California Dreamin’ wins Un Certain Regard award at Cannes
May 27, 2007
Romania is definitely a rising star in the film world, especially in Cannes. After the Un Certain Regard award was given to The Death of Mr. Lazarescu a couple of years ago, the jury of the 2007 edition of the Cannes Festival, which wraps today, decided to give the coveted award to another Romanian feature. The winner was California Dreamin’ (Endless) by Christian Nemescu, who died at the age 27 in a car accident when the film was in post-production. California Dreamin’ uses as background the 1999 war in Kosovo. A NATO train transporting military equipment without official documents is stopped in a small Romanian village by the chief of the railway station, who happens to be the local gangster as well. Their arrival changes the place into the village of all opportunities.
The Painted Veil (2006)
May 12, 2007
I am amazed this movie was not nominated for an Oscar last year.
The Painted Veil is set in the 1920s. Edward Norton plays a bacteriologist, and Naomi Watts plays the wealthy young woman with whom the doctor falls in love while he is back home in England. She says yes when he proposes marriage, even though they barely know each other. They wed and move to China, where he is stationed as a civil servant studying infectious disease.
The marriage, built on shaky ground to begin with, begins to crumble. The doctor gives his wife an ultimatum: either he files for divorce, or she follows him inland where he has volunteered to go and deal with a cholera epidemic. And this is where the plot really begins…
The movie is an adaptation of a Somerset Maugham book of the same name, published in 1925. (I’ve read Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge” and “Of Human Bondage,” and I thought both were fantastic, so I will definitely be reading this one soon.)
Overall, I thought this was a great movie. The acting was very good, the scenery was breathtaking, and the plot did not drag at any point (…rare for dramas of this quality, I think).
Out of 5 stars, I would rate The Painted Veil a 4.5. (In terms of what the critics said… the movie got approval ratings of 75% at Rotten Tomatoes and 69% at MetaCritic.)
