Rendez-vous with French cinema

It is often said that cinema is the central art of society, and a representation of its people in different socio-economic and political contexts. It is therefore no surprise that this medium has been a vital force to reckon with in depicting societal changes, preoccupations and fears.

On the world stage, French cinema has undoubtedly made international impact, especially for the innovative New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague) of the 1950s and 60s, through to the dominant trend of heritage films  (cinéma du patrimoine) and the cinéma du look of the 1980s and early 90s. While the cinéma du look was preoccupied with a slick visual style and avoided overt political ideologies, the cinéma du patrimoine was altogether more nostalgic in approach through its representation of France's past as a former colonial head.

Fast forward to 1995 and La Haine, a film for which I'm fast becoming a broken record which persistently calls out 'watch this, watch this!'. Much has been written on this film which showed an awareness of the tensions that existed in the suburbs (banlieues) of contemporary France through its narrative of youth dissaffection and restlessness. Given that the banlieues house a large number of France's marginalised ethnic minorites, the film was propelled forward with its trio of black-blanc-beur youths as the principal characters who draw attention to pertinent issues, critically bringing matters such as ethnicity, identity and belonging, and police brutality into prominence.

Though banlieue translates to 'outskirts' in the English language, its connotations in France often veers toward the negative. I should know. Several personal experiences from my time in France saw to that. In late 2008, fresh-faced and newly arrived in Paris for a year abroad, my laughably anglicized French gave me away as an English-speaker. In chic areas and bars around Paris, the fact that I was originally studying in London was often met with varying degrees of fascination, friendliness and curiosity...until I was asked where I lived in Paris.

'Saint Denis,' I'd say innocently, obliviously.

Faces fell, shock was expressed, exclamations were made that I didn't have the mannerisms of a girl from the banlieue, and, once, someone went so far as to pat me on the back for being 'brave enough to live there.' It was also the first time I didn't get a job simply because I lived in an 'undesirable' area. Granted, it was only meant to be an informal favour for a friend who was going on holiday and needed someone to cover her au pair duties to a French family. But, after speaking to the mother in question to finalise details of my takeover in my friend's absence, you can imagine my shock when, upon being told I lived in Saint Denis, she hastily rang off, and asked me to forget it all.

You see, Saint Denis and other banlieues have been infamous in France for crime and lawlessness, and thus, the dominant coverage from the media on these areas centers on negativity. But I am at pains to stress that while I lived there - and in the times I have been back - it wasn't the battlefield it was made out to be. In fact, much of the impressions I had of the place was initially formed from other people's reaction to my living there. And if I hadn't experienced another side of it myself - the positive side - I might have been led to believe that I was living in the 'hoodiest' hood there ever was, for which I would have a constant need of a flak jacket to go about the simplest activities. You must understand that I am not for one second rubbishing reports of violence, or glossing over the real issues of over-population, high rate of unemployment, juvenile delinquency and such in some of the banlieues of France, but perhaps for the first time ever, I felt the sting of damaging, myopic stereotyping that ruthlessly dismisses people for flimsy reasons where it shouldn't.

There is a tendency to paint Paris in rosy hues; it is all romantic boulevards and trendy brasseries, historical buildings and cultural offerings, endless curiosities and fascinating discoveries...and yes I did all that and got the t-shirt. But Paris is more than its 20 arrondissments. It is, for me, the city and its surrounding banlieues,warts and all. Yes, I went to parties in the posh district of Passy, but I also went to neighbourhood freestyle rap competitions in a banlieue in Zone 4 (no drive-by shooting happened, whodathunkit?); yes, I ate in lovely brasseries which were a stone's throw from some of the city's iconic buildings, but I also trekked up a hilly streets in Saint Denis after 8pm to buy waakye; yes, I bought a nice dress from a shop on Champs Elysées, but my favourite dress came from a chance find in Sarcelles.


And so when I watch films like La Haine, largely a negative portrayal of life in the banlieue, a part of me is still reminded that there is another side to that life whose existence I mustn't close myself to. Because I lived it and saw it.

Of course French cinema has produced other notable films since La Haine. Amélie, The Class (Entre les murs), Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, and naturally, The Artist, come readily to mind, and until 24 March 2012 UniFrance Films in collaboration with the Institut Français and a host of other bodies  is offering a smooch and cheeky Rendez-vous with French Cinema which promises to bring a new slew of films that will be talked about, and should not be missed if you are a French cinephile in London.

From one of the girls of the 'hood, I say try and see at least one if you're in these parts, blud.

Rendez-vous with French Cinema. Until 24 March 2012
www.institut-francais.org.uk

Hugh's that? It's Masekela, of course!

His is a name I've always loved to roll around my tongue for the sheer relish of its sound, but last night at the Barbican Centre, Hugh Masekela jazzed it up a whole 'nother notch.

Sooner or later musicians have to face the fact that their fans are growing old with them, and resort to churning out stuff that is tried, tested and loved by loyal listeners. But evergreen Masekela seems to have neatly sidestepped that in one fell swoop. There's his hot, young band for starters, of which the tall, athletic-looking guitarist, Cameron Ward, is guaranteed to cause many a maiden's heart to go aflutter.  And then of course, there's the music, launched to the powerful sound of drums, keyboards, bass and percussions, and the still haunting, still beautiful voice of the legendary trumpeter. Ageing, who's ageing?     

Zara McFarlane, the Jamaican darling on the British jazz scene, opened the night with  Blossom Tree in a voice that managed to fuse a subtle old school vibe with a rich contemporary sound that reminded me of Ella Fitzgerald (whom I simply refer to as 'The Darling'). She may have performed her five sets with class and won new legions of fans, but it was clear the night belonged to Masekela if the excitement with which the audience welcomed him was anything to go by.

I was clapping wildly along with everyone, and turning to shout breathlessly to the friend I'd gone with, 'you'll love him!' to which he nodded enthusiastically. (By this time, I'd raved about him for so long that if his response hadn't matched my fervour I might have gone physical on him.)  

'Some people have never screamed, not even in bed!'

Hugh Masekela has long been one of South Africa's most prominent figures on the international circuit, with a half-century career of playing music that depicts everything from street life to the labor of migrant workers in his native South Africa. Indeed, one of the night's best performances for me was a song about workers travelling on a train, the very sounds and whirs of this mode of transport mimicked by Masekela with spine-tingling accuracy.

The night was all the more special because of his connection with Ghana and Hedzoleh Soundz, the erstwhile band from the 70's known for their fusion of traditional Ghanaian rhythms with jazz and latin music, whom he met and later led at a time when Fela Kuti was also making waves with his style of Nigerian jazz funk. The two entities' collaborations far outlive their time together, with one of the songs, Rekpete, a hit in Ghana to the point where even I heard it occasionally while growing up. Yesterday, when the band launched into a rendition of it, I bolted out of my seat faster than you could say 'Usain' to shake it down like there was no tomorrow.

Captivating and quite the showman, Masekela was a crowd pleaser and a nimble-footed performer...and his audience loved him for it. He whipped us up with his infectious teasing ('Come on London, we know you're not as well-behaved as you'd like the world to believe - we all know what you did last summer,' referring to the riots last August), but it was the positively mischievous quip - 'There are some people in here who have never screamed, not even in bed!' - which had the audience guffawing and loosening up in the hands of this master player.

I grope for a word to describe Hugh the heck this Masekela is, to sum up the night, and fanfreakingtastic comes to mind, but his newest fan, my friend and concert partner summed it up better: 'The man has got swagga, eh!'

Indeed he has. Hugh Masekela is all that jazz.

And then some. 

You have the right to remain silent...

Voila!

I was always going to see Michel Hazanavicius's endlessly charming silent black and white film, The Artist, of course. 

First of all, it's French, which is usually the starting point of the alarming amount of bias I display towards films from foreign directors.

Secondly, I'd read somewhere that at its first screening at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, it had had hardcore film buffs on their feet clapping wildly, and I thought: right, this is definitely one to see. 

One of two things usually happens whenever I watch a film: I either leak tears at the smallest opportunity, or my very imaginative mind will most likely be transporting whatever I have watched on screen into a vivid dream for later (Should I be worried that even though I've only seen previews of My Week with Marilyn, I've already had a dream where I had to give Eddie Redmayne motorcycle lessons of all things?!). Take the time when I watched Clash of the Titans as a tween. In the middle of the night, I ran screaming from my room because I thought a bunch of shirts and what nots hanging behind my bedroom door had turned into  the head of Medusa and was about to 'catch' me. I woke my mum up with startling urgency, and in a shaky voice insisted that, 'I can't sleep in that room,' but her initial concern from being shaken roughly awake quickly descended into unamusement whereby I was informed in no uncertain terms to stop the nonsense and go back to bed RIGHT NOW.  

I slunk off meekly. And denied vigorously the next morning when my brother teased me about being a baby. I kept a deliberately blank face, and said with the right level of bemusement, 'But what ARE you talking about?' before injecting a patronizing note into my voice: 'Suuure, if you insist..'  As though HE were the one going loopy and imagining Medusa's head behind his bedroom door. 

Or how about how even now as an adult, I have a sneaking suspicion that I would still cry buckets at the scene where Mufasa dies in Lion King? (Simba: helllp! Anybody? Somebody? *sniffles* Ow. Then a lone tear rolls down his face, and..and..oh boy..I might be welling up at the memory right now..) So let me not talk of the preview of war time film, War Horse, shown before The Artist began...

I have therefore known for some time that when it comes to films, I am a romcom kind of girl. Yes, I will see other genres and styles of cinema - action comedy, heritage films about historically important moments, urban and gritty dramas about inscribing difference, heck, High School Musical 1, 2 and 3 (I was with little'uns, you understand..) and just about anything that comes highly recommended, but ultimately, I'm an unrepentant romcom-er. And boy, have I been suitably romanced by The Artist, the silent movie that beat the cacophony of talking pictures and left cinema goers in an excited state.  

The story takes us back to Hollywood in the glamorous twenties, where we meet George Valentin (Jean DuJardin) at the peak of his silent movie career. He has just screened his latest picture, A Russian Affair, to rapturous applause in a packed theatre and is basking in the adulation of fans and paparazzi outside when a woman bumps into him as she's picking up her dropped purse. There's a frozen hold-your-breath moment as all wait for Valentin's reaction. He flashes his megawatt smile, and there's a collective sigh of relief and a giddyness as he gamely poses for photos with the woman in question, who, emboldened by his move, plants a playful kiss on his cheek to the delight of the press.

She is Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), the young dancer and actress with the beautiful smile and great legs (a scene where she practices behind a screen with only her legs showing is scintillatingly distracting) whose gradual rise to darling status in Hollywood is juxtaposed with Valentin's fall to insignificance as sound becomes the new technology in cinema. 

There's a chemistry between them that won't allow Valentin to play his usual slick self when Peppy shares a dance scene with him as an extra in his new film. They laugh and ruin several takes , until an electric moment when they stare at each other as though caught up in an unexpected coup de foudre.  But for all his flirtatious inclinations, Valentin is faithfully married, even if it is to a stiffly boring woman whose departure from his life at his lowest moment may be the one silver lining to his cloud.

The preppy Peppy, meanwhile, triumphs in the 'talkies' but has never forgotten the influence Valentin had on her, including the beauty spot he tenderly placed near her upper lip so she stood out from all the other actresses, a faux spot she has since kept. As she shoots higher and higher, she follows Valentin's life discreetly, and in her sunny, good-natured way becomes the understated heroine of The Artist

There are several laugh-out-loud moments, aided by Valentin's canine friend Uggie, who knows a trick or two and seems to shine under the playful tutelage of his master. If Peppy is the saving of Valentin's career, Uggie is the dog that makes it possible.

Interestingly, sound is used to great effect in this silent movie. (Funnily enough, the start of the movie was so quiet that I held my breath on a few occasions. I know I definitely stopped chomping on my popcorn more than once for fear of disturbing others). There are the musical scores - of course - but ultimately, Hazanavicius's clever use is seen in a midway scene with Valentin trapped in a nightmare of deafening and exaggerated noise.

Whatever you DON'T do, make sure you see this exquisite offering. You will marvel at how an almost completely silent movie - and in black and white! - became the talk of the awards season. You will catch yourself wondering if the few inter-titles as dialogue is the film's way of making you laud silence as  the purer, more engaging art form. And, if we're anything alike, you will conclude thus:  that it's a brilliant film which resurrects the old idiom that heralds silence as not only golden, but the new noise. 

So shh! No talking at the back.

We jammin'! - The legend that is Bob Marley

The weekend saw a fabulous time spent at the premiere of Esther Anderson's 'Bob Marley, The Making of a Legend' at the BFI Southbank. Arriving a little late at the venue, I endured a confused forty or so minutes starring incomprehensively at the screen as interviewees rattled away in rapid fire Italian, with subtitles provided for us lost ones. More than once I wondered if I'd walked into the wrong auditorium, and if it wasn't for the relevance of the subject matter - a documentary on the largest Reggae festival, Rototom - I might have abandoned the whole thing. 

I'm glad I didn't.  

Half an hour later, a woman took the microphone to introduce the next film, and I stared, mesmerised, as I realised that I was looking at Esther Anderson, the 'other woman' who had been in Bob Marley's life. 

I know and like a few songs by Bob Marley. Personal favourites include Redemption Song, Is this love, Burnin' and Lootin' (which Mathieu Kassovitz used in the opening sequence of his film La haine where I first heard the song. See video below), and I have always found the storyline of I Shot the Sheriff amusing. So it is somewhat riveting to discover that it was Esther's doctor in Knightsbridge, one Dr Henderson, who inadvertently inspired the song, and is the proverbial 'sheriff' that is shot - because Marley was against his giving birth control pills to 'his woman' ('Every time I plant a seed, he kills it before it grows.')  However little I know of his songs - and I am quite musically clueless - my knowledge of the man Marley himself is negligible. I should perhaps have taken advantage of meeting Rita Marley to chat with her about him, but hey, I was twelve and my immediate preoccupation was how many more chicken pies I could eat, not an intellectual conversation about this unforgettable son of Jamaica.

And yet, the decision to go to the premiere was made within a millisecond of reading about it in Friday's Evening Standard newspaper - egged on by this particular statement Esther made in the article: 'Being in love with Bob Marley was a very private matter for me and it's taken me 37 years to reveal this to the world.' And it is quite an intimate revelation of the man and his music, as Esther speaks for the first time about her relationship  with Bob Marley, and the time she spent filming and helping him with his songs, including an experience the two of them had of being forgotten at a hotel in Haiti which led to the writing of Get up, Stand up.    

Long-lost footage found after 37 years of Marley at home in Jamaica is interspersed with contemporary shots and interviews from the families of the people who shaped the reggae legend into the man the world came to know: there is an interview with Marcia Higgs, daughter of Joe Higgs, the vocal coach who taught Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer to harmonize in the days when they would sing on the street corners of Trenchtown, Jamaica; a touching contemporary scene with a reminiscing Mother Macky, wife of Bongo Macky, surrounded by her children and grandchildren singing Fly Away Home, a song Marley later recorded and called Rastaman Chant.    

In parts mundane, and in others touching for its intimate portrayal of now widely-known names, the film showed an authenticity that put Marley in a different light to the predominant image of a weed-smoking musician. This was about the music and the revolution, and the fiery social and political awareness therein.  And for her part Esther was vivacious and quirky, especially during the lively Question and Answer discussion after the show. What a spunky woman, I thought. And I remarked as much to a photographer friend of hers I happened to be standing by. He smiled warmly in  her direction and said, 'She is definitely punchy!'


Later on, I stood by the bar quietly sipping tap water on ice - (these are hard times) - and realized with a jolt that the woman herself had materialized at my side, and was demanding mulled wine from the clearly charmed bartender. He shook his head regretfully to indicate that he had none, and I'm sure both he and I were equally enchanted by the girlish petulance with which she said, 'Aw, all I want is a glass of mulled wine!' Turning around and noticing my sympathetic smile, she winked at me, 'It's Christmas isn't it? You'd think mulled wine would be the first thing they'd have!' A little starstruck at her nearness, I flashed an even bigger, slightly nervous smile, before managing to ask if the film was going to be available to view again online. 'Very soon, I hope, my dear..' she tapped my shoulder gently as she answered, and then she was swallowed up again with friends and well-wishers kissing and congratulating her on the success of the film. I do wish I could have conjured mulled wine from the heavens...

There is no way I can do this review justice, but you might find this an interesting read. In the meantime, here's the video of the opening scene in La haine: 

A Screaming Man

Mahamet-Saleh Haroun's quietly engaging drama of rivalry between a father and his son sets the tone for the humanely explored film, A Screaming Man (Un homme qui crie). Adam (Youssouf Djaoro) is a former national swimming champion who now works as a pool attendant in a posh hotel in Chad, where his 20 year old son Abdel (Diouc Koma)  assists him with the day-to-day running of poolside activities. Their loving relationship is intensely put to the test when new management at the hotel demotes him to the role of gate keeper, and installs Abdel in his place. Set against the backdrop of the raging civil war in Chad, this move accelerates tension, financial pressure and resentment that propels Adam to betray his family in the most unthinkable way.      


The film has collected several awards since its release, including the Jury Prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, and, going to a screening of it at the just-ended Film Africa 2011, it is easy to see why Haroun is being hailed as one of Africa's leading film makers. 


He has told the world a story with a simple but poignant touch which, rather than shake you in an obvious way, pierces and grips in the most subtle fashion, and it is the effective combination of cinematography, good central performances and context which make you sit up and pay attention. 


This subtlety carries through to the end, one which is very moving, precisely because it does not descend into weepy sentimentality. Rather, there is a spatial quality to it - space to quietly observe and reflect on what you have just seen, as opposed to being meted out a firm conclusion by the director. For instance, much of the internal conflict - perhaps too much of it -  stirring within Adam comes through long enigmatic camera shots that gradually close in on his face and highlight an inner battle not only with his son, but the community where he is harassed by the District Chief to contribute to the war effort against the rebels. 


Again, rather than make it an obvious focal point, our initial glimpse into the reality of war is through snatches of news reports Adam listens to on his portable radio whilst at work. And yet, when we are confronted with actual images of war via CNN on his television, it is in shocking juxtaposition to a picture of domestic bliss in Adam's home - he is lovingly sharing watermelons with his wife while the images and reports filter through on the television in the background.    
This is perhaps Haroun's way of not papering over the cracks - there is ongoing civil war in Chad - but he is at pains to stress that Adam's betrayal stems not from a political perspective, but a very personal force.


A Screaming Man was simply one of fifty films from Film Africa 2011, a ten-day event that celebrated the best of African film and documentary offerings over a range of subjects. Regrettably, I could not make it to the screening of Ghanaian-British writer, Yaba Badoe's 'Death by Chicken - The Witches of Gambaga', a documentary that explores the fate of Ghanaian women condemned and forced into exile camps for witches in Gambaga in Northern Ghana. (Whilst researching material for my undergraduate dissertation on the treatment of women in Ghana, information gathered, including a very revealing one from DOVVSU (Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit) provided shocking statistics that again and again called into question this and other decidedly stubborn embedding of harmful cultural practices against women. There are deep, harrowing issues in our society, yet, when it's not a nightmare WE  are living, a combination of naivete (I don't believe something like this happens in the 21st century), detachment (it's something that happens to OTHER people), and helplessness (but what can little old me do?) feeds the inertia and wanes the desire to up and do something about it. Discussion for another day? I think so.)    


It was the first time I was seeing a film by the Chadian director whose existence, up until a quick perusal of the schedule for Film Africa 2011, I hadn't known of. Sitting in an audience filled with an eclectic mix of young intellectuals from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), dedicated African film cinephiles and a host of others, it was clear each of us had come to see this cinematic offering from Africa with energetic interest.    Perhaps because of this, I found myself looking out for scenes that would still be somewhat familiar to me, despite the theme and context of the film. And I was rewarded in two ways:


- the bothersome neighbour who constantly shows up to borrow some item or other (salt, onion..) from Adam's wife Mariam. Now this was familiar. Several times as I was growing up in Ghana, I would sometimes be dispatched on short errands to lend our next door neighbour anything from a small pestle (to pound palm nut. Abenkwan, anyone?) to an earthenware bowl ('asanka', 'apotoyewa' to grind food), and so this scene of communal sharing, though annoying for Mariam, made me smile.


- Djénéba, the beautiful 17-year old singer girlfriend of Abdel who randomly shows up and announces she is expecting his baby. (No, I don't make a habit of unexpectedly turning up at my boyfriend's parents' house, bestowing Earth Mother smiles and rubbing my stomach meaningfully, let's not get ahead of ourselves, okay?) The familiarity is in how she respectfully addresses Adam and Mariam as 'Papa' and 'Mother', and the touching way in which Mariam, after receiving this piece of news, gives Djénéba not a lecture, but food and a place to rest. 


It is these simple but affecting scenes that guide the film to its climax. Is Adam sorry for his actions? Painfully, terribly so. But in the end, it is too little too late. There isn't so much a scream, as an agonising uncertain silence stemming from a single move that has volcanic consequences .  It is that which leads to the conclusion that a screaming man is indeed 'not a dancing bear.' 

Say 'cheese'...and die.

There is a chillingly accurate line in Roland Barthe's Camera Lucida that describes death as the 'eidos of the Photography.'* In this age of mindless digital reproduction, it is a somewhat faltering thought to consider that any time we look at a photograph, we are essentially looking at ghosts of our former selves. That moment which was captured will never be again. It is the that-which-has-occurred-only-once. Ain't that the genius of photography, that it makes a relic of even the most mundane snapshot, simply because it is a moment in time that will never be again.


The lady doth wax lyrical. And what has brought this on? Only a visit to the National Portrait Gallery which is currently exhibiting sixty of the over 6,000 submissions to the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011. 


This annual competition, open to photographers from a range of amateur and professional backgrounds, offers a fascinating insight into contemporary portrait photography. Some of the images are formally commissioned portraits of well-known people, but it is the seemingly intimate ones of family and friends which will grab your attention from the start and never let go.  


Jooney Woodward's winning portrait of an auburn-haired girl holding her auburn guinea pig, 'Harriet and Gentleman Jack', is arresting for the shocking match of colour tones. 
Here, as with other years, Africa is represented in various ways. 'Ari Boy with Toy Car' by Harry Hook is of a young African boy holding his hand-made toy car by a string, but Mario Marino's 'Surma Boy' draws you back one last time to lock eyes with the direct, furrowed-brow stare of the young male adult. Julian Baker need not have informed us of the themes he explores in his photography, for it was displayed in all its naked glory in 'Inflate', a portrait of two friends - he black, she white - in full frontal nudity. 

Surma Boy

Harriet and Gentleman Jack

By far, my favourite was one by Nick Reilly, 'Woman in Orange', not least because it was taken in Stone Town, Zanzibar. I, too, am from Stone Town, though this is the one in Ghana. (Ghanaian readers might know it better by its real name, 'Buokrom', in Kumasi, not its literal translation in English, 'Stone Town' as my family affectionately calls it). The first thing that comes to mind is the 'naturalness' in the woman's composure. The light catches her at just the right angle, and her smile is genuine. And yet..and yet..you wonder just how much tweaking and manipulation was effected to bring about this spontaneity.


What is clear in all the portraits is an inter-connectivity between artist and photographer, some of which you, as an observer, may not necessarily be privy to. They explore ideas and issues about the gaze - why is the person in the portrait looking away from the camera, why is their face hidden, and so on..? It could be shrouded in mystery or it could throw light on that detached reaction with which we sometimes view photographs that have nothing to do with us. Whatever it is, there is a story. 


There always is.


The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. Until February 2012
(npg.org.uk)


*Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida, 15.

The Adventures of Tintin

Halfway through Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Hergé's Tintin, I find myself getting distracted by the rosy-cheeked ginger handsomeness of the eponymous Tintin. I wonder briefly what a shrink would make of the crush I've just developed on a 3D computer graphic in the romantic confines of the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square. 


It is no surprise I am at the cinema watching The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn 3D; I have a huge Tintin fan in the shape of my ten year old brother, who incidentally, is the reason why over eighty percent of my barely existent cinema appearances are to do with watching animations and other such child-appropriate movies, as opposed to my ever growing list of 'movies to see'.  Un Prophète, Precious and Black Swan are all somewhere on said list, and yet, every time I wind up at the cinema, it is to see such gritty, hard-hitting films like..um..Shrek, Megamind or Alvin and the Chipmunks (1 and 2!) with the young man. Don't get me wrong, though. I am, after all, a woman who ranks Lion King highly on her list of all-time favourites.  


That said, I marched to the cinema a fortnight ago to watch Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris by myself. I sat in the darkened screen room munching on salty popcorn and was delighted when I got talking with the person in the seat next to me after the film ended, an attractive middle-aged Parisian woman.


Having already established a rapport while the previews were on before the actual film started, I gushed in her direction afterwards, 'Marion Cotillard is incandescent in this film!' 
'She was even more hauntingly beautiful playing Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose,' she agreed with a smile.
'Wasn't she just?' I said smoothly. (I've never actually got round to watching that one, but as you know, it's on 'the list'. I'm sure Ms Cotillard portrayed her impressively.)


A general discussion on what we had just seen opened way for more intense talk about French cinema after the second World War. I must have been giving off a faintly intelligent air, because in the next moment - after I made reference to the heavily nostalgic slant of French heritage cinema in the 80's and 90's - she leaned over and said, 'Well, you sound like a real cinephile..tell me, what was the last film you saw at the cinema before this one?'


I squirmed a little in my seat. 'Erm. Smurfs.'


I'm sure the look she gave me was one of immediate disrespect. But that's probably the paranoia talking.


But surely, Tintin is in a different league, right? For Spielberg and Peter Jackson have recreated a story which captures the irrepressible boy reporter and his faithful dog, Snowy, at their mystery-solving best. In this adventure, Tintin and Captain Haddock are on a hunt for treasure that may or may not have sunk when a ship commanded by Haddock's ancestor, Sir Francis, went down. But the scheming Sakharine, whose pirate forebear was a long-standing enemy of Sir Francis, is also in search of the treasure, the clues to which are in three separate scrolls placed in hand-built models of the ship. Tintin has one, having purchased one model in a market stall for a pound; Sakharine has another, and plans to use the high-pitched operatic glass-shattering squeal of the Milanese Nightingale to get the third from the courtyard of a wealthy seikh in Bhaggar.      

A glowing, revolving Tintin and Snowy spotted in Brussels recently

You could say I hadn't particularly walked into the cinema with any expectation, except perhaps a slightly annoying voice in my head that told me I would dislike it, Tintin never having featured prominently in my cartoon psyche as I grew up. So I was surprised - often pleasantly - when:


-  I found myself thinking what a cute ginger lad Tintin is. With balls of steel.


-  I noticed that the large cinema was filled with a mostly adult audience. But this was no news. After all, adult readers of the Tintin stories have long enjoyed the references to history and politics within this comic space. So I was not exactly surprised when an elderly gentleman seated close to us even shushed my brother who was piping loudly in the quiet room, 'Day, are they really sure it's 3D? Does it seem like it to you?' to which I could be heard whispering back furiously, 'Must you talk so loudly?!'  


- less than fifteen minutes into the film, it became obvious that I would actually enjoy it.


- the bumbling Interpol twin officers, Thompson and Thompson with their exaggerated accents provided mildly entertaining moments


- I developed distinctly vile feelings towards the Milanese Nightingale for her affected mannerisms (It's obvious I react strongly where computer graphics are concerned).


- there was an instant warming to Captain Haddock, voiced by Andy Serkis, who delivers variously hilarious turns as Tintin's drunken ally.  


- I watched Tintin's gravity-defying quiff of hair with growing fascination. As I write this right now, every strand of my own hair is standing up at unfashionably weird angles because I just woke up, so excuse me if I experience a slight inferiority complex towards Tintin's perfectly tended tresses, the style of which is unperturbed even when he's crashing a helicopter in the middle of the Saharan desert. Does he use spritz?


- I couldn't take Sakharine's villainy seriously, probably because any time he appeared on screen, it reminded me of Daniel Craig  giving swoony fans an eyeful of well-pumped body in the Casino Royale scene where James Bond emerges from the sea in blue trunks. I have never seen a Bond film (now there's a fact which renders some of my friends speechless, and causes them to ask a stupefied, 'But why not???!' at which time I can almost see them searching my face for signs of possible extra-terrestrial  repossession of my body, why else would I have never seen at least one Bond film? I played the 007 game on Nintendo when I was younger though, I always add in a cajoling voice), but this particular scene was analysed and re-analysed so much at the time when the film came out that it was the first thing that came to mind when Sakharine (if you haven't guessed by now, he is voiced by Daniel Craig) made his entrance.


So that was tins of fun. Whodathunkit? Have you seen it yet? Do you think Spielberg and Jackson do it justice?