Alicia Vikander

  • Euphoria (2017)

    Euphoria (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) I hate when a promising concept is extinguished by the weight of pedestrian execution, and the latest example of that is found in Euphoria, a low-budget drama that delights in being as dull as it can be after a promising beginning. Although, let’s not overpraise those opening moments: As two estranged sisters reunite, the mystery that accumulates through their interactions and strange behaviour is already overshadowed by a heavy ponderousness. This is going to be an overwrought drama, quickly says the film through its execution. Before long, we have both the explanation to the mystery and nearly the last interesting thing about Euphoria: One of the women is mortally sick and has chosen to go, accompanied by her sister, to a secluded euthanasia clinic when she’ll be able to live her last days in peace before undergoing a fatal injection. It’s a sign of the script’s overwrought melodramatic tendencies that this (including the terminal cancer) is all explained to the protagonist once they’re already at the clinic rather than at any reasonable moment before then… you know, like normal people would do. But no — Euphoria is about creating a pressure cooker of an environment in which the sisters can hash out their recriminations, childhood traumas and repressed feelings in time for a conclusion that isn’t nearly as climactic as the filmmakers hoped for. Despite the acting talent of Alicia Vikander and Eva Green, the film struggles to make it past the finish line, weighed down by a graceless exploration of familiar themes that completely forgets the spark of mystery that led its first few minutes. Director Lisa Langseth is clearly trying for artistic drama here and succeeds too well: the film feels interminable even at less than two hours, and not even Charlotte Rampling as a therapist nor Charles Dance as another terminally-ill patient can quite manage to save the film even if they manage to make us temporarily interested again. It’s a bad, bad sign for a film when you start wishing for the lead character to die so that it can finally end. I still think that there was potential here for something much better — and a purely theatrical take on the same elements may be far more effective than a film that seems to exhaust itself in aimless meanderings. But as it is, Euphoria is anything but exhilarating.

  • Tomb Raider (2018)

    Tomb Raider (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) In rebooting the Tomb Raider film franchise, the 2018 version of the film sets itself against two perhaps overwhelming references—not only the series of adventure videogames that made such a splash over the past two decades, but also the Angelina Jolie double-feature that, for many and for all of their faults, defined the way it should be approached on-screen. But everything reboots, even videogame heroines, and so the recent Tomb Raider games have featured a younger, untested heroine, and that’s the approach also taken with the 2018 film featuring Alicia Vikander. The result is not especially impressive. Petite Vikander isn’t much of a presence even as the not-yet-formidable Croft, and director Roar Uthaugturnins merely manages to deliver serviceable sequences along the way to yet another dull origin story. (Seriously, the decision to “re-introduce” Lara Croft is dumbfounding: here we have one of the few videogame household names, and you’re going to waste everyone’s time reintroducing a beginner’s version of her? Why bother?) Much of the film is boring digital mayhem, not shot with any wit or expertise—the lone exception being a sequence featuring an old aircraft fuselage and a cliffside waterfall. It’s all not quite terrible, but it’s definitely laborious—there’s a sense that this is the film we have to struggle through so that they can be bothered to make a real Lara Croft movie. The film chuckles to itself as it ends with a reveal of Croft dual-wielding guns, but it’s only the final nail in the exasperation felt by the movie not delivering what it should. I’m solidly whelmed by the perfunctory adventure movie that is this wholly useless Tomb Raider. Now let’s hurry up to the inevitable sequel to see whether they’ll manage to make something out of this redundant throat clearing.

  • Son of a Gun (2014)

    Son of a Gun (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, June 2016) I wasn’t expecting much from Australian thriller Son of a Gun, but it does get steadily better as it goes on. Featuring Ewan MacGregor and Alicia Viklander, this film starts as a prison thriller, but gradually becomes more interesting as the characters get out of prison, execute their Big Heist and then have to live with the aftermath. Brenton Thwaites has the central role as a young man who is transformed by prison, becomes the confidante of a veteran criminal and tries to forge his own happy conclusion from between far more powerful villains. While the limits of the film’s budget are obvious, the script gets more interesting as it goes along, and the film’s west-Australia setting makes for an interesting change of pace. There isn’t much more to say about Son of a Gun—at best, it’s a quiet surprise for those who aren’t expecting much more.

  • The Danish Girl (2015)

    The Danish Girl (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2016) 2015 was the year when transgender issues hit the mainstream like never before, but it’s not clear whether this helped or hindered The Danish Girl. Reportedly a very fictionalized account of the first clinically transgendered person, this is also a recognizable piece of Oscar-courting filmmaking, complete with credible historical recreations, flawed but heroic characters, progressive social issues and a self-important tone. It seeks legitimacy through art, blurs the messy inconvenient details of its inspiration and wraps up everything with a sad bow. It usually works: director Tom Hooper is, by now, a veteran at this sort of thing, and effortlessly moves through period sets, and Eddie Redmayne does turn in a showy but compelling performance as a man becoming a woman—although Alicia Viklander is just as interesting as the character who reacts to the transition. The historical atmosphere of the early-twentieth-century European art scene is well executed and the drama goes slightly beyond what we’d expect from the film’s slug-line. The Danish Girl is, in short, a bit more interesting than expected, helping it avoid feeling like it’s exploiting the issue-of-the-moment. It could have been better: At times, the cinematography feels overly staid, feeling like a series of isolated room dramas rather than presenting its world with the bustling energy suggested at the edges. It’s also a film condemned by facts to a rather conventional dramatic arc—comforting given the touchy subject matter, but no less predictable. For all the sympathies we can have for the character’s plight, it’s also locked into the filmmaking template proper to those kinds of movies.

  • Ex Machina (2014)

    Ex Machina (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, October 2015)  Many recent science-fiction movies are probing the uncomfortable notion of humans being replaced by their creations, but few have the nerve to do so as deviously as Ex Machina does.  At first, it seems like a familiar kind of film: A young man is brought in to a remote location to administer a Turing Test to a freshly-developed Artificial Intelligence.  What could go wrong?  Oh, we know the answer to that question.  But Ex Machina goes there through unexpected paths: It stacks the deck against its lovelorn examiners by featuring a robot optimized for sex-appeal, bypassing higher cognitive functions by going straight for base instincts.  (Much as I loathe to admit any robosexual fetishes to the world at large, Alicia Vikander is here far more attractive as a visibly artificial character than when she dons a dress and wig to pass as human.)  Oscar Isaac turns in another terrific performance as a mad genius combining technical skills with in-your-face arrogance.  (The dance sequence alone is instantly memorable)  Domhnall Gleeson is just as effective as the audience stand-in, a young man who doesn’t even realise the extent to which he’s being manipulated.  But the mastermind here is writer/director Alex Garland, who direct a great first film from his own tight and mean script.  There’s a deceptive simplicity to Ex Machina’s surface that hides a lot of philosophical allusions, well-explored ideas and contemporary fears.  The result maximizes its secluded location and small cast to present a great science-fiction film, unnerving from beginning to end and very successful in what it manages to achieve.  It’s a surprisingly raw treatment for a cerebral subject, and it’s a sure-footed modern classic about a well-worn SF trope.