Warm Water Under a Red Bridge ***
Dir: Shohei Imamura
With: Koji Yakusho, Misa Shimizu, Mitsuko Baisho, Mansaku Fuwa, Kazuo Kitamura, Isao Natsuyagi
119 mins, cert 15
Shohei Imamura, a Cannes Palme d'Or winner in 1997 with The Eel, here presents us with a diverting piece of seriocomic whimsy, the nearest thing to a U-certificate sex film it is possible to see. Koji Yakusho plays Yosuke, an unemployed salaryman in Tokyo who travels to a remote provincial spot on the enigmatic advice of an old tramp, who tells him he has buried a stolen gold Buddha under a red bridge. He never finds it, but he does meet Saeko (Misa Shimizu), a beautiful young woman who gushes gallons of water at the point of orgasm, jetting and spurting and spraying at slightly unfeasible angles and trajectories from just out of frame. It is a charming, if faintly twee form of mystical eroticism, and the two principals develop their unique love affair with grace and flair.
Fatma ***
Dir: Khaled Ghorbal
With: Awatef Jendoubi, Nabila Guider, Bagdadi Aoum, Amel Safta, Huguette Maillard, Maurice Garrel
124 mins, no cert
A well-acted first feature from director Khaled Ghorbal about the status of young women in modern Tunisia. Fatma (Awatef Jendoubi) is raped at the age of 17 by a cousin; when she finally meets a man who wants to marry her - a doctor - she secretly undergoes a painful gynaecological procedure to restore the illusion of virginity for her wedding night, but to her horror, she discovers that the surgeon is a colleague of her new husband's whom she must now meet socially. This movie certainly takes its time coming to the dramatic point, and does not have the richness and psychological subtlety of a comparable film about women in Tunisia, Moufida Tlatli's La Saison des Hommes. But it is a serious piece of work with urgent insights into the status of the country's women, particularly divorced women.
Thirteen Ghosts **
Dir: Steve Beck
With: Tony Shalhoub, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard, Shannon Elizabeth, Rah Digga, F Murray Abraham
91 mins, cert 15
13ghosts.warnerbros.com
Unlucky for us. This is a very so-so remake of a 1960 William Castle chiller, but unlike the recent reworking of House on Haunted Hill, it is without one small but all-important element: humour. The estimable Tony Shalhoub plays a widower who inherits a creepy house from his deceased uncle, played by the cackling and bearded F Murray Abraham. This is a bizarre contraption of a place, composed almost entirely of glass walls and doors with weird mechanical attachments and dusty tomes with runic inscriptions. "What an incredible wealth of knowledge!" gasps Shalhoub. But Abraham has imprisoned a number of ghosts in the basement, and a very great deal of the film is taken up with shots of them slapping their horrible, disfigured faces up against the glass, to the detriment of any plausible plot development, and therefore of anything remotely scary. Sean Hargreaves' production design for the house is impressive - perhaps a little influenced by the mansion in Jan De Bont's recent remake of The Haunting. But that's not going to make up for a script which provokes snores rather than screams.
Mullet **
Dir: David Caesar
With: Ben Mendelsohn, Susie Porter, Andrew S Gilbert, Belinda McClory, Tony Barry, Kris McQuade, Peta Brady
89 mins, cert 15
This is a nicely acted, likeably low-key, but insubstantial movie from writer-director David Caesar, presented as part of the Australian film festival in London. Ben Mendelsohn plays tousle-haired Eddie "Mullet" Mahoney, back in his home town with his tail between his legs, having failed to make a go of it as a hotshot in the big city. No one wants him back and certainly no one wants to eat the oversweet mullet he's taken to fishing to make ends meet - the comparison between the fish and his nickname becoming more laboured as the film goes on. Nice performances from Susie Porter as Mullet's ex, and Tony Barry and Kris McQuade as his squabbling mum and dad, but the film fizzles out with an underpowered emotional climax.
Life as a House *
Dir: Irwin Winkler
With: Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, Hayden Christensen, Jena Malone, Mary Steenburgen
124 mins, cert 15
www.lifeasahouse.com
A sucrose tough-love extravaganza for which you will need a sick bag made of reinforced tarpaulin. The lead is Kevin Kline in tear-jerking mode, a very disquieting proposition, just short of Robin Williams territory. He is George, a middle-aged divorced architect; his ex-wife, Kristin Scott Thomas (doing Empathy and an American Accent, neither idiom coming naturally) is unhappily remarried to an uptight rich asshole. Their errant teenage son, Sam, a druggie Goth, is seriously off the rails. George offers to take Sam for one summer to get him clean by making him help with his pet project: knocking down the dilapidated old shack he lives in by the cliff-edge and building his dream home. Sam rants and raves but there's no doubting the inevitable. Let the lip-trembling and the hugging and the bonding begin! But there's a catch. George has got cancer - and just a few months to live.
He has, apparently, refused radiotherapy or chemotherapy or any form of conventional palliative care, preferring to butch it out with Vicodins. In this way he finishes most of the tough physical work with just a bit of wincing, stubble and picturesque weight loss until he is taken to the "Ocean View Hospital" (set up in a pedantic establishing long shot) so he can see his house, all lit up with Christmas lights, from his hospital bed, before having the happiest and most painless death from cancer in medical history. Certainly easier than the 125-minute death you will suffer watching this.
