John McDonald

“Gwynplaine we are made for each other. The monster you are outside, I am inside.” Where do you get to hear – or at least read – lines like that? Only at the 24th Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, or until a featured item gets an Australian release. From an exceptionally strong program last year … More

“Heartwarming” must be the most overused word in the film critic’s lexicon. It suggests we enter the cinema as  cold-hearted types and are transformed by the power of a movie. When the lights go back on we are more sensitive, more optimistic; we believe in the essential goodness of human beings and the necessity of … More

Blood may be thicker than water but it runs a distant second to fine wines. At least that seems to be the way, vigneron, Paul De Merseul, views the world. Paul, played by veteran actor, Niels Arestrup, is the stern patriarch in Gilles Legrand’s You Will be My Son, a taut, lean story of tensions … More

Although it should be the most depressing subject in the world there is something strangely inspiring about films that deal with disability. The Miracle Worker (1962) was a smash hit in its day, making Helen Keller into the most famous deaf and blind person in history, although she has since been overtaken by several cricket … More

It has been an excellent year for French cinema, but Holy Motors brings back memories of the brittle, self-consciously ‘poetic’ malaise that has infected so many gallic directors of the past. How alarming for all red-blooded Aussies that Our Kylie should be embedded in this piece of Parisian pastry. Kylie Minogue’s appearance comes at the … More

Having watched two films about old age over the past month, I’m beginning to wonder if this is the start of a trend: perhaps a reaction to all those movies about comic book heroes. In these geriatric sagas there are no super powers on display – it’s enough if characters can keep their faculties intact … More

It’s sheer coincidence that both this week’s films are by female directors with French connections who play a role in their respective features. The difference is that Polisse, by Maïwenn, has all the drama, the humour and the acting that one misses in Where Do We Go Now? While the latter has a story that … More

With a film about food and cookery, a director can hardly fail. Whatever the deficiences of the script, the acting or camerawork, the subject has such an intrinsic attraction an audience will keep watching just to see the next dish. Daniel Cohen’s The Chef is better than that – a slick French farce as predictable … More

Declaration of War may be the most peculiar, most polarising film of the year. A controversial choice for the opening night of the 2012 French Film Festival in Sydney, it divided the audience between those who felt touched and moved, and those who saw it as a monumental act of self-indulgence. As a general rule … More

It probably requires a teenage girl to understand the attractions of Robert Pattinson, and here I’m deficient in empathy. Having missed out on all those romantic vampire flicks I must be lacking a crucial point of comparison, for on first impressions this young Adonis’s acting style consists of several variations on the theme of the … More