New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Guillermo Arriaga.
Cast: Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence, JD Pardo, Kim Basinger, Joaquim de Almeida, Tessa Ia, Danny Pino, Jose Maria Yazpik
Description: Ensemble drama, stitching together three seemingly unconnected narrative threads. In Oregon, restaurant manager Sylvia is consumed by self-loathing, dulling the pain by sleeping with almost any man who crosses her path. Meanwhile in New Mexico, teenagers Mariana and Santiago, whose respective mother and father were embroiled in an affair and perished together in a fire, try to make sense of their parents' gruesome demise and their forbidden attraction to one another. Not too far away, Maria is distraught when her father Santiago crashes his crop-dusting airplane into a field. From his bed, he despatches Maria and work partner Carlos to North America to carry out an important assignment.
Country: US. 2008. 106mins
Guilty conscience: Charlize theron as Sylvia, a woman with a secret
Guillermo Arriaga wrote Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel with Mexican director Alejandro Inárritu, and his first feature as sole writer/director retains the tricky structure of those films.
Three plot strands, seemingly disparate, coalesce in the end but not before you wonder how on earth Arriaga is going to manage it.
In the first story, the excellent Charlize Theron plays Sylvia, who manages a smart seaview restaurant in Oregon, sleeps with almost everyone in sight and hates herself for it. We don’t know why, except that she obviously feels guilty about something.
In the second, two families go to the funeral of a Mexican immigrant (Joaquim de Almeida). He had been having a passionate affair with an American woman (Kim Basinger) and apparently the isolated trailer in which they had their liaison burnt down with them inside. Then her daughter, Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence), and his son, Santiago (JD Pardo), meet in secret to try to find out what happened to their parents.
A third strand has a Mexican girl (Tessa la) watching her crop-duster father (Danny Pino) crash his aeroplane in a sorghum field. He is badly injured and sends her off to the States on a strange but interconnected mission.
All this is accomplished with some fine film-making, acting that is well above average and a screenplay which gradually begins to make sense. Theron is particularly impressive and Lawrence and Basinger aren’t far behind.
It’s a dramatic and sometimes melodramatic story, full of a raw kind of truth about families and tragedy, and Robert Elswit’s cinematography eloquently paints the desert of New Mexico while John Toll does the same for Oregon.
One thing’s for sure: Arriaga can direct at least as impressively as Inárritu and use his actors with the same sensitivity.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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