“Freud’s Last Session,” which stars Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud and Matthew Goode as author C. S. Lewis, is in its final stages of filming in Ireland.
“Freud’s Last Session” is set on the eve of the Second World War, when at the end of his life, Freud (Hopkins) invites “The Chronicles of Narnia” author C.S. Lewis (Goode) to debate the existence of God. Interweaving past, present and fantasy, the film explores Freud’s unique relationship with his daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries), and Lewis’ unconventional relationship with his best friend’s mother.
Sony Pictures Classics last year snapped up all rights for North America, the Middle East, Turkey, India, Eastern Europe (excluding Cis), Asia and Latin America and worldwide airlines. WestEnd Films, which is selling the film, has also struck deals across Australia (Sharmill Films), Scandinavia (Scanbox), Italy (Adler), Benelux (Just Entertainment), Portugal (Nos), Israel (United King) and Greece...
“Freud’s Last Session” is set on the eve of the Second World War, when at the end of his life, Freud (Hopkins) invites “The Chronicles of Narnia” author C.S. Lewis (Goode) to debate the existence of God. Interweaving past, present and fantasy, the film explores Freud’s unique relationship with his daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries), and Lewis’ unconventional relationship with his best friend’s mother.
Sony Pictures Classics last year snapped up all rights for North America, the Middle East, Turkey, India, Eastern Europe (excluding Cis), Asia and Latin America and worldwide airlines. WestEnd Films, which is selling the film, has also struck deals across Australia (Sharmill Films), Scandinavia (Scanbox), Italy (Adler), Benelux (Just Entertainment), Portugal (Nos), Israel (United King) and Greece...
- 4/11/2023
- by Manori Ravindran
- Variety Film + TV
WestEnd Films and CAA Media Finance are selling the film.
Babylon Berlin star Liv Lisa Fries has joined Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode in the cast of Freud’s Last Session, which is in its final stages of filming in Ireland.
A first look at the film, in which Oscar-winner Hopkins plays Sigmund Freud and Goode plays author C.S. Lewis, has been released by WestEnd Films, which handles sales alongside US-based CAA Media Finance.
German actress Fries plays Freud’s daughter in the film, which is set on the eve of the Second World War and sees the founder of...
Babylon Berlin star Liv Lisa Fries has joined Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode in the cast of Freud’s Last Session, which is in its final stages of filming in Ireland.
A first look at the film, in which Oscar-winner Hopkins plays Sigmund Freud and Goode plays author C.S. Lewis, has been released by WestEnd Films, which handles sales alongside US-based CAA Media Finance.
German actress Fries plays Freud’s daughter in the film, which is set on the eve of the Second World War and sees the founder of...
- 4/11/2023
- by Michael Rosser
- ScreenDaily
“A Call to Spy” braids the stories of three decorated WWII spies to reveal — and to revel in — their pivotal roles in British spy craft and history. The title may fall flat but the movie, a sturdy directorial debut for producer Lydia Dean Pilcher, gets to the heart of the matter. Even as they faced various forms of discrimination, Vera Atkins, Virginia Hall and Noor Inayat Khan responded boldly to the tug of duty. They served Britain, and
A scene of torture begins the film. The year is 1941, and Germany has invaded France. The person being interrogated is a woman. Soaked, gasping, she will not crumble. Turns out, she doesn’t have to. The woman is Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas), and to our relief, she’s undergoing the final test in her training. Three months earlier, the Special Operations Executive branch of the British government began recruiting “lady spies.” Winston Churchill...
A scene of torture begins the film. The year is 1941, and Germany has invaded France. The person being interrogated is a woman. Soaked, gasping, she will not crumble. Turns out, she doesn’t have to. The woman is Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas), and to our relief, she’s undergoing the final test in her training. Three months earlier, the Special Operations Executive branch of the British government began recruiting “lady spies.” Winston Churchill...
- 10/1/2020
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Once upon a time there was a young girl named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan), whose father Erik (Eric Bana) trained her to kill. Her target was CIA section head Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), who had a falling out with Erik many years ago. Erik taught Hanna several languages, fatal hand-to-hand maneuvers and all the other perks that come from being a former CIA agent. Now, Hanna says she’s “ready”, flips a control node on and watches an assault team take her in while her father dons a suit and begins a trap-laden trip to Germany, where he will meet his daughter after “the witch is dead”. Wiegler doesn’t know that she is a target, but when Hanna breaks out of the holding facility with a pile of bodies in her wake, Marissa gives chase, aided by a team of off-the-books skinhead hooligans.
Joe Wright’s new film, Hanna, is...
Joe Wright’s new film, Hanna, is...
- 4/8/2011
- by Mark Zhuravsky
- JustPressPlay.net
I had the pleasure of seeing Joe Wright’s fourth feature tonight, the action/drama/thriller Hanna starring Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, and Eric Bana. While I’m embargoed from sharing any thoughts, Focus Features shared a new clip and a variety of images from the film. The clip features some of the fantastic The Chemical Brothers score, and a snippet from one of my favorite scenes in the film. Check them out below, followed by production notes from the film. Click for hi-resolution versions.
Synopsis
A teenage girl goes out into the world for the first time – and has to battle for her life. Director Joe Wright weaves elements of dark fairy tales into the adventure thriller Hanna, filmed on location in Europe and Morocco.
Hanna (played by Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan of Atonement, also directed by Joe Wright) is 16 years old. She is bright, inquisitive, and a devoted daughter.
Synopsis
A teenage girl goes out into the world for the first time – and has to battle for her life. Director Joe Wright weaves elements of dark fairy tales into the adventure thriller Hanna, filmed on location in Europe and Morocco.
Hanna (played by Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan of Atonement, also directed by Joe Wright) is 16 years old. She is bright, inquisitive, and a devoted daughter.
- 2/16/2011
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The adventure thriller Hanna, directed by BAFTA Award winner Joe Wright, begins filming in Europe next week. Focus Features holds worldwide rights to the movie. Focus CEO James Schamus made the announcement today.
Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan (of Focus’ Atonement, also directed by Mr. Wright), Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett (soon to be seen in Robin Hood), and Eric Bana (Star Trek) star in Hanna. Joining the cast is Niels Arestrup, who last month won the César Award (France’s Academy Award equivalent) for Best Supporting Actor for A Prophet [Un Prophète].
Hanna (to be played by Ms. Ronan) is a teenage girl. Uniquely, she has the strength, the stamina, and the smarts of a solider; these come from being raised by her father (Mr. Bana), an ex-cia man, in the wilds of Sweden. Living a life unlike any other teenager, her upbringing and training have been one and the same,...
Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan (of Focus’ Atonement, also directed by Mr. Wright), Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett (soon to be seen in Robin Hood), and Eric Bana (Star Trek) star in Hanna. Joining the cast is Niels Arestrup, who last month won the César Award (France’s Academy Award equivalent) for Best Supporting Actor for A Prophet [Un Prophète].
Hanna (to be played by Ms. Ronan) is a teenage girl. Uniquely, she has the strength, the stamina, and the smarts of a solider; these come from being raised by her father (Mr. Bana), an ex-cia man, in the wilds of Sweden. Living a life unlike any other teenager, her upbringing and training have been one and the same,...
- 3/21/2010
- MoviesOnline.ca
This review was written for the festival review of "Atonement".Venice International Film Festival
VENICE, Italy -- "Atonement", Ian McEwan's best-selling novel of love thwarted by juvenile fantasy, has been rendered on screen so well by director Joe Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton that it ranks with the best novel adaptations of recent times. It was the opening film in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.
With compelling and charismatic performances by Keira Knightley and James McAvoy as the lovers, and a stunning contribution from Romola Garai as their remorseful nemesis, the film goes directly to "The English Patient" territory and might also expect rapturous audiences and major awards.
Like that film, "Atonement" deals with lovers parted by pitiless fate and promising to come back to each other in a time of war. It captures impeccably three periods of English life -- before, during and after World War II -- in its parallel stories of aching romance and deepest regret.
Wright and Hampton keep the structure of McEwan's novel so that the story's revelations are well hidden though foreshadowed and revisited cinematically in very clever ways. The first section deals with mid-1930s life in the Tallis family, minor-league aristocrats who bask in lazy wealth at their bucolic pile in the countryside. Father is seldom at home, but mother (Harriet Walter) maintains strict upper-middle-class standards, tolerant of Cecilia (Knightley), with her college degree, and indulgent toward 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan), who often disappears into her own fantasies.
It's a family weekend, and first-born Leon Tallis (Patrick Kennedy) has brought his friend Paul Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, to dinner. Also invited is the son of the family housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn), a young man named Robbie Turner (McAvoy), whose Cambridge education has been paid for by Tallis senior.
It is when Cecilia and Robbie discover and act on the passionate love that underpins their friendship that everything begins to unravel. Young Briony, who once had a crush on the handsome young man, witnesses two of their encounters. Wide-eyed and impressionable, she sees the agitation of lovers hot with anticipation and concludes it's harmful aggression. Lovemaking in her eyes becomes assault.
A note that should never have been sent confirms her direst imagination, and when she surprises cousin Lola (Juno Temple) coupling in the woods and the man runs off, she instantly concludes it was Robbie. In a fury of righteous ignorance, she makes public her accusation, and he is taken away in handcuffs.
Like the book, the film jumps four years to find the devastated young man now a soldier lost in France and fleeing with the rest of the British army toward the English Channel. Director Wright, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Jacqueline Durran and editor Paul Tothill create astonishing sequences that depict the bungling of warfare, the randomness of death and the horror that results. Dario Marianelli's evocative score, with typewriter keys used as percussion, adds greatly to the film's emotional power.
The British army's remarkable retreat from Dunkirk has taken on a rosy hue over the decades, but "Atonement" reveals it as the hell it really was. A hell matched in England when the survivors show up at the hospital where the now 18-year-old Briony (Garai) is working as a nurse.
Tending to the brutally wounded and holding the hands of dying men serves only to amplify the plunging remorse that the young woman feels for destroying her sister's great love. The film's title derives from her wish to atone for her behavior and bring the lovers back together.
Garai shows extraordinary poise in these scenes, saying very little, as the director allows her formidable expressive powers to convey everything. Ronan is good, too, as the obsessed young Briony, and Vanessa Redgrave completes the trio with some typically concise and seemingly effortless heavy lifting in the film's shattering closing moments.
ATONEMENT
Focus Features
A Working Title Films production
Credits:
Director: Joe Wright
Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton
Based on the novel by: Ian McEwan
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster
Executive producers: Lisa Chasin, Richard Eyre, Robert Fox, Debra Hayward
Director of photography: Seamus McGarvey
Production designer: Sarah Greenwood
Music: Dario Marianelli
Costume designer: Jacqueline Durran
Editor: Paul Tothill
Cast:
Cecilia Tallis: Keira Knightley
Robbie Turner: James McAvoy
Briony at 18: Romola Garai
Grace Turner: Brenda Blethyn
Older Briony: Vanessa Redgrave
Briony at 13: Saoirse Ronan
Leon Tallis: Patrick Kennedy
Paul Marshall: Benedict Cumberbatch
Lola: Juno Temple
Police Inspector: Peter Wight
Emily Tallis: Harriet Walter
Fiona MacGuire: Michelle Duncan
Nurse Drummond: Gina McKee
Tommy Nettle: Daniel Mays
Frank Mace: Nonso Anozie
Pierrot: Felix von Simson
Running time -- 130 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
VENICE, Italy -- "Atonement", Ian McEwan's best-selling novel of love thwarted by juvenile fantasy, has been rendered on screen so well by director Joe Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton that it ranks with the best novel adaptations of recent times. It was the opening film in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.
With compelling and charismatic performances by Keira Knightley and James McAvoy as the lovers, and a stunning contribution from Romola Garai as their remorseful nemesis, the film goes directly to "The English Patient" territory and might also expect rapturous audiences and major awards.
Like that film, "Atonement" deals with lovers parted by pitiless fate and promising to come back to each other in a time of war. It captures impeccably three periods of English life -- before, during and after World War II -- in its parallel stories of aching romance and deepest regret.
Wright and Hampton keep the structure of McEwan's novel so that the story's revelations are well hidden though foreshadowed and revisited cinematically in very clever ways. The first section deals with mid-1930s life in the Tallis family, minor-league aristocrats who bask in lazy wealth at their bucolic pile in the countryside. Father is seldom at home, but mother (Harriet Walter) maintains strict upper-middle-class standards, tolerant of Cecilia (Knightley), with her college degree, and indulgent toward 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan), who often disappears into her own fantasies.
It's a family weekend, and first-born Leon Tallis (Patrick Kennedy) has brought his friend Paul Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, to dinner. Also invited is the son of the family housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn), a young man named Robbie Turner (McAvoy), whose Cambridge education has been paid for by Tallis senior.
It is when Cecilia and Robbie discover and act on the passionate love that underpins their friendship that everything begins to unravel. Young Briony, who once had a crush on the handsome young man, witnesses two of their encounters. Wide-eyed and impressionable, she sees the agitation of lovers hot with anticipation and concludes it's harmful aggression. Lovemaking in her eyes becomes assault.
A note that should never have been sent confirms her direst imagination, and when she surprises cousin Lola (Juno Temple) coupling in the woods and the man runs off, she instantly concludes it was Robbie. In a fury of righteous ignorance, she makes public her accusation, and he is taken away in handcuffs.
Like the book, the film jumps four years to find the devastated young man now a soldier lost in France and fleeing with the rest of the British army toward the English Channel. Director Wright, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Jacqueline Durran and editor Paul Tothill create astonishing sequences that depict the bungling of warfare, the randomness of death and the horror that results. Dario Marianelli's evocative score, with typewriter keys used as percussion, adds greatly to the film's emotional power.
The British army's remarkable retreat from Dunkirk has taken on a rosy hue over the decades, but "Atonement" reveals it as the hell it really was. A hell matched in England when the survivors show up at the hospital where the now 18-year-old Briony (Garai) is working as a nurse.
Tending to the brutally wounded and holding the hands of dying men serves only to amplify the plunging remorse that the young woman feels for destroying her sister's great love. The film's title derives from her wish to atone for her behavior and bring the lovers back together.
Garai shows extraordinary poise in these scenes, saying very little, as the director allows her formidable expressive powers to convey everything. Ronan is good, too, as the obsessed young Briony, and Vanessa Redgrave completes the trio with some typically concise and seemingly effortless heavy lifting in the film's shattering closing moments.
ATONEMENT
Focus Features
A Working Title Films production
Credits:
Director: Joe Wright
Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton
Based on the novel by: Ian McEwan
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster
Executive producers: Lisa Chasin, Richard Eyre, Robert Fox, Debra Hayward
Director of photography: Seamus McGarvey
Production designer: Sarah Greenwood
Music: Dario Marianelli
Costume designer: Jacqueline Durran
Editor: Paul Tothill
Cast:
Cecilia Tallis: Keira Knightley
Robbie Turner: James McAvoy
Briony at 18: Romola Garai
Grace Turner: Brenda Blethyn
Older Briony: Vanessa Redgrave
Briony at 13: Saoirse Ronan
Leon Tallis: Patrick Kennedy
Paul Marshall: Benedict Cumberbatch
Lola: Juno Temple
Police Inspector: Peter Wight
Emily Tallis: Harriet Walter
Fiona MacGuire: Michelle Duncan
Nurse Drummond: Gina McKee
Tommy Nettle: Daniel Mays
Frank Mace: Nonso Anozie
Pierrot: Felix von Simson
Running time -- 130 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 8/30/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review was written for the festival review of "Atonement".Venice International Film Festival
VENICE, Italy -- "Atonement", Ian McEwan's best-selling novel of love thwarted by juvenile fantasy, has been rendered on screen so well by director Joe Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton that it ranks with the best novel adaptations of recent times. It was the opening film in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.
With compelling and charismatic performances by Keira Knightley and James McAvoy as the lovers, and a stunning contribution from Romola Garai as their remorseful nemesis, the film goes directly to "The English Patient" territory and might also expect rapturous audiences and major awards.
Like that film, "Atonement" deals with lovers parted by pitiless fate and promising to come back to each other in a time of war. It captures impeccably three periods of English life -- before, during and after World War II -- in its parallel stories of aching romance and deepest regret.
Wright and Hampton keep the structure of McEwan's novel so that the story's revelations are well hidden though foreshadowed and revisited cinematically in very clever ways. The first section deals with mid-1930s life in the Tallis family, minor-league aristocrats who bask in lazy wealth at their bucolic pile in the countryside. Father is seldom at home, but mother (Harriet Walter) maintains strict upper-middle-class standards, tolerant of Cecilia (Knightley), with her college degree, and indulgent toward 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan), who often disappears into her own fantasies.
It's a family weekend, and first-born Leon Tallis (Patrick Kennedy) has brought his friend Paul Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, to dinner. Also invited is the son of the family housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn), a young man named Robbie Turner (McAvoy), whose Cambridge education has been paid for by Tallis senior.
It is when Cecilia and Robbie discover and act on the passionate love that underpins their friendship that everything begins to unravel. Young Briony, who once had a crush on the handsome young man, witnesses two of their encounters. Wide-eyed and impressionable, she sees the agitation of lovers hot with anticipation and concludes it's harmful aggression. Lovemaking in her eyes becomes assault.
A note that should never have been sent confirms her direst imagination, and when she surprises cousin Lola (Juno Temple) coupling in the woods and the man runs off, she instantly concludes it was Robbie. In a fury of righteous ignorance, she makes public her accusation, and he is taken away in handcuffs.
Like the book, the film jumps four years to find the devastated young man now a soldier lost in France and fleeing with the rest of the British army toward the English Channel. Director Wright, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Jacqueline Durran and editor Paul Tothill create astonishing sequences that depict the bungling of warfare, the randomness of death and the horror that results. Dario Marianelli's evocative score, with typewriter keys used as percussion, adds greatly to the film's emotional power.
The British army's remarkable retreat from Dunkirk has taken on a rosy hue over the decades, but "Atonement" reveals it as the hell it really was. A hell matched in England when the survivors show up at the hospital where the now 18-year-old Briony (Garai) is working as a nurse.
Tending to the brutally wounded and holding the hands of dying men serves only to amplify the plunging remorse that the young woman feels for destroying her sister's great love. The film's title derives from her wish to atone for her behavior and bring the lovers back together.
Garai shows extraordinary poise in these scenes, saying very little, as the director allows her formidable expressive powers to convey everything. Ronan is good, too, as the obsessed young Briony, and Vanessa Redgrave completes the trio with some typically concise and seemingly effortless heavy lifting in the film's shattering closing moments.
ATONEMENT
Focus Features
A Working Title Films production
Credits:
Director: Joe Wright
Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton
Based on the novel by: Ian McEwan
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster
Executive producers: Lisa Chasin, Richard Eyre, Robert Fox, Debra Hayward
Director of photography: Seamus McGarvey
Production designer: Sarah Greenwood
Music: Dario Marianelli
Costume designer: Jacqueline Durran
Editor: Paul Tothill
Cast:
Cecilia Tallis: Keira Knightley
Robbie Turner: James McAvoy
Briony at 18: Romola Garai
Grace Turner: Brenda Blethyn
Older Briony: Vanessa Redgrave
Briony at 13: Saoirse Ronan
Leon Tallis: Patrick Kennedy
Paul Marshall: Benedict Cumberbatch
Lola: Juno Temple
Police Inspector: Peter Wight
Emily Tallis: Harriet Walter
Fiona MacGuire: Michelle Duncan
Nurse Drummond: Gina McKee
Tommy Nettle: Daniel Mays
Frank Mace: Nonso Anozie
Pierrot: Felix von Simson
Running time -- 130 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
VENICE, Italy -- "Atonement", Ian McEwan's best-selling novel of love thwarted by juvenile fantasy, has been rendered on screen so well by director Joe Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton that it ranks with the best novel adaptations of recent times. It was the opening film in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.
With compelling and charismatic performances by Keira Knightley and James McAvoy as the lovers, and a stunning contribution from Romola Garai as their remorseful nemesis, the film goes directly to "The English Patient" territory and might also expect rapturous audiences and major awards.
Like that film, "Atonement" deals with lovers parted by pitiless fate and promising to come back to each other in a time of war. It captures impeccably three periods of English life -- before, during and after World War II -- in its parallel stories of aching romance and deepest regret.
Wright and Hampton keep the structure of McEwan's novel so that the story's revelations are well hidden though foreshadowed and revisited cinematically in very clever ways. The first section deals with mid-1930s life in the Tallis family, minor-league aristocrats who bask in lazy wealth at their bucolic pile in the countryside. Father is seldom at home, but mother (Harriet Walter) maintains strict upper-middle-class standards, tolerant of Cecilia (Knightley), with her college degree, and indulgent toward 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan), who often disappears into her own fantasies.
It's a family weekend, and first-born Leon Tallis (Patrick Kennedy) has brought his friend Paul Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, to dinner. Also invited is the son of the family housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn), a young man named Robbie Turner (McAvoy), whose Cambridge education has been paid for by Tallis senior.
It is when Cecilia and Robbie discover and act on the passionate love that underpins their friendship that everything begins to unravel. Young Briony, who once had a crush on the handsome young man, witnesses two of their encounters. Wide-eyed and impressionable, she sees the agitation of lovers hot with anticipation and concludes it's harmful aggression. Lovemaking in her eyes becomes assault.
A note that should never have been sent confirms her direst imagination, and when she surprises cousin Lola (Juno Temple) coupling in the woods and the man runs off, she instantly concludes it was Robbie. In a fury of righteous ignorance, she makes public her accusation, and he is taken away in handcuffs.
Like the book, the film jumps four years to find the devastated young man now a soldier lost in France and fleeing with the rest of the British army toward the English Channel. Director Wright, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Jacqueline Durran and editor Paul Tothill create astonishing sequences that depict the bungling of warfare, the randomness of death and the horror that results. Dario Marianelli's evocative score, with typewriter keys used as percussion, adds greatly to the film's emotional power.
The British army's remarkable retreat from Dunkirk has taken on a rosy hue over the decades, but "Atonement" reveals it as the hell it really was. A hell matched in England when the survivors show up at the hospital where the now 18-year-old Briony (Garai) is working as a nurse.
Tending to the brutally wounded and holding the hands of dying men serves only to amplify the plunging remorse that the young woman feels for destroying her sister's great love. The film's title derives from her wish to atone for her behavior and bring the lovers back together.
Garai shows extraordinary poise in these scenes, saying very little, as the director allows her formidable expressive powers to convey everything. Ronan is good, too, as the obsessed young Briony, and Vanessa Redgrave completes the trio with some typically concise and seemingly effortless heavy lifting in the film's shattering closing moments.
ATONEMENT
Focus Features
A Working Title Films production
Credits:
Director: Joe Wright
Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton
Based on the novel by: Ian McEwan
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster
Executive producers: Lisa Chasin, Richard Eyre, Robert Fox, Debra Hayward
Director of photography: Seamus McGarvey
Production designer: Sarah Greenwood
Music: Dario Marianelli
Costume designer: Jacqueline Durran
Editor: Paul Tothill
Cast:
Cecilia Tallis: Keira Knightley
Robbie Turner: James McAvoy
Briony at 18: Romola Garai
Grace Turner: Brenda Blethyn
Older Briony: Vanessa Redgrave
Briony at 13: Saoirse Ronan
Leon Tallis: Patrick Kennedy
Paul Marshall: Benedict Cumberbatch
Lola: Juno Temple
Police Inspector: Peter Wight
Emily Tallis: Harriet Walter
Fiona MacGuire: Michelle Duncan
Nurse Drummond: Gina McKee
Tommy Nettle: Daniel Mays
Frank Mace: Nonso Anozie
Pierrot: Felix von Simson
Running time -- 130 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 8/30/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Venice International Film Festival
VENICE, Italy -- "Atonement", Ian McEwan's best-selling novel of love thwarted by juvenile fantasy, has been rendered on screen so well by director Joe Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton that it ranks with the best novel adaptations of recent times. It was the opening film in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.
With compelling and charismatic performances by Keira Knightley and James McAvoy as the lovers, and a stunning contribution from Romola Garai as their remorseful nemesis, the film goes directly to "The English Patient" territory and might also expect rapturous audiences and major awards.
Like that film, "Atonement" deals with lovers parted by pitiless fate and promising to come back to each other in a time of war. It captures impeccably three periods of English life -- before, during and after World War II -- in its parallel stories of aching romance and deepest regret.
Wright and Hampton keep the structure of McEwan's novel so that the story's revelations are well hidden though foreshadowed and revisited cinematically in very clever ways. The first section deals with mid-1930s life in the Tallis family, minor-league aristocrats who bask in lazy wealth at their bucolic pile in the countryside. Father is seldom at home, but mother (Harriet Walter) maintains strict upper-middle-class standards, tolerant of Cecilia (Knightley), with her college degree, and indulgent toward 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan), who often disappears into her own fantasies.
It's a family weekend, and first-born Leon Tallis (Patrick Kennedy) has brought his friend Paul Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, to dinner. Also invited is the son of the family housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn), a young man named Robbie Turner (McAvoy), whose Cambridge education has been paid for by Tallis senior.
It is when Cecilia and Robbie discover and act on the passionate love that underpins their friendship that everything begins to unravel. Young Briony, who once had a crush on the handsome young man, witnesses two of their encounters. Wide-eyed and impressionable, she sees the agitation of lovers hot with anticipation and concludes it's harmful aggression. Lovemaking in her eyes becomes assault.
A note that should never have been sent confirms her direst imagination, and when she surprises cousin Lola (Juno Temple) coupling in the woods and the man runs off, she instantly concludes it was Robbie. In a fury of righteous ignorance, she makes public her accusation, and he is taken away in handcuffs.
Like the book, the film jumps four years to find the devastated young man now a soldier lost in France and fleeing with the rest of the British army toward the English Channel. Director Wright, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Jacqueline Durran and editor Paul Tothill create astonishing sequences that depict the bungling of warfare, the randomness of death and the horror that results. Dario Marianelli's evocative score, with typewriter keys used as percussion, adds greatly to the film's emotional power.
The British army's remarkable retreat from Dunkirk has taken on a rosy hue over the decades, but "Atonement" reveals it as the hell it really was. A hell matched in England when the survivors show up at the hospital where the now 18-year-old Briony (Garai) is working as a nurse.
Tending to the brutally wounded and holding the hands of dying men serves only to amplify the plunging remorse that the young woman feels for destroying her sister's great love. The film's title derives from her wish to atone for her behavior and bring the lovers back together.
Garai shows extraordinary poise in these scenes, saying very little, as the director allows her formidable expressive powers to convey everything. Ronan is good, too, as the obsessed young Briony, and Vanessa Redgrave completes the trio with some typically concise and seemingly effortless heavy lifting in the film's shattering closing moments.
ATONEMENT
Focus Features
A Working Title Films production
Credits:
Director: Joe Wright
Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton
Based on the novel by: Ian McEwan
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster
Executive producers: Lisa Chasin, Richard Eyre, Robert Fox, Debra Hayward
Director of photography: Seamus McGarvey
Production designer: Sarah Greenwood
Music: Dario Marianelli
Costume designer: Jacqueline Durran
Editor: Paul Tothill
Cast:
Cecilia Tallis: Keira Knightley
Robbie Turner: James McAvoy
Briony at 18: Romola Garai
Grace Turner: Brenda Blethyn
Older Briony: Vanessa Redgrave
Briony at 13: Saoirse Ronan
Leon Tallis: Patrick Kennedy
Paul Marshall: Benedict Cumberbatch
Lola: Juno Temple
Police Inspector: Peter Wight
Emily Tallis: Harriet Walter
Fiona MacGuire: Michelle Duncan
Nurse Drummond: Gina McKee
Tommy Nettle: Daniel Mays
Frank Mace: Nonso Anozie
Pierrot: Felix von Simson
Running time -- 130 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
VENICE, Italy -- "Atonement", Ian McEwan's best-selling novel of love thwarted by juvenile fantasy, has been rendered on screen so well by director Joe Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton that it ranks with the best novel adaptations of recent times. It was the opening film in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.
With compelling and charismatic performances by Keira Knightley and James McAvoy as the lovers, and a stunning contribution from Romola Garai as their remorseful nemesis, the film goes directly to "The English Patient" territory and might also expect rapturous audiences and major awards.
Like that film, "Atonement" deals with lovers parted by pitiless fate and promising to come back to each other in a time of war. It captures impeccably three periods of English life -- before, during and after World War II -- in its parallel stories of aching romance and deepest regret.
Wright and Hampton keep the structure of McEwan's novel so that the story's revelations are well hidden though foreshadowed and revisited cinematically in very clever ways. The first section deals with mid-1930s life in the Tallis family, minor-league aristocrats who bask in lazy wealth at their bucolic pile in the countryside. Father is seldom at home, but mother (Harriet Walter) maintains strict upper-middle-class standards, tolerant of Cecilia (Knightley), with her college degree, and indulgent toward 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan), who often disappears into her own fantasies.
It's a family weekend, and first-born Leon Tallis (Patrick Kennedy) has brought his friend Paul Benedict Cumberbatch), a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, to dinner. Also invited is the son of the family housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn), a young man named Robbie Turner (McAvoy), whose Cambridge education has been paid for by Tallis senior.
It is when Cecilia and Robbie discover and act on the passionate love that underpins their friendship that everything begins to unravel. Young Briony, who once had a crush on the handsome young man, witnesses two of their encounters. Wide-eyed and impressionable, she sees the agitation of lovers hot with anticipation and concludes it's harmful aggression. Lovemaking in her eyes becomes assault.
A note that should never have been sent confirms her direst imagination, and when she surprises cousin Lola (Juno Temple) coupling in the woods and the man runs off, she instantly concludes it was Robbie. In a fury of righteous ignorance, she makes public her accusation, and he is taken away in handcuffs.
Like the book, the film jumps four years to find the devastated young man now a soldier lost in France and fleeing with the rest of the British army toward the English Channel. Director Wright, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Jacqueline Durran and editor Paul Tothill create astonishing sequences that depict the bungling of warfare, the randomness of death and the horror that results. Dario Marianelli's evocative score, with typewriter keys used as percussion, adds greatly to the film's emotional power.
The British army's remarkable retreat from Dunkirk has taken on a rosy hue over the decades, but "Atonement" reveals it as the hell it really was. A hell matched in England when the survivors show up at the hospital where the now 18-year-old Briony (Garai) is working as a nurse.
Tending to the brutally wounded and holding the hands of dying men serves only to amplify the plunging remorse that the young woman feels for destroying her sister's great love. The film's title derives from her wish to atone for her behavior and bring the lovers back together.
Garai shows extraordinary poise in these scenes, saying very little, as the director allows her formidable expressive powers to convey everything. Ronan is good, too, as the obsessed young Briony, and Vanessa Redgrave completes the trio with some typically concise and seemingly effortless heavy lifting in the film's shattering closing moments.
ATONEMENT
Focus Features
A Working Title Films production
Credits:
Director: Joe Wright
Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton
Based on the novel by: Ian McEwan
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster
Executive producers: Lisa Chasin, Richard Eyre, Robert Fox, Debra Hayward
Director of photography: Seamus McGarvey
Production designer: Sarah Greenwood
Music: Dario Marianelli
Costume designer: Jacqueline Durran
Editor: Paul Tothill
Cast:
Cecilia Tallis: Keira Knightley
Robbie Turner: James McAvoy
Briony at 18: Romola Garai
Grace Turner: Brenda Blethyn
Older Briony: Vanessa Redgrave
Briony at 13: Saoirse Ronan
Leon Tallis: Patrick Kennedy
Paul Marshall: Benedict Cumberbatch
Lola: Juno Temple
Police Inspector: Peter Wight
Emily Tallis: Harriet Walter
Fiona MacGuire: Michelle Duncan
Nurse Drummond: Gina McKee
Tommy Nettle: Daniel Mays
Frank Mace: Nonso Anozie
Pierrot: Felix von Simson
Running time -- 130 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 8/30/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Shane Meadows' second feature is a compulsive look at the relationship between two children and what happens when people and situations drive them apart. At times tough, charming and disturbing, the British film presents a telling portrait of growing up in a Midlands estate town where life is never easy and the line between compassion and violence is often thin.
Meadows' first full-length film, "TwentyFourSeven", was acclaimed by critics at Venice two years ago, and "A Room for Romeo Brass" confirms his talent for telling honest tales and pulling no punches. It screened at the London Film Festival.
The story centers on the friendship between two 12-year-olds, the chunky Romeo (Andrew Shim) and the more fragile Gavin (Ben Marshall), next-door neighbors whose relationship helps compensate for the shortcomings of their families. Then they meet Morell (Paddy Considine), a strange and gangly young man who befriends the boys and develops a romantic obsession with Romeo's sister.
When Gavin has to go into the hospital, the friendship is hampered by the presence of Morell. He seems to take a fatherly role with Romeo, whose estranged real father has recently appeared on the scene. But Morell's obsession with Romeo's sister becomes more and more violent, eventually pushing Romeo back to his old friendship and a seeming reconciliation with his father.
As with his previous film work, Meadows uses a mixture of professional actors and newcomers. In the lead roles, Shim and Marshall are excellent, and Considine is wonderfully bizarre and disturbing as the unhinged Morell. Bob Hoskins, who starred in "TwentyFourSeven", crops up in a cameo as a cycling tutor who visits Gavin while he is bed-bound after an operation.
Meadows, again shooting in his native town of Nottingham, films with deep understanding and compassion for his characters. Often it doesn't make for easy viewing, but he remains a filmmaker with stories to tell.
A ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS
Alliance Atlantis/BBC
A Company Pictures production in association with Big Arty
Credits: Producers: George Faber, Charlie Pattinson; Director: Shane Meadows;
Screenwriters: Shane Meadows, Paul Fraser; Executive producers: Andras Hamori, David M. Thompson; Director of photography: Ashley Rowe; Production designer: Crispian Sallis; Music: Nick Hemming; Editor: Paul Tothill. Cast: Romeo Brass: Andrew Shim; Gavin 'Knocks' Woolley: Ben Marshall; Morell: Paddy Considine; Stephen Laws: Bob Hoskins; Joseph Brass: Frank Harper; Carol Brass: Ladine Hall; Ladene Brass: Vicky McClure; Sandra Woolley: Julia Ford; Bill Woolley: James Higgins. No MPAA rating. Color/stereo. Running time -- 88 minutes.
Meadows' first full-length film, "TwentyFourSeven", was acclaimed by critics at Venice two years ago, and "A Room for Romeo Brass" confirms his talent for telling honest tales and pulling no punches. It screened at the London Film Festival.
The story centers on the friendship between two 12-year-olds, the chunky Romeo (Andrew Shim) and the more fragile Gavin (Ben Marshall), next-door neighbors whose relationship helps compensate for the shortcomings of their families. Then they meet Morell (Paddy Considine), a strange and gangly young man who befriends the boys and develops a romantic obsession with Romeo's sister.
When Gavin has to go into the hospital, the friendship is hampered by the presence of Morell. He seems to take a fatherly role with Romeo, whose estranged real father has recently appeared on the scene. But Morell's obsession with Romeo's sister becomes more and more violent, eventually pushing Romeo back to his old friendship and a seeming reconciliation with his father.
As with his previous film work, Meadows uses a mixture of professional actors and newcomers. In the lead roles, Shim and Marshall are excellent, and Considine is wonderfully bizarre and disturbing as the unhinged Morell. Bob Hoskins, who starred in "TwentyFourSeven", crops up in a cameo as a cycling tutor who visits Gavin while he is bed-bound after an operation.
Meadows, again shooting in his native town of Nottingham, films with deep understanding and compassion for his characters. Often it doesn't make for easy viewing, but he remains a filmmaker with stories to tell.
A ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS
Alliance Atlantis/BBC
A Company Pictures production in association with Big Arty
Credits: Producers: George Faber, Charlie Pattinson; Director: Shane Meadows;
Screenwriters: Shane Meadows, Paul Fraser; Executive producers: Andras Hamori, David M. Thompson; Director of photography: Ashley Rowe; Production designer: Crispian Sallis; Music: Nick Hemming; Editor: Paul Tothill. Cast: Romeo Brass: Andrew Shim; Gavin 'Knocks' Woolley: Ben Marshall; Morell: Paddy Considine; Stephen Laws: Bob Hoskins; Joseph Brass: Frank Harper; Carol Brass: Ladine Hall; Ladene Brass: Vicky McClure; Sandra Woolley: Julia Ford; Bill Woolley: James Higgins. No MPAA rating. Color/stereo. Running time -- 88 minutes.
- 11/16/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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