Film reviews: Paul & Paulette Take a Bath | On Swift Horses | The Cut | Row
Shot through with playful Nouvelle Vague energy, Paul & Paulette Take a Bath is a deceptively complex film, writes Alistair Harkness
Paul & Paulette Take a Bath (15) ★★★★
On Swift Horses (15) ★★
The Cut (15) ★★
Row (15) ★
Set mostly in Paris, Paul & Paulette Take a Bath serves up the sort of appealing tourist-eye view of the city you might expect in an offbeat indie romance, albeit with one intriguing twist: its titular protagonists’ fast-forged relationship deepens as they explore the sites of historical atrocities in the city and beyond.
First meeting when American photographer Paul (Jeremie Galiana) tries to covertly take a picture of Paulette (Marie Benati) as she re-enacts Marie Antoinette’s beheading outside the Place de la Concorde, they soon strike up a flirty relationship built around local girl Paulette’s curious obsession with the dark truths obscured from her home city’s everyday reality by the passage of time – a nifty idea that the film’s British-French writer/director Jethro Massey uses to subtly explore the baggage we carry through life and into our relationships.
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Shot through with playful Nouvelle Vague energy, the film’s Jacque Rivette-riffing title is also a knowing reference to a famous Lee Miller photograph she took of herself in Hitler’s bathtub, something Massey incorporates into the film as he gradually dismantles its carefully crafted layers of irony to get at something more profound about how one generation’s psychic scars don’t necessarily prepare succeeding generations for the horrors they’ll likely witness in their own lifetimes. It’s a deceptively complex film in that way – and the Eva Green-esque Benati is a real find.
On Swift Horses plays like a James Dean movie in which all the queer subtexts have now become text. Set in 1950s California, it’s a love triangle of sorts between an aspiring family man called Lee (played by Will Poulter), his secretive new wife Muriel (Daisy Edgar Jones) and Lee’s free spirited gambling brother Julius (played by Jacob Elordi), whose instant bond with Muriel starts upending all their lives.
The love triangle, though, isn’t really fuelled by Muriel’s desire for Julius so much as by her infatuation with what Julius represents; both, it soon transpires, are attracted to members of their own sex, though in truth they might also be attracted to each other too. It’s hard to tell in an overly-plotted film that hints at both without much conviction.
Despite a committed physical performance from Orlando Bloom as a has-been Irish boxer desperately trying to shed weight for a hastily arranged title fight, downbeat boxing drama The Cut struggles to go the distance as it descends into psychological horror territory. That’s a shame because director Sean Ellis’s attempt to do a boxing-themed take on Black Swan is certainly intriguing. Alas, the script doesn’t make much sense and John Torturro’s arrival as a merciless trainer drafted in to get Bloom’s character to the requisite weight is so over the top it sabotages all the excellent work Caitríona Balfe’s performance as Bloom’s no-nonsense partner does to ground the film emotionally.
Row serves up an even more dubiously plotted sports-themed psychodrama. Set against the backdrop of an attempt to row across the Atlantic in record time, the film is told from the fevered perspective of crew member Megan (Bella Dayne) after she washes up on Hoy, miles off course and with the rest of her crew having apparently fallen victim to some form of bloody mishap.
Looked after in a B&B-cum-makeshift-hospital where she recounts her story to a local police inspector (Tam Dean Burn), Megan’s fractured nightmares soon blend with straight-up flashbacks depicting her increasingly harried teammates arguing over whether or not the mysterious stranger they drafted in at the last minute to aid their attempt might actually be a murderer on the run. Incredibly, it builds to an even stupider plot twist than this.
All films in cinemas from 5 September
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