How I Live Now (15.)
Directed by Kevin Macdonald.
Starring Saoirse Ronan, George MacKay, Harley Bird, Tom Holland and Anna Chancellor. 101 mins.
This year has been marked by a series of Failed New Twilights, such as The Host and The Mortal Instruments, projects that hoped to cash in on the hole left by the end of the Edward Cullenhands stories. This though is the only Failed New Twilight that is so masochistically bleak, so indulgently gruelling, so romantically unromantic it seems almost designed for failure.
It has the feisty heroine – Daisy (Ronan), a bratty, gothy, punky New York teen sent to live in the English countryside with her three cousins for the summer. She is dismayed by her new surroundings but immediately falls for hunky nature boy and cow whisperer Edmond (Mackay, who for at least five minutes after you first see him has you marvelling at the miracles Rupert Grint has performed in the gym recently.) The tragic romantic element is provided by the outbreak of World War III and the imposition of martial law with 24 hour a day Elgar on the radio.
War initially opens up an idyllic Swallows and Amazons existence to them. Free of adult supervision they romp away in the countryside. This happiness is soon wrenched away from them and after being split up, the second half of the film is taken up with Daisy’s quest to get back to this Eden.
The film gives only a fragmentary view of the larger conflict, never clarifying who Britain is at war with. It is adapted from a novel by Meg Rosoff which came out in 2004 and though the film only speaks of “terrorists” it seems to have a view of the scale and organisation of the Islamic threat that might have come out of one of Donald Rumsfeld’s wilder post 9/11 press briefings.
It’s all done with bleak plausibility but, given that it is still, basically, a teen romance there is something hysterical about the levels of misery it imposes on an audience. The moment, Spoiler, when Daisy rummages through a pile of body bags, ripping each one open to see if one of her cousins is in them was the moment that had me throwing in the towel and saying enough, enough. It was also the point when I noticed the man next to me had tears streaming down his face. Maybe this grisly portent of doom is what audience wants now that those pasty faced Twilight glummies have passed on.
Directed by Kevin Macdonald.
Starring Saoirse Ronan, George MacKay, Harley Bird, Tom Holland and Anna Chancellor. 101 mins.
This year has been marked by a series of Failed New Twilights, such as The Host and The Mortal Instruments, projects that hoped to cash in on the hole left by the end of the Edward Cullenhands stories. This though is the only Failed New Twilight that is so masochistically bleak, so indulgently gruelling, so romantically unromantic it seems almost designed for failure.
It has the feisty heroine – Daisy (Ronan), a bratty, gothy, punky New York teen sent to live in the English countryside with her three cousins for the summer. She is dismayed by her new surroundings but immediately falls for hunky nature boy and cow whisperer Edmond (Mackay, who for at least five minutes after you first see him has you marvelling at the miracles Rupert Grint has performed in the gym recently.) The tragic romantic element is provided by the outbreak of World War III and the imposition of martial law with 24 hour a day Elgar on the radio.
War initially opens up an idyllic Swallows and Amazons existence to them. Free of adult supervision they romp away in the countryside. This happiness is soon wrenched away from them and after being split up, the second half of the film is taken up with Daisy’s quest to get back to this Eden.
The film gives only a fragmentary view of the larger conflict, never clarifying who Britain is at war with. It is adapted from a novel by Meg Rosoff which came out in 2004 and though the film only speaks of “terrorists” it seems to have a view of the scale and organisation of the Islamic threat that might have come out of one of Donald Rumsfeld’s wilder post 9/11 press briefings.
It’s all done with bleak plausibility but, given that it is still, basically, a teen romance there is something hysterical about the levels of misery it imposes on an audience. The moment, Spoiler, when Daisy rummages through a pile of body bags, ripping each one open to see if one of her cousins is in them was the moment that had me throwing in the towel and saying enough, enough. It was also the point when I noticed the man next to me had tears streaming down his face. Maybe this grisly portent of doom is what audience wants now that those pasty faced Twilight glummies have passed on.
