MATTHEW BOND
The Phantom Of The Open
Cert: 12A, 1hr 46mins ★★★★★ X
Cert: 18, 1hr 45mins ★★★★★ Paris, 13th District
Cert: 18, 1hr 45mins ★★★★★
There are some films that try just that little bit too hard to make you like them, performing the cinematic equivalent of a puppy rolling on its back and inviting you to tickle its tummy.
And that turns out to be the problem with The Phantom Of The Open, a new British comedy that retells the long-forgotten story of Maurice Flitcroft, the Northern crane operator who, in 1976, successfully entered the British Open Golf championship despite the fact he could barely play the game. His score of 121 for the first qualifying round was the worst in major championship history.
It’s a good story, albeit remarkably similar in basic structure – Northern grit takes on snobby British Establishment – to The Duke, another British comedydrama that came out a few weeks ago and told the story of a Newcastle taxi driver who stole a portrait of the Duke of Wellington in 1961.
But while The Duke had Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren on top form, this has Sally Hawkins, being perfectly good but, in the pivotal role of Flitcroft himself, the normally excellent Mark Rylance on this occasion giving it way too much.
Coming dangerously close to depicting Flitcroft as some sort of Cumbrian Forrest Gump, it’s a tick-and-teeth-driven performance that seems to have been assembled from bits left over from performances he’s given before.
Bit of BFG here, bit of nice brave boat-owner from Dunkirk there, surprising bit of philosophical Russian spy from Bridge Of Spies somewhere in between.
I’m sure others – understandably in the mood for something lightweight, undemanding and undeniably funny – will be more forgiving, but it drove me slightly mad.
But there are compensations to a film with enjoyably evocative 1970s production design and crowdpleasing parallels to the likes of Eddie The Eagle and Dream Horse.
Simon Farnaby’s screenplay appreciates the value of silliness, never avoids an obvious joke (listen out for the groan-worthy one about ‘handicap’) and gets full comic value from the serendipitous fact that Flitcroft’s supportive teenage sons really did become international disco-dancing champions. You couldn’t make it up.
Listen carefully because I don’t want to mislead anyone. The mini
mally titled X is essentially a slasher-killer film, fully deserving of its real-life 18 certificate and stomach-churning enough to put an awful lot of people off. Quite possibly you among them.
But for those who like this sort of blood-soaked thing – and there definitely are those who do, including real grown-ups – what you need to know is that Ti West’s taboo-trampling addition to the genre is really, really good… albeit in a way so nasty that I was regularly flinching in my seat.
From the moment the film opens, with a Texas police sheriff arriving on a remote farm that has clearly become a scene of mass murder, we know things are not going to end happily. And then we skip back 24 hours and watch a group of good-looking young wannabes piling into a mini-van to make a porn film and know that it’s just a matter of waiting… With a cast led by Mia Goth, it’s funny, bold and clever. But nasty too, of course.
Paris, 13th District is the latest film from acclaimed French director, Jacques Audiard, best known for A Prophet and Rust And Bone. Shot mainly in beautiful black and white and featuring a startling amount of sex, it chronicles the interconnected lives of three young people battling the unpredictabilities of life and love in Paris’s 13th arrondissement. Like French films always have been and, one quietly hopes, always will be too.
The Nan Movie was also released this week, with Catherine Tate reprising her TV role as the foul-mouthed comedy gran, but alas there were no screenings for critics. I wonder why?