Film Review: Le Havre

LE HAVRE: A beautiful film, perfectly performed.

REVIEW: If you're a Kaurismaki fan, this will be old news to you. Le Havre is the lovely man in full flight, taking on a story that owes a little to Philippe Lioret's Welcome and Thomas McCarthy's The Visitor, and full to overflowing with all of Kaurismaki's trademarked dust-dry wit, droll and beguiling characterisations, classic film references, and utterly unfakeable charm.

Le Havre - the place - is a busy and eclectic port city on the northwestern French coast. Like all ports, it's a cultural melting pot, with a rich music scene, and it makes a terrific stage on which to play out this simple and deceptively serious fable.

Marcel (Andre Wilms) is a shiner of shoes. He is happily married, and has been for a long time, but he is not an ambitious man, and is content to allow his life to swing in a steady orbit around his wife, his favourite bar and his undemanding work.

Into Marcel's life comes Idrissa, a young illegal immigrant who thought the shipping container he had been travelling in was destined for London.

The gendarmes are looking for Idrissa, and so Marcel, and then his friends, begin to do what they can to get the boy across the channel, and reunited with his mother.

This film is a fable, and like all fables, it has a darkness and a fear at its heart.

But Kaurismaki is a film-maker in love with film, and, although he hides it behind a cool detachment, in love with people too.

He has not always been this optimistic, and forgiving of humanity and our foibles, but as long as the old goat is making films this charming, long may his new mood last.

Le Havre is a beautiful film, perfectly performed. I actually cannot imagine anyone not finding something to enjoy in it.

Also opening this week is Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski, and starring Jodie Foster, John C Reilly, Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet.

It's a brief and very well-done restaging of the play God of Carnage, in which two well-heeled New York couples go to war while trying to resolve a brief scrap between their respective sons. For Winslet and Foster's performances alone, this is worth a look.

Also this week, the gay and lesbian film festival Out Takes 2012 gets under way. This is always a fascinating and bold lineup of films.

The documentary Rock Hudson: Dark and Handsome Stranger and Hit So Hard, on Hole's drummer, Patty Schmel, are both highly recommended.

Le Havre
Runtime: 93min
Rated: G
Director: Aki Kaurismaki.
Starring: Andre Wilms, Blondin Miguel.

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