Gemma Chan

  • Let Them All Talk (2020)

    Let Them All Talk (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) How did Let Them All Talk go so wrong? It has a genius-level director, an impeccable cast (even just with Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen and Dianne Wiest), the backdrop of an ocean liner, a writer-as-protagonist, the always-cute Gemma Chan, and yet it all falls flat. One of my favourite settings in fiction is the ocean liner – a vast but enclosed space in which dramas can play out on a very romantic stage. But director Steven Soderbergh somehow manages to make it all look and feel so banal. The dialogue is trite and uninteresting, the characters are bland and over-privileged (Oh, no, you based your book on my life and my life is now ruined – get a grip over yourself) and the directing is both flat and unremarkable. Really, it’s as if Soderbergh went on an all-destroying mission to leech away all energy from what he had at his disposal. Part of it can be explained by the film’s production, heavy on naturalistic light and staging, as well (more crucially) on rambling improvised dialogue. But that’s the price to pay for Soderbergh’s unquenchable thirst for experimentation: Sometimes, you get a masterpiece, and other times, you get the antithesis of that. At least there’s Chan to make it slightly better.

  • Exam (2009)

    Exam (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2019) I’m almost always a good sport for closed-room thrillers, and Exam does have an exemplary purity of execution, as the entire film takes place in a small examination room where eight candidates are vying for a coveted (but mysterious) corporate job. As the exam papers are revealed to be blank and the exam’s arbitrary rules are absorbed by the candidates, the stage is set for a closed-room pressure cooker. (Providing a weapon to the security guard overseeing the exam is a literal application of Chekhov’s gun.)  As is often the case with closed-room thrillers, writer-director Stuart Hazeldine’s Exam can’t quite rise to the level set by its premise and opening moments—there’s always a moment where we come to understand where the film is going, and it’s not as exciting as anticipated. Some of the dialogue/staging/acting feels stilted and unlikely, but that almost comes standard with those ensemble-cast hermetic thrillers. A more serious problem is a script where the revelations progressively establish that it’s not taking place in the same universe as ours — it’s the kind of thing that lessens whatever involvement viewers may have in the result.  Still, Exam does rather well considering its limited means and austere presentation. It’s regrettable that Gemma Chan is only in the very early part of it, but the film itself is watchable enough.