Cutty Sark Appeal

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My Best Friend

This is a wonderful French movie - and a very typical French film at that. It starts with art dealer Francois attending a client's funeral (mainly in order to get his hands on a choice piece of furniture). At a meal afterwards he remarks on the paucity of mourners. His companions suggest he would have fewer. When he declares he has plenty of friends his business partner bets him to produce a 'best friend' within ten days. Francois is indeed just the kind of man who would have no friends as he is not interested in anyone at all - failing to notice that his business is in fact a lesbian. He buys a grecian vase at enormous cost because it is alleged to be a funereal vase that contained the tears of a man for his best friend. But in reality you think he is more interested in the vase than the friendship it represents. In his desperation to find a best friend Francois meets quiz obsessive taxi driver Bruno and observes how easy he finds it to makes friends and be friendly towards others. Naturally, things aren't exactly they seem and Francois decides to use Bruno to win the bet, and things go badly wrong - and yet the two unlikely companions discover some truths about themselves and about friendship. Rating 8/10

Away From Her

This film staring Julie Christie (a rare appearance from that megastar of the 1960s) and Gordon Pinsent, set in Canada, concerns the effects of memory loss on a couple married for several decades and 'never apart'. Fiona (Julie Christie) begins to realise that the occasional forgetfulness is becoming rather more serious.

She puts the frying pan in the fridge, forgets words, doesn't know where she is and generally becomes vague. After studying the inevitable steady decline and realising the stress it will impose on her husband she decides to admit herself into a nursing home. Pinsent is 'not allowed' to visit her for the first 30 days - 'to allow the patient to become acclimatised). He is horrified to see the effect the nursing home has on Fiona. Quickly she has no idea who he is, or of most of their past life together. She latches onto a fellow patient and Pinsent seeks out the man's wife (played brilliantly by one of my favourite actresses Olympia Dukakis) for illumination.

A movie that deals with one of the great fears of those of us entering old age, probably needs to be slow paced, but this film is almost catatonic. It misses the target, and the characters are too stereotypical - the overbearing administrator, the caring chief nurse, the over the to patients. Christie's performance is admirable, but it doesn't really raise this movie to a great level. My rating: 6/10