European Union Film Festival 2024
Presented by the European Union Delegation to Singapore, the European Film Festival runs till May 25 and celebrates the rich diversity of the region through contemporary cinema.
The roster for 2024 covers 24 films from 24 countries, offering genres from animation to documentary to comedy.
From Belgium comes the drama Here (2023, PG, 90 minutes, screens on May 4, 5pm), the fourth feature from Belgian writer-director Bas Devos and winner of the Fipresci Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Construction worker Stefan (Stefan Gota) is a Romanian living in Brussels. He is fond of wandering around the city, taking in aspects of life that others ignore.
He meets Chinese-Belgian student Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), a researcher who studies mosses. Like him, she has her eyes fixed on the forgotten and overlooked.
Trade publication The Hollywood Reporter calls it a mood piece of “quiet magnificence, one that feels spun of gossamer summer light and rooted in unshakeable depths”.
Where: Golden Village x The Projector at Cineleisure on level 5, 8 Grange Road
MRT: Somerset
Admission: $16 standard, with concessions
Info: euff.com.sg
The Fall Guy (PG13)
126 minutes
4 stars
Inspired by the Lee Majors television series of the same name (1981 to 1986), the story centres on stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), who has quietly retired from show business following an accident.
When former flame Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), a director, asks him to work for her, he jumps at the chance, hoping it will lead to a lovers’ reunion. Producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) tells him there is a hitch: The star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), has disappeared.
Colt and Jody are former lovers in their 40s, so their romantic interactions lean towards the regretful rather than the erotic. The subdued tone makes a good contrast with the turbulent action that surrounds the couple.
A supporting cast loaded with actors with comedy credentials – Waddingham and Stephanie Hsu among them – gives the story plenty of airiness.
Director David Leitch, a stuntman-turned-specialist in stories grounded in real stunts and fights (Bullet Train, 2022; Atomic Blonde, 2017), makes sure The Fall Guy puts the talent of his stunt team on full, jaw-dropping display. His concern for stunt quality is obvious, as is his respect for the craft.
One Life (PG)
110 minutes
4 stars
In the late 1930s, at great danger, 29-year-old British stockbroker Nicholas Winton led a volunteer mission to evacuate 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia before the Nazi Germany invasion.
His humanitarianism was largely unrecognised until the discovery of his Prague Rescue documents in 1988 landed him on BBC magazine show That’s Life for an emotional surprise reunion – since viewed over 41 million times on YouTube – with his now-grown “Nicky’s Children”.
Johnny Flynn plays the impassioned Winton in wartime flashbacks, with Helena Bonham Carter as his formidable mother mobilising the campaign from London.
Anthony Hopkins appears in the dual-timeline narrative as the elderly Winton half a century later. Far from basking in his heroism, he is haunted by regret over his failure to save more children, and his decency and unassuming reserve are the movie’s very qualities.
The unfussy film-making lets Hopkins do his thing. This is an actor who can summon crushing sorrow from just stillness and silence.
