Tag: Haley Lu Richardson

The Chaperone

Rated: PGThe Chaperone

Directed by: Michael Engler

Script Written by: Julian Fellowes

Based on the Novel by: Laura Moriarty

Produced by: Greg Clark, Victoria Hill, Luca Scalisi, Rose Ganguzza, Kelly Carmichael, Greg Hamilton

Starring: Elizabeth McGovern, Haley Lu Richardson, Géza Röhrig, Campbell Scott, Victoria Hill, Miranda Otto, Robert Fairchild, Matt McGrath, Blythe Danner, Jayne Houdyshell and Jonathan Walker.

‘What do you want to be Louise?’

‘To be the best dancer in the world.’

The Chaperone explores the story of the silent film super-star, Louise Brooks.

I think just about everyone would recognise her flapper style and short dark bob.

After her dancing and acting career faded and failed, Louise Brooks disappeared from the spotlight, only to re-invent herself and remerge as the best-selling author of her biography, Lulu in Hollywood (1982).

She writes of her life in New York, mentioning a middle-aged chaperone who escorted her when she first arrived.

No-one knows who this chaperone was.

Laura Moriarty has written a novel exploring the idea of the character, The Chaperone.  And a script was written, reuniting the director, writer and star from the multi-award winning TV series, Downton Abby.

Set in the 1920s, we see Louise as a young girl living in Wichita, Kansas.

At fifteen, Louise is accepted into a dance academy in New York.

Her mother (Victoria Hill) too busy with her own pursuits doesn’t have time to take her.

And young girl can’t go to New York on her own.

When Norma (Elizabeth McGovern) sees Louise dance after over-hearing the need of a chaperone, she volunteers.

The main focus of the film is on Norma – her escape from a stale marriage and her need to find her birth mother: ‘I love you, I really do,’ her husband tells her as she leaves.  ‘That’s nice,’ she replies.

Norma was an orphan.  And the orphanage she grew up in is in New York, unfortunately named: The New York Home for Friendless Girls.

Haley Lu Richardson as Louise is full of life and rebellion and fun, whereas Elizabeth McGovern as Norma plays the prudish and sincere lady.  This contrast between the two is where the film develops – the life lessons learned from the other as each character struggles to find themselves.

What I found difficult to digest was Norma trying to deviate from her character, to be seductive, even if it was fake.

The romance between the chaperone and German immigrant, Joseph (Géza Röhrig) felt forced and strained.  Much like the attempt to introduce the need of forward-thinking regarding issues of racism and homosexuality

What I enjoyed was seeing Louise dance and her struggles to be independent.  And although, annoying and precocious, there’s something exciting about the gifted girl that made me want to know more.

Instead, we get the struggles of the chaperone and the lessons she learns from the young and free dancer.

Which didn’t make a bad film – although, that seduction scene was pretty bad – but more a period drama.  And like Louise says, ‘I don’t like historical novels.’

And I don’t like watered-down versions of an imagined biography.

Five Feet Apart

Rated: MFive Feet Apart

Directed by: Justin Baldoni

Written by: Justin Baldoni & Tobias Iaconis

Produced by: Cathy Shulman, Justin Baldoni

Starring: Haley Lu Richardson, Cole Sprouse, Moises Arias, Kimberly Hébert Gregory, Paraminder Nagra, Claire Forlani.

Based on the fact people suffering from cystic fibrosis can’t touch each other because of risk of contamination, transference of bacteria; infection, Five Feet Apart is a romance between two teens: cute-as-a-button Stella (Haley Lu Richardson), who deals with her illness by controlling everything in her environment; and rebel, Will (Cole Sprouse) who now carries the bacteria strain Burkholderia cepacia, or B. cepacia for short, making any chance of lung transplant impossible.

Added to a bleak future, the bacteria’s easily transferred by casual contact, so the CF sufferers must stay six feet apart.

You’ll find out why the film’s named Five Feet Apart if you decide to expose yourself, not to the bacteria, but a film made specifically to make you cry, using every trick in the book.

Writer and director Justin Baldoni came up with the idea of this romance while shooting his 2012 series My Last Days.

While filming an episode about CF he met Claire Wineland, “One day I asked Claire if she’d ever dated anybody with CF. Claire kind of looked at me like I was stupid.

She said, ‘of course not’

And I said, ‘wait, why not?’

That’s when she explained that people living with CF can’t get closer than six feet because they could pass on dangerous bacteria to people with CF.

Once she said that, I had so many reactions,” he recalls.

Five Feet Apart is set in a hospital following CF sufferers while they contemplate their mortality.  Even with a lung transplant, the shelf-life of the new lungs are five years, while waiting to die, drowning in their own secretions.

Walking into this film, I wondered if I was going to get sucky, cheesy, teary or romantic.  None of these options was particularly appealing.

And I have to say the film is all the above.

My God, people were sobbing in the cinema.

I personally couldn’t wait until it was over.

If you like a romance, then the idea of lovers falling for each other but unable to touch is a potent idea.

Forbidden fruit and all that.

And the character, Poe (Moises Arias), Stella’s best gay buddy coming out with statements about Stella’s anal-retentive behaviour helped lighten the film, a bit: ‘I know you Stella, organising a med cart is like foreplay’.

And Cole Sprouse as Will is dreamy – even with nasal tubing.

But the whole film is riddled with slow motion takes with the underlying cheesy soundtrack.

I know I know, Brian Tyler is a very famous composer (of over 70 films including Avengers: Age of Ultron, Furious 7, Iron Man 3, and Thor: The Dark World and recently Crazy Rich Asians featuring a big band jazz and romantic string score that was voted to the 2019 Oscar shortlist for Best Score…!); but it felt so contrived, to me…

Just to re-cap: Teens, sick in hospital, fall in love, but if they kiss, they will die.  All set to that teen romance music – sobbing with tubing inserted and attached to a ventilator included.

SPLIT

Rated: MSPLIT

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Writer: M. Night Shyamalan

Producer: M. Night Shyamalan, Jason Blum, Marc Bienstock

Executive Producer: Steven Schneider, Ashwin Rajan, Kevin Frakes

Starring: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula

Director and writer M. Night Shyamalan (Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), The Visit (2015)) is back with his unique, sometimes tongue-in-cheek style of horror thriller, this time featuring Kevin (James McAvoy): a man suffering (or is he suffering?) from DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder).

After the kidnapping of three young girls, the audience is given a taste of the 23 different personalities inhabiting Kevin’s body.

Shyamalan together with clever camera angles (from cinematographer Mike Gioulakis) use the change in personality to amp up the horror the kidnapped girls experience when they realise their captor is using completely different voices to have a conversation, with himself.

It’s Kevin’s psychiatrist, Dr. Karen Feltcher (Betty Buckley) who speculates whether DID caused through trauma is a weakness or a strength.  And whether the Split is a way of tapping into the plasticity of the brain, creating pathways into parts unknown.

An interesting premise and the main thrust of the film.

 

Shyamalan really takes the idea of tapping into the power of the mind as far as he can. The result being a thought-provoking horror with a bit of dark humour thrown in the mix.

Thankfully, the few snorts of laughter I had were meant to be provoked, but jeez, there’s a real push of that suspension of belief, the suspension achieved through the believable and truly phenomenal performance of James McAvoy as all those differing personalities.

McAvoy’s great at those parts that require equal measures of
nice guy versus evil.  I kept thinking back to the character from the film: Trance (2013), another thriller that delves into the mind.

And Anya Taylor-Joy was well-cast as the, well, out-cast, Casey Cook.  Anya looks different here, compared to her unforgettable performance in, The Witch (2015), but you can’t miss those sanpaku eyes…

I think people will either swallow the story and enjoy the film, or they won’t.  There’s certainly a unique flavour here.

I liked the exploration into the realm of neuroscience, the idea that thought and belief can change the organic.  To make imagination into reality.  And I enjoyed the interaction between the personalities of Kevin and Dr. Karen Feltcher, the sessions giving much needed authenticity through the grounding dialogue.

However, I found myself wanting to get sucked in then jolted out of the film with that weird sense of humour that’s all Shyamalan.

SPLIT is something different to watch, that reaches for those edges. And if you don’t mind a bit of weird you’ll be rewarded with a unique story well executed.

 

 

 

Subscribe to GoMovieReviews
Enter your email address for notification of new reviews - it's free!

 

Subscribe!