Emma Watson

Regression (2015)

Regression (2015)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, April 2019) Any discussion of Regression will mean spoiling the ending, so prepare yourself or stop reading. There’s a huge paradox at the heart of the film: It’s bad most of the time, and its sharp improvement at the end comes at the expense of robbing the film of any satisfying narrative. Let me explain: Much of Regression is spent with a policeman (Ethan Hawke, solid) in 1990 small-town America, investigating the testimony of a young woman (Emma Watson, better than expected) who claims to have been sexually abused. So far, so conventional, except that the film becomes abruptly dumber once it leads us to claims of a satanic cult, regression hypnotherapy, sacrificed babies and small-town conspiracies. By the time our protagonist is maybe drugged and maybe raped and maybe stared at by members of the local satanic conspiracy, viewers can be forgiven if they give up all hopes of the film ever becoming anything more than a standard horror film of that type. At that point, Regression isn’t just being unoriginal both for its content and presentation—it revels in tired old clichés and discredited material (both hypnosis and satanic cults) that belonged in the 1990s. Fortunately, director Alejandro Amenabar has something up his sleeve, and it’s to spend the last five minutes of the film unbolting its own narrative and telling us that it was all lies, that satanic cults don’t exist and that regression hypnotherapy is a bunch of hooey. Having destroyed itself, Regression ends. What are we left to think? That it’s good that the ending got back to reality, or bad that whatever narrative structure was being built was pulled from underneath us? I’m still not sure. It may be possible for a film to redeem itself and yet leave us unsatisfied. But it’s not the ending: much of the film’s bulk is as uninteresting and generic as what it initially purports to be—there are more fundamental issues here than an ending designed to upset viewers. If it had been an interesting but ludicrous ride to a self-destructive ending, I wouldn’t have minded so much—but Regression makes the double mistake of being both (intentionally) stupid and (unintentionally) dull and the combination is deadly to the film’s enjoyment.

The Circle (2017)

The Circle (2017)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, August 2018) There’s something really weird at play in The Circle, and I’m having a bit of trouble untangling my exact issue with it. I think that it has a lot to do with its unimaginative techno-skepticism, as it follows a young woman who starts working for a (fictional) tech giant and becomes gradually disenchanted by the disconnect between its lofty public ambitions and the less-than-positive impact it has on her life and society at large. It’s not a bad premise on which to base a film, but The Circle does itself no favours by being lazy and trite about it. There is a surprising lack of interest from the film in spelling out what exactly is so awful about the company for which our character works: it seems to rely more on common assumed notions about the evils of Facebook, Google, Apple, et al. There’s a conspiracy angle to the film that never goes farther than two senior executives saying to each other, “Oh no, we’re in trouble now!” when their emails are leaked. Paradoxically, the crutch of using viewer’s anti-tech prejudices also points at why the film feels so useless—so it simply confirms those awful suspicions about the evils of tech giants? That’s it? Nothing more? Why bother watching the film when I can just look at my favourite newspaper and read articles that go far beyond The Circle‘s freshman-level musings? Even the dumb moral at the end of the film feels badly under-thought. It doesn’t help that the film doesn’t have much in terms of energy or paranoia. Writer/director James Ponsoldt has done much better in the past. Poor dull boring featureless generic actress Emma Watson looks annoyed for ninety minutes or however long it takes to make it to the end of this ordeal. Tom Hanks seems to have fun playing the sinister CEO visionary, but there’s—again—nearly nothing of substance behind the vague menace he’s supposed to present. What a dull movie. What a hypocritical movie. What else is on?

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, In theatres, March 2017) Disney’s been on a roll in adapting its own animated classics to live-action lately, but the surprise is how consistently solid the result have been. They clearly understand their own material, and if the result tends to be unsurprising by design, there’s something to be said about delivering exactly what viewers are expecting. So it is with Beauty and the Beast, a film not designed for today’s kids as much as it’s aimed to everyone who has flipped over the original film at any time in the past twenty-five years. Emma Watson stars but does not impress as Belle—she plays the character like about a dozen other actresses her age would, and that’s good enough without being particularly impressive. The point of the film isn’t the human actors, though—not only is there a lot of CGI here, but the nearly-overwhelming set design takes center-stage early on and doesn’t let go. The tunes are the ones you remember (curiously enough, I like “Gaston” and “Be Our Guest” a lot, but it’s “Belle” that I hum most often.), and the “Be Our Guest” number is spectacular enough to be compared to then-ground-breaking original. I still don’t particularly like the story, even though much care has been spent explaining and justifying its least convincing elements. Having seen the French version, I can’t speak about the voice acting of the furniture (now here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write when I woke up today) but their characters are surprisingly sympathetic—this remake wrings all possible pathos out of their plight until the final moment. For Disney, this is a success: the kids will love it (although it’s a bit too dark for younger children), the parents will be reminded of the original and there’s enough to see to make things interesting to everyone else. Of all of Disney’s various live-action remakes so far, I think that this is the one that has the best shot at displacing (but not eclipsing) the original—it’s not that different in tone, and manages to update the weaknesses of the original without neglecting to play up its iconic elements. Time will tell—and I say this as someone who dislikes the idea of remakes supplanting the originals.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2014) I don’t usually go for teenage coming-of-age dramas –seeing The Perks of Being a Wallflower was a bit of self-imposed viewing to complete a checklist.  But there’s quite a bit to like in this tale of early-nineties growing up in Pittsburgh: a textured look at damaged teenagers (ie; all of us) and the way they can help each other cope.  Alternately hilarious, heartbreaking, tragic and uplifting, The Perks of Being a Wallflower goes everywhere but in a carefully deliberate fashion: there’s little that’s accidental in this story (written and directed by Stephen Chbosky, adapting his own novel) about how a high school freshman comes to find a support group among eccentric seniors and break out of his shell.  Logan Lerman is likably bland as the protagonist, while Emma Watson proves herself to be an interesting actress in this first post-Potter role and Ezra Miller steals every scene with his outspoken character.  The last twenty minutes are a roller-coaster of emotions as secrets are revealed, friendships are tested and tragedies unfold.  This is a movie with heart, complexity and a decent amount of subtlety as well: It reminded me of my own early-nineties high-school years despite having almost none of the specific experience of the characters.  The Perks of Being a Wallflower is not a spectacular film, but it lingers in mind far longer than most Hollywood spectacles.