Me Before You
Cast: Emilia Clarke, Sam Claflin, Janet McTeer, Charles Dance, Vanessa Kirby, Jenna Coleman
Director: Thea Sharrock
110 mins.
You may well find yourself categorising this amongst the plethora of sweet but soppy lightweight comedy melodramas, but “Me Before You” is actually a delight, mainly due to the fine central performances. It deals with class-division, on one hand the working class, decent but financially struggling Clark family, and the insanely loaded Traynor brood. The former features a twenty-six year old hungry woman, desperate for any kind of work, whilst the latter includes a disabled once-high-flyer son, who is seriously contemplating suicide due to a road accident leaving him in a permanent existence of life in a wheelchair.
Sam Claflin plays the erstwhile William Traynor, formerly the cliched guy in a scandalously well-paid job in finance – who also prides himself on having an equally upper-class girlfriend, Alicia Dewar (Vanessa Kirby). He is so obsessed with a mobile phone call whilst darting through traffic on foot that he is hit by a speeding motorcycle and left quadriplegic. With no physical ability from the neck down, apart from a finger or two to operate his motorised wheelchair, he is giving serious thought to a trip to Dignitas’ assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland, which allows participants to end their lives in the presence of witnesses. He has promised his parents Camilla (Janet McTeer) and Steven Traynor (Charles Dance) that he will delay any final decision for six months - but, following this, if his mood remains, then his decision to purchase a one-way ticket will be so. In hiring Louisa Clark (Emilia Clarke) to be a cheerful companion to her son, Mrs Dewar hopes that this chatty individual, despite being totally inexperienced as a carer, will nevertheless show herself as someone motivated enough to learn and help overcome the irritability of William, and permanently change his dismal plans.
“Me Before You” is based upon the novel by Jojo Moyes, and it slowly develops in pace, to establish a growing rapport between initially resistant victim and cash-driven cohort, and in so doing, is deft enough to make us believe that decency and warmth from a former teashop waitress can win over a man with more education and life experience. Louisa, who has idiosyncratic dress sense but loads of joi de vivre, works alongside William’s nurse, Nathan (Steve Peacocke), which in turn makes Louisa’s tedious fitness fanatic Patrick (Matthew Lewis), intensely jealous, as Louisa’s ‘chum’ is slowly becoming the target of her romantic attentions. No spoiler here - just save to say that the entire enterprise is not without some genuine pleasures - and it is beautifully shot and performed, offering a very welcome addition to the romcom catalogue.
Cast: Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Karl Glusman, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
117 mins
Nicolas Winding Refn, whose ego infiltrates every frame, here offers his devoted, deranged poseur followers The Neon Demon – a film that is utterly pretentious, vacuous and ugly with its grotesque cynicism about the world of modelling and the price of celebrity. It moves from metaphor to hideous reality as people draw knives and actually eat each other, as the abstract violence becomes literal. This is a film about extremes but there is very little here about which to care.
Sixteen-year-old Jesse (Elle Fanning) has come to Los Angeles to pursue a career in modelling following the demise of both her parents. Despite doubting herself in that she feels bereft of any specific talent, she accepts her physical beauty and the profits which can be made from it. Dean, a local amateur photographer (Karl Glusman), whom she met online, takes some ultra-stylised but excessively vile shots to set Jesse up with a portfolio for potential employers. Jesse's rise in the industry is ridiculously and preposterously fast with her quickly obtaining a much sought-after high-profile agent (Christina Hendricks) at her initial interview, followed immediately thereafter with a shoot alongside a top photographer (Desmond Harrington), then chosen by a poncy fashion designer (Alessandro Nivola) who ludicrously announces she will close his latest show.
Next, she chums up with leering lesbian Ruby (Jena Malone), a makeup artist, who introduces Jesse to some of her contemporaries at a party. From there, the intensity increases with each character she meets. The photographer orders Jesse to strip naked for his session before salaciously rubbing gold paint on her body. The fashion designer utters orgasmic gasps and sighs simply from looking at her. Meanwhile, the manager (Keanu Reeves) of the motel where she stays, is another nut job who bills her for keeping a window open thus allowing a feral lioness to wander in with some prey for a late-night snack on the bed.
If there is any message in all this nonsense, beautifully shot though it is to the always-ace music of Refn’s go-to soundtracker Cliff Martinez, then it has passed me by. It’s further distorted by the feeling that the finale of The Neon Demon has little to do with anything - it is merely manic, pompous, up its rear-end tosh. It's solely about Refn pushing the imagery as far as he can, to feature necrophilia, cannibalism and self-evisceration—simply because he wants to— smugly satisfied in the knowledge that there are those with maximum cash and minimum taste to allow him these gross indulgences.
