I have resisted watching _A Late Quartet_ for years. The subject matter
-- the changing of the guard in a famous string quartet based in New
York -- seems interesting, but I was sure it would be spoiled by
bthe late Philip Seymore Hoffman, an overacting piece of ham if ever
there is one. Turns out he is very restrained in the film, surviving
the soap-operaish plot about infidelity to his wife and fellow
musician (Catherine Keener), and Christopher Walkin is surprisingly
dignified as the retiring cellist and elder statesman. The real star
is the young Imogen Poots, however. The young British actress does not
have a classical lead-actress profile, but she is so alive, intelligent
beyond her years; she also gave the best improvisions in Malick's _Knight
of Cups_. None of the British flavor-of-the-month ingenues can match
her intensity (except, perhaps, Florence Pugh of _Lady Macbeth_).

X X X X X X X X

Has anyone made a more vapid film than _Cafe Society_? It is completely
devoid of tension, meaningful conflicts, moral choices, and dramatic
intensity. Everything is played for laughs, including the Jewish
gangster glamorized as a murderous thug, and Hollywood studio tycoons
who ditch their wives to sleep with their secretaries. There is even
a joke about Errol Flynn's girlfriend who could be his granddaughter.
It is an endless parade of groan-worthy bad-taste. Parker Posey, in
an unrecognizable wig, steals what is worth stealing about the film,
while Blake Lively is criminally underused; the much maligned actress
is clearly so much more interesting than the vapid and overpraised
Kristen Stewart, the nominal female lead. Stewart and the film
deserve each other. Woody Allen should learn from Anne Fontaine's
_Gemma Bovary_, which balances farce, tragedy, fantasy, and pathos
with such aplomb.

X X X X X X X X

The films of Nicole Garcia (_Going Away_, _A View of Love_, _From the
Land of the Moon_) are about the gravitational pull of memory and the
distorted dreams and illusions they turn into. Her fellow actress-turned- director Anne Fontaine's films (_How I Killed My Father_, _Gemma Bovary_,
_The Innocents_) skip the memory part; they go straight from reverie to nightmares, gaudy fairy tales gone very wrong. Much has been written
about _The Innocents_, starring Lou de Laage as a French nurse
who volunteers in post WWII Poland. She comes across secretic nuns
raped and impregnated by Russian soldiers, and things get worse from
there; what the mother superior does to the babies are more suited
in a "Game of Thrones" episode. Like many woman directors, Fontaine
elicits an extraordinary and layered performance from her actresses.
de Laage is in _L'Attesa_ and Melanie Laurent's _Breathe_; I still have
to catch the latter. There are so many good female diretors out
there; the critics, who only talk about gender-politics warriors like
Jane Campion and the no-talent Sophie Coppola, do us a great disservice.

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