The Hedgehog is French director Mona Achache’s first feature film and is an impressive debut. Adapted for the screen by Achache and based on the internationally acclaimed novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, it is a darkly comic and poignant tale about class, misrecognition and a child’s insight. Set in a wealthy Parisian apartment block, the film peels away the layers of class and conceit that have encased the life of the building’s live-in concierge, Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko).

We first meet her neighbour Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic); an emotionally neglected child who has decided to kill herself on her twelfth birthday. She is making a film to document, as she says, ‘why life is absurd’, and much of The Hedgehog is seen through the lens of her camera and thus from her perspective. It is the gaze of a child who resents the adult world, narrating in whispers behind the camera what she perceives to be its hypocrisy and tedium with utmost disgust. Read more

This gently illuminating documentary from filmmakers Masha and Yonathan Zur casts its gaze upon the life of critically acclaimed Israeli writer and political commentator Amos Oz. Drawing deeply from his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, the film paints a thoughtfully evocative portrait of the eminent author and the personal, philosophical and political dreams that traverse, and haunt, his work.

Oz is renowned for his fiercely unequivocal political views; he is a stalwart proponent of a two-state solution for the Israel–Palestine issue, and as such his politics have sparked controversy in his homeland. Oz’s outspoken approach has seen him marginalised on both sides of the ideological chasm, though his articulate candour, humour and frank acknowledgement of the often-nightmarish reality of everyday life for many in the Middle East are an invaluable contribution to the issue. Oz likens the two-state solution to a patient contemplating the amputation of a limb: it entails a loss, but life is preserved in the process. Read more

‘Please don’t hurt each other, and have a fun with The Room‘, says Tommy Wiseau, the writer, director and star of cult film The Room. If you haven’t heard of this cinema phenomenon yet, Wiseau’s film tells of a love triangle between a man, his fiancée and his best friend. His ungrammatical but earnest exhortation is but a small example of the oddness The Room is famous for: characters disappear and appear without explanation, dialogue is terrifyingly clunky and the living room set is famously decorated with framed pictures of spoons.

Its peek-out-from-behind-your-hands awfulness, incoherent plot and hammy acting have certainly earned The Room a place in the Worst Film Ever annals. However, despite its obvious flaws, The Room has managed to find an enthusiastic – and repeat – audience, which is of course any filmmaker’s dream. (In his PDF message to The Room’s Australian audience, Wiseau says: ‘It is my suggestion to you that if you can see “The Room” at least five or more times in the theater.’) A quick YouTube search brings up viewer-created videos of particular scenes from the film in which the audience, who have clearly seen the film at least once before, yell out lines or throw props at the screen. (Take a helmet if you’re brave enough to check out a screening.) For a clearer vision of the artistic tenor of The Room – and the tongue-in-cheek hamminess that its stakeholders have embraced to market it – check out the trailer or this video of Greg Sestero (Mark), made to promote the film’s run in Australia (exclusively at Cinema Nova). Holy exploding football, Batman!

The Room is showing at Cinema Nova on Wednesday 28 April at 7pm.

Micmacs, the latest film from French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is a chaotic revenge caper against two evil arms dealers and the world of pain and death they represent. Imbued with the same enchanting sense of joyful whimsy that characterises Delicatessen, A Very Long Engagement and the beguiling classic Amelie, Micmacs blends tragedy and inventive comedy with Jeunet’s beautifully idiosyncratic visual style to produce a quirkily engaging piece of cinema. Read more

Guest post by Michelle Calligaro

“When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.” Joyce Carol Oates

One man being hounded at the moment because of the violence in his art is Quentin Tarantino over his new film Inglourious Basterds, a pulp action-thriller set during World War II. I will admit that Reservoir Dogs is one of my all-time favourite movies, but I haven’t watched many of Tarantino’s films since. I gave up after Natural Born Killers – I don’t even think I watched it all the way through. But a friend convinced me that Inglourious Basterds was worth seeing, and I wasn’t disappointed. The plot is inspired, the international cast excellent and it is visually and stylistically spot-on.

But, and I think this is what the critics are missing, the most interesting thing about Inglourious Basterds is the way Tarantino presents violence. It isn’t always easy to watch, I spent half the film with my hand over my eyes, but all the characters are compromised by it. And while Tarantino has himself said that we love to watch it, I don’t think, in this instance at least, it is violence simply for violence’s sake. The black humour prevalent throughout doesn’t allow a complacent view of the agresssion, for which none of the characters are vindicated: Aldo, the American ‘hero’ and leader of the basterds is clearly psychotic. The classic ‘Mexican-standoff’ moment, when three men have their guns pointed at each other’s dicks, pretty much sums up for me the appalling and ridiculous futility of male violence that is magnified in war.

Some have said that his use of the pulp genre reduces the absolute horror of his subject. I disagree – like any great artist, he makes us see something we are very familiar with in a new way. You can only watch so many realist dramas about the Holocaust before you start to become numb to the horror and inhumanity of it all. Inglourious Basterds, while being highly entertaining, challenges you all over again. And at the same time, Tarantino continues to question his own art by setting the destruction of Hitler and his Nazi war machine inside a cinema – an icon of art, but also one of the great instruments of war propaganda.

Tarantino’s films don’t always satisy beyond the level of schlock fest, but Inglourious Basterds is inspired. And to return to Ms Oates, it would be very naive of us to think that the reality of World War II was any less senselessly violent than Tarantino imagines.

Cross-posted at The Readings Carlton blog