MikePadgett.com

• Director: Joe Wright
• United Kingdom, 2007
• 

When a young girl uses a series of events to doom the romance of the housekeeper’s son and her elder sister, the course of each of their lives is changed beyond foresight. So goes the story of Atonement, an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s manipulative novel by upcoming British director Joe Wright.

Whilst the first act concentrates on the minute tensions of a pre-war country residence, the remaining drama unfolds on a much broader and more popular canvas set among the young nurses of London’s war effort and the British Expeditionary Force’s evacuation of Dunkirk.

Though our three protagonists comfortably succeed in displacing themselves to a new time and place, the film as a whole still feels unbalanced when detailed portraits are swapped for sweeping landscapes. When all is finally explained with a typical McEwan twist in the dénouement, this beautifully shot, seriously acted film rather struggles for credibility like a swan taking flight.

• Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
• Austria, 2007
• 

A busy master forger, Salomon Sorowitsch is a man with little concern for political ideals. And that’s what keeps him alive when war breaks out and he ends up in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Receiving preferential treatment to other prisoners, Sorowitsch is given the task of forging the currency that will keep the Nazi war effort alive and ruin the Allies’ economies. Put simply, it’s a case of “(y)our money or your life”.

The balance of principles and survival adds massively to the tension of the movie. We are never left in any doubt that Sorowitsch and his colleagues are moments from the same fate as those over the wall. As a result the film feels much weightier than its mere 98 minutes.

Karl Markovics is an agreeably grim Sorowitsch. An opportunist with few redeeming features, but in the circumstances, we still find ourselves rooting for him even though other characters perhaps deserve more regard. Sachsenhausen is certainly no place for lofty words, yet oddly it brings Sorowitsch a sort of redemption.

• Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
• Italy, 2000
• 

It’s tempting to think of Malèna as a shrink-wrapped, ultra-compact, bitesize companion piece to Tornatore’s meandering, elegiac ode to movies Cinema Paradiso. But while both pictures feature protagonists still in the grip of childhood, what drives young Renato here is something less innocent and more erotic. For what’s barely hinted at in the snipped reels of Salvatore’s silver screen is the very epicentre of this great quaking story of an iconic siren.

The siren in question is Malèna Scordia, admirably filled with equal parts mystic and sympathetic by Monica Bellucci, for whom this role seems especially fitting. Yet the contrast between the leading lady of hormonal Renato’s nocturnal wanderings and the reality of a troubled, vulnerable woman struggling with widowhood and wartime couldn’t be greater. It’s through this counterbalance that the movie’s tone turns bittersweet and mines a rich seam of dramatic gold.

For those of us who hold fond memories of Paradiso, Malèna comes off a bit rushed. It’s almost as if Tornatore seems worried about getting away with his usual languid pacing. Nevertheless, everything’s memorably and confidently photographed and even the camera’s love affair with Bellucci doesn’t stop the film from hitting the right emotional notes.

• Director: Paul Verhoeven
• Netherlands, 2006
• 

With the turbulent Hollywood years behind him, Verhoeven is back in Europe and the opening salvo is a freshly energetic epic that firmly suggests Amsterdam’s finest has rediscovered his mojo.

Ironic then that the only blot in this particular black book is Verhoeven’s oldest trick: a sudden acceleration in the third act, which leaves us as breathless and confused as the indomitable heroine.

Fortunately, Zwartboek is visually eloquent and finely acted, especially by Carice Van Houten as Ellis. Comparisons with Soldier of Orange are inevitable and with a couple of new Dutch projects already in the pipeline, I for one am sighing with relief at Verhoeven’s return to form.

• Director: Paul Verhoeven
• Netherlands, 1977
• 

Verhoeven’s revisionist wartime drama is a bittersweet story of five student dandies who each face the subjugation of their country in different ways. The film displays a sensitivity that’s missing in the director’s Hollywood oeuvre.

Soldier of Orange would still be an effective ensemble piece without the outstanding performances put in by Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbé, oscillating unnervingly between humour and horror.

Verhoeven’s visual interpretation of Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema’s book was also informed by personal experience, and he may draw on this resource once more in the forthcoming Black Book, his first Dutch film for 21 years.