Twilight’s had its day

By Matthew Bond

PUBLISHED: 12:25 EST, 19 November 2012 | UPDATED: 12:25 EST, 19 November 2012

Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2. Certificate: 12A Time: 1hr 55mins

Twelve months ago, in the disappointing wake of Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1, I expressed the fervent hope that Breaking Dawn, Part 2 would be a big improvement. But, alas, it is not. After four years and at least two too many films, the Twilight franchise that has turned Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson into global superstars limps to a distinctly underwhelming end.

Of course, there’s a climactic final battle – how could there not be? – and I’m sure die-hard fans will find a certain closure as they finally discover whether Bella and Edward live happily ever after.

But for anyone like me, who has needed to be persuaded by each Twilight film (and just for the record I loved the first and third) it’s a long and pedestrian haul that barely seems worth the effort.

Twilight Breaking Dawn part 2 is less the 'epic conclusion' and more the sage limping to a disappointing end

This is the film equivalent of the primary-school essay that has to be given a new lease of over-extended life by a very big ‘and so’ that suddenly and arbitrarily sets the story racing off in an entirely new direction.

At the end of the last film, Bella and Edward had become parents and Bella, as the mother of a baby that was half-human, half-vampire, was so ill that the only way to save her was for Edward to bite her and turn her into a vampire too.

Which, presumably, is why she begins the new film with even paler skin than usual, red eyes and much bigger hair. Clearly blood is very good for the old follicles.

Even at this early stage, it all seems so laboured, in the same way Superman adaptations often fall flat once Lois Lane has discovered Clark Kent’s little secret.

That special Twilight magic – will they, won’t they and will it kill her in the process? – has gone, replaced here by inane humour, awkward sex scenes and an abundance of good-looking people striking poses in coloured contact lenses.

‘There’s a lot of red eyes around here,’ notes Taylor Lautner’s Jacob, who is now probably better known for his spectacularly toned abs than for his ability to turn into a werewolf. He’s not wrong.

The wolves: The film is essentially good vampires (plus werewolf allies) against bad vampires

We’re going painfully nowhere until Melissa Rosenberg’s screenplay reveals its big ‘and so’. And so, Bella and Edward’s daughter Renesmee is mistaken for an ‘immortal child’, a being so dangerous and against so many vampire rules that it can only  be a matter of time before the Volturi, looking and sounding more like an Eighties band of New Romantics than ever, come looking for the Cullens. Yes, it’s good vampires (plus werewolf allies) against bad vampires time, albeit in a battle that, thanks to a sudden outbreak of supernatural powers, at times seems to belong more to an X-Men film than a Twilight one.

Some decent spectacle, albeit violent enough to push the film’s 12A certificate to breaking point, lies ahead, along with one good-ish twist. And yet the overriding impression is of a franchise that has run out of both steam and ideas.

Actors who have been perfectly good in past Twilight films are notably poorer here, while director Bill Condon damagingly overdoes the silly special effects. Personally, I wish they’d stopped after three.

P. J. Hogan’s new film, Mental, has one of the strangest and funniest opening scenes you will see all year, involving a slightly plump Australian housewife belting out The Sound Of Music in her suburban back garden while her eldest daughter, cowering inside with embarrassment, confesses to a failed suicide attempt in which she jumped from the veranda but only as far as the roof of her father’s car just a few feet below.

The love triangle at the centre of the Twilight Saga has won it legions of fans - the most extreme of which are known as 'Twihards'

Yes, indeed, if the title alone wasn’t indication enough, by the end of this first scene we’re certain: this way madness most definitely lies. But, thankfully, this is mental illness explored with laughter and entertainment very much to the fore.

Just about everybody in the Moochmore family seems to have mental-health problems: mother Shirley (Rebecca Gibney) is sweet-natured but stressed to breaking point by her serially unfaithful, local politician husband (Anthony LaPaglia). Her eldest daughter, Coral (Lily Sullivan), believes herself to be bi-polar, while Coral’s younger, voice-hearing sister, Michelle (Malorie O’Neill), might actually be. Small wonder that their youngest siblings are already competing to see who becomes a sociopath or is diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

But if it’s one Julie Andrews film that starts things off, it’s another that springs quickly to mind once Shirley has been dispatched to a psychiatric hospital and her hopeless husband, who rarely comes home, simply picks up the first hitchhiker who catches his roving eye to look after his daughters.

Mental: Toni Collette as Shaz, the hitchhiker who is picked up by Shirley's husband (played by Anthony LaPaglia) to look after his daughters

But Shaz (Toni Collette) is no conventional Mary Poppins. In fact, at times, the drug-smoking, knife-wielding, killer dog-owning free spirit seems every bit as mad as the Moochmores. Ah, but is there method in her madness as she sets about ‘curing’ them all?

The end result marks a real return, both to Australia and creative form, for Hogan, best known of late for Hollywood comedies such as My Best Friend’s Wedding and Confessions Of A Shopaholic. It also reunites him with Collette, star of his breakthrough picture, Muriel’s Wedding.

Inevitably, the tone darkens a little  in the second half and there’s also no doubt that Hogan, who writes as well as directs, takes a few strange turns along the distinctly non-formulaic, slightly overlong way.

But it does all work: the dialogue is sharply funny, Liev Schreiber is a hoot as a cattle-prod wielding shark-hunter, and a sweetly romantic scene takes place on a swimming pool flume ride. Unconventional but definitely worth tracking down.

Amour won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival and, like so many of its recent predecessors, that means it is a demanding, even gruelling watch. For while the title is quite accurate – this  is, indeed, a film about love – Michael Haneke’s intimate, almost claustrophobic film is about a love being tested to its  very limits. Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) are  an elderly Parisian couple leading a comfortable retired life.

Then one morning Anne, formerly a piano teacher of some repute, suddenly stops talking at breakfast and we know (I shan’t tell you how) that her descent into incapacitating and humiliating terminal illness has begun.

 In its early stages, even after an operation has failed, she has good moments and less good moments, and it is during one of the former that she makes Georges promise not to put her into a hospital or home.

He is going to have to look after her himself, a task he sets about with both care and dedication. But how long can he keep it up?

Frankly, this is the sort of character-driven drama that British television used to do brilliantly, and certainly I can think of many fine British actors who would acquit themselves every bit as well as, and possibly even better than, Trintignant and Riva do here. And make rather more of an emotional impact.

For Haneke has an austere style of film-making and, as a result, this tale of everyday tragedy leaves you exhausted but distinctly dry-eyed. Haneke offers us few glimpses of the couple before illness sets in and shares little of those intimacies that all long-established couples have, preferring instead to concentrate on Anne’s relentless decline.

One particularly poignant flashback contrasts Anne playing the piano with the rambling, incontinent invalid she has so rapidly become.

With one nightmare, a strange series of landscape paintings and an over-indulged pigeon all making a contribution, Amour is undeniably well-made but every bit as depressing as it sounds.

Mental

Certificate: 15 Time: 1hr 56mins

Amour

Certificate: 12A Time: 2hrs 7mins