Movie day

Went to see a couple of films yesterday since I had time. Forty shades of blue and Heading south. Kind of gloomy fare, but both excellent in various ways... old actors doing really quite unsympathetic character pieces, Rip Torn in Blue and Catherine Deneuve in South.

Here's the summaries from the gft site


Forty Shades of Blue (15)

Set against the backdrop of the Memphis music scene, the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, is an understated character study. Director Ira Sachs uses the narrative framework of romantic triangle to depict the painful emotional awakening of his heroine, a pretty Russian immigrant on the arm of a successful Memphis songwriter. Although veteran Rip Torn gets top billing in Forty Shades of Blue, the film belongs to expressive newcomer Dina Korzun as Laura, whose stoic façade gradually crumples as she discovers a surprising bond with her older lover's bitterly estranged adult son. Smartly observed and emotionally truthful, Forty Shades of Blue is a quietly effective drama about a woman numbly going through the motions of living.


Heading South (15)

Laurent Cantet’s (Human Resources, Time Out) third feature - an investigation of sexual tourism - is arguably his most achieved, and certainly his most challenging. The setting is sun drenched ‘70s Haiti, foreigners idle away their vacations in the palm-fringed paradise of the beach hotels. Brenda, Ellen and Sue, three North American women, converge on the island looking for flirtation, relaxation and respite from their colourless jobs and marriages. They find what they are looking for in Legba an enigmatic local adonis whose beauty and passion has them enthralled. It is this passion that will lead them away from the gilded cage of tourism and will open their eyes to the poverty stricken and dangerous world of Haiti at the end of "Baby Doc" Duvalier's notoriously violent regime.