For
showtimes, see the events listing.
Odeon
Piazza Strozzi, 2
tel. 055/295051
www.cinehall.it,
www.odeon.intoscana.it
THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL
April 17, 18, 19
Seven British pensioners decide to
retire to India-because it’s cheaper to live there-and take up residence in
what they believe is a newly restored hotel. Much less luxurious than
advertised, the Marigold Hotel nevertheless slowly begins to work its charms in
unexpected ways. ‘Unashamedly aimed at the Shirley Valentine/Calendar Girls
crowd, developments are as predictable as a post-vindaloo trip to the toilet.
Yet while gently patronising in its stereotypes-cricket, curry and call centres
all feature large while smiling locals put us all to shame with their modesty
and humility-it’s agreeably inoffensive stuff’ (Sky). ‘The cast are spry, but
this bittersweet comedy… needs a Stannah chairlift to get it up to any level of
watchability, and it is not exactly concerned to do away with condescending
stereotypes about old people, or Indian people of any age. It’s a film which
looks as if it has been conceived to be shown on a continuous loop in a Post
Office queue’ (The
Guardian).
EDWARD SCISSORHANDS
April 17
In this modern fairy tale, Edward is
a gentle, naive creation with razor-sharp scissors for hands. When he is taken
in by a kindly Avon Lady to live with her family, his adventure in the pastel
paradise of suburbia begins! Tim Burton’s winning and heart-warming story is a
perennial delight. ‘An ambitious and quite beautifully conceived fairy tale for
the 90s’ (Empire). ‘Simple, funny,
gorgeous, sad, and sweet’ (Entertainment Weekly). ‘Like a great chef concocting an
exquisite peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, Mr. Burton invests awe-inspiring
ingenuity into the process of reinventing something very small’ (New York Times). ‘Great to look
at but not much fun to watch… An emotionally uncommitted picture that’s smirky
and mawkish, by turns, and at heart, empty’ (San Francisco Chronicle).
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MONSANTO
April 19
Monsanto is the world’s main producer
of genetically modified foods and one of the most controversial businesses
operating today. Since its founding in 1901 it has been accused of negligence,
fraud and causing ecological disaster. Marie-Monique Robin’s documentary is an
all-out attack on the company and its methods, not as dynamic as might have
been expected, at times strident and often tedious. ‘As damning a screed that
has ever been filmed against any corporation this side of the tobacco industry,
The World According to Monsanto posits that this 100-year-old chemical
giant-which now positions itself as a “life sciences” company-wants nothing
less than a stranglehold over the world’s food supply’ (Jam!).
TO ROME WITH LOVE
April 20, 21, 22, 26
Woody Allen’s latest European setting
is Rome. Loosely based on stories by Boccaccio, the film is divided into four
parts and features a range of Italians and Americans lost and found in the
Eternal City. Allen himself returns in an acting role. Also known as The Bop
Decameron and Nero Fiddled. (A first release, so no reviews are available.)
The British
Institute
Lungarno
Guicciardini 9
tel.
055/267781
Shakespeare Week 2012
Romeo and Juliet
The star-crossed lovers are at the
centre of this year’s British Institute Shakespeare Week, featuring school
workshops, seminars, a graduate conference and film screenings.
Details at www.britishinstitute.it.
ROMEO AND JULIET April 23
(Renato Castellani, 1954)
(with Laurence Harvey and Susan
Shentall)
Filmed in various locations around
Italy (Siena, Verona, Venice and elsewhere) for ‘Renaissance authenticity’ this
rather underwhelming version of the story is distinguished by its setting and
its rather bizarre fashion parade of imagined costumes in impossibly bright
colours and incongruously inconsistent styles, presumably borrowed from
paintings of a certain period. Laurence Harvey’s Romeo is a bit of a damp
squib-he’s bloodless and fey and drippy and delivers his (cut) lines with a
disconcerting thespian effeteness (and he’s a little too old); but Shentall (in
her first and only film performance) is sweet and delicate and although
ingenuous, canny and sharp. Castellani’s additions (some nonsense about a
plague, the couple’s wedding) and his taking gratuitous and unnecessary
liberties with the manner of Romeo’s suicide are pointless and ill considered.
Lavish Technicolor production values typical of 1950s big-budget spectaculars
are cramped by a conservative style and insensitivity to Shakespeare’s
language.
ROMEO AND JULIET April 24
(Franco Zeffirelli, 1968)
(with Leonard Whiting and Olivia
Hussey)
Zeffirelli’s
conception is operatic, not painterly, and his omissions (he uses only 35
percent of the text) are in the service of simplicity, while his interpolation
of the Carpe Diem song sweetens
the tragedy to come. Both Romeo (Leonard Whiting) and Juliet (Olivia Hussey)
are adolescents brimful with sensual vitality, and a childlike intensity
unadulterated by prejudice and convention. Romeo is a guileless, dreamy flower
child, Juliet a wide-eyed nubile innocent (this is a 1968 movie). In contrast,
the adults are locked into a world of hatred, adultery, profitable marriage
alliances, drunkenness, etc. Zeffirelli is famous for his homoeroticism; thus
boys in tights and colourful codpieces, not to mention Whiting’s shapely
buttocks, find their place in the youthfest celebrated by sensuous camera
movements and lingering close-ups. To be fair, Juliet gets a look in, too. A
conventional, Italianised safe adaptation of Shakespeare that sacrifices the poetry
for visual effects; sincerely attempts to capture the tragedy; and celebrates
youth and vitality, passion and energy while condemning ‘wisdom,’ maturity and
the bad habits of the past. Its swooning romanticism is winning.
ROMEO + JULIET
April 24
(Baz Luhrmann, 1996)
(with Leonardo Di Caprio and Claire
Danes)
Baz Luhrmann’s
target audience is the MTV generation for whom visual metaphors resonate more
than verbal, and his movie has an almost surreally stylised sense of actuality
and modernity, all neon and bling, while remaining essentially romantic. The
multiethnic setting is not quite today and not quite tomorrow but somewhere
recognisably between the two. Add to the mix the preserved archaic language and
the result is irresistibly timeless. Luhrmann parodies twentieth-century
media-TV, newspaper headlines, news flashes-to frame the story, and he converts
the hot-blooded macho posers of Renaissance Verona into the swaggering Latino
macho ethic in Verona Beach, California. Leonardo Di Caprio struggles with the
lines and his delivery is flat and wooden, not insightful, but Claire Danes is
tender and seductive, knowing and naïve. An arresting and original take on a
stale tradition of theatrical representation (also on film) that manages both
to parody and celebrate the tragedy, to simultaneously deconstruct and
reconstruct Shakespeare, and to offer a self-consciously postmodern, hip,
clever and thoughtful reading.
