that sums up how his orphan protagonists deal with trauma and tragedy. We see nine-year-old Icare (voiced by Gaspard Schlatter), who likes to be referred to as ‘Courgette’ (the nickname his alcoholic mum gave him), sitting alone in his attic bedroom carefully assembling a sculpture from leftover beer cans. Just as Courgette creates something beautiful out of his sadness, so too do the filmmakers craft something special in this insightful exploration of how a gang of abused children living in a group home try to make the best out of their situation.

It’s incredible how deeply you fall in love with the characters in a film that runs for a succinct 66 minutes. That’s down to a combination of a frank screenplay (from Girlhood’s Céline Sciamma) adapted from Gilles Paris’ novel and the brightly coloured, superbly designed models, whose giant eyes convey a multitude of thorny emotions. The way in which the children speak to one another is perfectly judged too. Their candid discussions about sex artfully highlight what some of them have been privy to at a young age, while also perceptively showing how they can misinterpret things due to their naivety.

Though all this might sound pretty heavy-going, debut director Barras deals with the material in such an imaginative manner and with such levity that My Life as a Courgette instead makes for extremely heartening, often giggle-inducing viewing. All ages will benefit from this charming tale of tolerance that extols the value of grasping the good in life, without overlooking how difficult it can be for some people to get there. (Katherine McLaughlin) Selected release from Fri 5 May.

1 Apr–31 May 2017 THE LIST 75