The
Little Bedroom
(2014/Cinema Libre DVD)/1,000
Times Good Night (2013,
2014/Film Movement DVD)
Picture:
C/C+ Sound: C/C+ Extras: C-/C Films: C/B
Here
are two serious dramas for your consideration...
Stephanie
Chual & Veronique Raymond's The
Little Bedroom
(2014) comes from France and is about an older man (Michel Bouquet)
who is put in a care home, then in anger that his son has sold his
place without his permission or consideration, gets his nurse to get
him out and put him up at her place. Of course, he is suddenly a
wanted, missing man, so what will they do next?
The
humor is overly obvious and actors not bad, but in 87 minutes, I was
surprised the makers did not take more advantage of the situation for
character study, realism and to do something different throughout. I
kept expecting this one to pick up, but top no avail. It simply
plays it too safe and having two directors was a bad idea, as it is
in most cases.
A
trailer is the only extra.
Erik
Poppe's 1,000
Times Good Night
(2013) on the other hand is a remarkable, excellent drama about a
photographer Rebecca (Juliette Binoche) who insists on going into the
worst parts of the world and snapping images that she feel the world
needs to see to expose the truth, even including the Middle East
(much like Catherine Keener in War
Story,
reviewed elsewhere on this site) where women are particularly not
respected. This is very dangerous, especially in an atmosphere where
journalists are being captured, tortured and killed more and more
often. In this case, Rebecca is nearly killed when she is witness to
a suicide bomber she is covering.
Back
home with her husband (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) she is safe and taken
care of, but he is rightly sick of all of it and she promises to
quit, not well and hurt physically. They have two daughters and the
older one starts to become interested in Africa for a school
assignment, but Rebecca has some ugly things to share. Even with
this, the daughter still wants to visit that country...
This
is a stunning, excellent drama that shows Binoche in excellent form
yet again and is as well written as it is directed, as Poppe was such
a photographer before he became a dramatic filmmaker. Everyone is so
good here and the script maturely goes all the way on everything it
needs to on the subjects at hand and is impactful all the way. This
may be the victim of political censorship top some extent, but don't
let that stop you form seeing one of the best foreign films (includes
plenty of English language dialogue) of the last few years. See
it!!!
Interviews
and Behind The Scenes footage are the extras.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on both DVDs are digital
shoots, but Bedroom
tends to be softer by design and than gets in the way of enjoying it
on playback, plus I bet the style would carry over to Blu-ray and HD.
Night
is warmer, more consistent and calls for a major Blu-ray. The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Bedroom
is also a bit limited, though the drama is on the quiet side, while
the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Night
is better and has some surround engagement. Wish this one was
lossless.
-
Nicholas Sheffo