Film- Goodbye First Love - directed by Mia Hansen-Love

Star rating 8/10

This is a very French and understated film about the pain and intensity of young love. Director Mia Hansen-Løve accurately captures the maelstrom of feelings that can be involved in adolescent romance, but treats the subject seriously, without a trace of condescension.

Camille is a 15 year old schoolgirl (and her under age sexual activities are not made an issue of, as perhaps they would be if the film was British) who is in love with Sullivan, a self absorbed and self centred college student. When they are together, all she wants is to know when she will see him again, and all he wants to do is fob her off with vague promises to call her, and make plans for a 10 month trip to South America with his friends.

It’s not that he doesn’t love her, it’s just that his emotions can never match the intensity of hers, leading to fights and squabbles as his trip approaches. The film then tracks Camille through heartbreak, loneliness, and eventually, inevitably, solace in a new relationship as a young woman.

The subtly made, quiet contrast between the way her new lover, an older Norwegian architecture lecturer, views Camille, and expresses his affection for her in a much more mature and liberating way is well done. And then she bumps into Sullivan’s mother on a bus one day and meets up with him. Her old feelings resurface as they clandestinely renew old affections and open up old wounds.

The scenery of rural France and in Paris itself is beautifully captured, and there is a lovely soundtrack, with end credits playing to the beautiful The Water by Johnny Flynn with Laura Marling. It seems to perfectly capture the reflective mood of the film. There are two performances of some depth from young actors Lola Créton and Sebastian Urzendowsky as Camille and Sullivan. And apart from a dodgy short wig which Camille seems to be wearing half way through to signify her leaving her teenage years behind, it handles the time switch well. 

Exhibitions - Haçienda 30 XXX - Manchester Photographic Gallery

Star rating – 8/10

How did it get to be 30 years since the legendary Hacienda opened in Manchester? Well it is – and there is a great new exhibition at the Manchester Photographic Gallery to celebrate the fact.

As well as superb photos of fantastic nights in the capital of cool, there are some artefacts from the club to take you down memory lane, including a fabulous model of the club itself (pictured), accurate in detail both inside and out. That’s so everyone who was surely far too young to have ever sampled its delights for themselves who were there at the VIP opening of the exhibition tonight can see what it looked like.

To be fair through there were a fair few oldies like me too, reminiscing about great nights over the evocative photographs, bits of wall, floor and original prints from the venue. For myself I like to remember some of the great gigs I went to there – best of the bunch being the Smiths, and Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five in the mid 1980’s. 

Whatever your memories of the Hacienda, be they Madchester, Flesh, gigs, or whatever, or even if you never even went, this great little exhibition gives you an idea of what an iconic club it was – yes we know about the gangsters and the money flooding out of New Order’s pockets that it also involved – but this is an exhibition for wonderful memories. And well worth a visit to reawaken them until it ends on 29^th May.

Film - Damsels in Distress - directed by Whit Stillman

Star rating – 8/10

Director Whit Stillman has not made a film since 1998’s The Last Days of Disco, and dancing again features prominently is his extremely funny campus tale Damsels in Distress. It’s quirky and very charming, even if it doesn’t exactly keep its momentum going entirely throughout.

It is refreshingly not full of Hollywood A listers, the cast brilliantly led by Greta Gerwig as Violet, who organises a small group of American college girls into trying to save potentially suicidal fellow students. The young women who gather around her are acerbically judgemental, as they set out to attract boys who are not good looking or cool. The action seems to be set in present day, but there are oddly no sign of any social networking going on.

And there are some very, very funny scenes, particularly one involving doughnuts. As the film unwinds, it becomes obvious that Violet is fundamentally unhappy and as damaged as she thinks the people she is trying to help are. Stillman manages to create characters who are both comedic and repellent , and with whom his audience can’t help but empathise with too.

The dancing is fabulous, and is becoming a Stillman trademark feature. This is an uplifting oddity of a film which is a delight to watch. 

DVD - Las Acacias - directed by Pablo Giorgelli

Star rating – 6/10

Just out on DVD is a very quiet and understated road movie/love story from Argentinean director Pablo Giorgelli. Ruben (German de Silva) is a middle aged truck driver who has agreed to take a woman passenger, Jacinta (Hebe Duarte) with him from Paraguay to Buenos Aires as a favour for his boss. He obviously prefers his own company, and is a bit put out, in a silent kind of way, when she appears with a five month old baby girl in tow.

There is not much dialogue to speak of, with the noise of the truck’s engine featuring more prominently than any words. But the way their relationship develops is quite affecting, and not at all sentimentally done. The film is only 82 minutes long, but to be honest the long silences make it drag slightly at times. But watching Ruben’s emotions slowly come out of hibernation, first towards the young baby, and then to her mother, is very gently and nicely done.

Films - Marley - directed by Kevin Macdonald

Star rating – 8/10

Bob Marley’s charisma shines through in this highly enjoyable and informative documentary about the man who put reggae music on the world map. It’s amazing to think that he was only 36 when he died of cancer in 1981, having achieved so much in his short life.

Kevin Macdonald’s impressive film, if slightly overlong at 2 hours 25 minutes, charts the rise of this gifted and highly influential man from the dirt poor countryside of Jamaica to the harsh streets of Kingston. His beauty is striking, and his talent undeniable. What is more surprising perhaps is just how driven and hard working he was, making his fellow band members rehearse for hour upon hour, and only getting about three or four hours sleep a night himself.

Macdonald hints at some conclusions that his audience might draw from the interviews he shows of many of Marley’s close friends and family members, without ever really spelling them out. And there is a wealth of detail that I was not previously aware of, like the impact of his having a white father, who deserted his mother very early on in his life and was not around to share his son’s childhood. This, and his mixed race heritage, seems to have lead Marley to a deep sense of rejection and a feeling of not belonging.

His salvation was the Rastafarian religion which shaped his life and music, and which grounded him in his core beliefs of peace and love to all humanity.  But some of the more contentious details are skirted over, like his attitude to his children and the many women in his life. His daughter, for example, is very visibly still hurting from not being able to really get close to her father, even when he was on his deathbed.

 Marley comes across as an ultra competitive person, who was just as capable of being cold to those close to him, as he was of being extremely warm and generous to the thousands of people who came to him for charitable hand outs. And the political dimension to his relationship with Chris Blackwell and Island Records is not really not explored, just hinted at.

So maybe one day there will be another story told about Bob Marley, which doesn’t leave out some of the details which his family want to remain hidden. I am sure it will be equally fascinating, but for the moment it is enough to enjoy this inspiring man and his uplifting music. This film is a great reminder of the power and joy of Marley’s songs, and it was good to see how many of the audience were in their twenties – so his is also music for a new generation perhaps. 

Theatre - Henry V - The Globe at Liverpool Playhouse

Star rating – 8/10

Cards on the table – I love this play. It reminds me of when my eldest son was 5 and enjoyed nothing more than dressing up like a knight and watching alternate versions of it.  Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Oliver were certainly staples in our house for a while about 20 years ago. Happy memories....

But apart from my maternal nostalgia, it is a cracking play, and the Globe Theatre have certainly got a great production of it touring the country before taking it to their home this summer. Jamie Parker is suitably regal and commanding as the warrior king. He should be used to playing him now, as he was the same Prince Hal in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 at The Globe in summer 2010. But his former life of debauchery has most definitely been left behind, as he inspires his ‘happy few’ soldiers to a heroic victory against the mighty French armies on the fields at Agincourt.

It must be difficult to follow in such large footsteps, but Parker largely gets the tone just right. Not copying the previous deliveries of the more famous speeches, but stamping his own brand on them. The battle scenes are well played – always tricky in such a small space – damn that writer!

The whole cast is excellent, but special mentions should go to Brendan O’Hea as the amusing and verbose Welshman Fluellen, and to Brid Brennan as the narrator who persuasively and gently guides the audience through the fast paced action. Great entertainment, comedy and drama all rolled into one package. 

DVD - Moneyball directed by Bennett Miller

Star rating – 8/10

As the Premier League season draws to its nail biting end (interest declared now as a 100% blue and nervous Man City fan), you may well be wondering how teams such as Newcastle United have achieved such great results this year with a team assembled on a relative shoestring. Well, look no further than the DVD of Moneyball for all the answers. And before you ask, no, you don’t have to understand baseball to appreciate it at all.

This is the true story of how the total underdogs of American baseball in 2001, the Oakland Athletics, took the league by storm, and very nearly won it too, by making use of statistics and analysis in a way never before seen in sport. This film is an adaptation of the book by the brilliant Michael Lewis, who manages to turn to the credit crunch and the near collapse of the Euro into page turning thrillers. And it doesn’t harm this film’s cause that it features Brad Pitt, who gives a simply fantastic performance as Billy Beane, the failed baseball star turned General Manager of the A’s. 

Oakland are really struggling at the bottom of the league - think Wolves with knobs on – when Billy accidently stumbles across an analyst with an freshly earned economics degree from Yale, who holds the key to unlock the winning formula.  Jonah Hill is fabulous as the unassuming Pete, who is able to analyse players records in a totally unique way, so that a team like Oakland with scant resources, are able to assemble a team of players that no-one else wants to buy, and turn them into winners. This goes against everything that is the accepted norm in the sport – when players are bought according to ridiculous criteria such as their girlfriends’ looks - ‘Ugly girlfriend? = no confidence – not bought’.

Beane is a complex, bittersweet character, who is battling not only the club hierarchy, but his own demons. But his partnership with Pete in finding value in players that are universally rejected using complex mathematical formulas is a great story. Pitt plays it brilliantly, and the story is all the more fantastical for being true. And, although as a Man City fan I really shouldn’t admit this, there is a great morality tale in finding value in the rejected, and in allowing money not to triumph in the end. Stirring stuff of dreams. Now, what about those weekend fixtures...