Movie Review: Beautiful Lies

The talented Audrey Tatou and the altogether-too-delicious Sami Bouajila star in this lovely French Film about, well, essentially, the lies one tells to keep life beautiful for the ones you love. An alternative title could be "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

The basic premise is this - Jean, an intellectual turned handyman due to unfortunate circumstances pens a old-fashioned love letter to Emilie, his boss and owner of a hair-dressing salon. Emilie, who is consumed with the breakdown of her parent's marriage, forwards the letter on to her mother, who she feels needs it to cheer her up. This leads to a whole comedy of errors that keeps you in good humour, albeit being cringe-worthy at times.

Like when Maddy (Emilie's mother) has the most awkward conversation ever with the man who she thinks loves her, but he has no clue whatsoever why she is behaving so. The director makes no effort to spare the audience of the intense discomfort that one feels when you see someone making an utter fool of themselves. Her delusion and his confusion become your own - all you can do is squirm uncomfotable, giggle nervously and hope to God she will stop already.

I was particularly moved by Sami Bouajila's performance in this film. An actor previously unknown to me, his face was a vertitable canvas on which the director painted ever conceivable emotion. To watch him move through lovesickness, fear, confusion, betrayal, anger, coldness, hard-heartness, sympathy, pain, loneliness and finally fulfillment and love was a wonder to behold. Loved it.

I am glad my friend AJJ(J) made me watch this movie. I, in turn, highly recommend it.

Theatre Review: Shakespeare - Reduced and Riotous

I went to the opening night performance by the Reduced Shakespeare Company last night with my friend-in-all-things-literary. The complete works of Shakespeare - Abridged, performed in 97 minutes. All 37 plays, some sonnets, some aprocryphal works and a whole lot of physical comedy, innuendo, quote massacre,puns and play-on-words thrown in.

While most of the plays were mainly touch and go,(All the comedies were lumped together under a skit titled "4 weddings and a tranvestite"), the entire second half was devoted to what is considered Shakespeare's greatest work of all time. (And if you have to ask which one, tch).

The most enjoyable was the incredible versality of the actors, whose multiple talents really kept you guessing at what they are going to come up with next. Adding relevancy with references to popular culture (who hasn't used wiki or google to research eh?), the performance reminded us of the Bard's innate talents as well as his absolute verbosity, his penchant to "distil" other people's works and to pair the most unlikely couples in his many plays (many of whom can be married in various states in the US, as astutuely observed by the players).

If you are planning to watch this, you are in for the laugh of your life. I can't remember the last time I saw the aforementioned partner in crime laugh so hard or lose it so badly.

If you weren't planning to watch this, let me assure you that dont need a knowledge of Shakesepeare's work to enjoy it. Go. Now.

Till 2 August 2009
Drama Centre
Tickets from $19 at Sistic.