Games Without Frontiers

"Nil By Mouth" (18) Screen at D'Olier Street, Virgin, UCI Tallaght, Dublin

In a week when the new movies from the directors of Seven and Farewell My Concubine fall somewhat short of expectations, the most powerfully achieved new release comes from an actor who has never directed in the past. Gary Oldman's harrowing and uncompromising Nil By Mouth follows in the gritty, naturalistic tradition of Ken Loach's incisive, socially conscious dramas and Michael Winterbottom's remarkable television series of Roddy Doyle's Family.

Shot in a murky, washed-out lighting style and shot through with a rarely relieved claustrophobic intensity that becomes almost unbearable to endure, this patently sincere and concerned drama is set among mostly unemployed, inter-related characters in present-day south London. Based on Oldman's own semi-autobiographical original screenplay, this clearly was a deeply personal project for him and it ends with a dedication to his late father.

The film's dramatic centre is Raymond (Ray Winstone), a domineering and dangerously volatile middle-aged man whose entire life revolves around drinking, drugtaking, scams and strip clubs. His despairing wife (Kathy Burke), pregnant with their second child, is the victim of his shocking domestic violence, while her younger brother (Charlie Creed-Miles) spends all his waking hours desperately devising ways to support his expensive drug habit. This raw, grim drama is driven more by character than by incident and Oldman's treatment of the people who populate it is entirely unpatronising and unsentimental. Even the raging brute that is Raymond eventually breaks down and expresses his pent-up fears and feelings of inadaquacy, and he is played in a chillingly arresting performance by Ray Winstone, an actor who is finally affirming the youthful promise he showed in Scum and Quadrophenia.

As his much-suffering wife, Kathy Burke is remarkably subtle and expressive in the performance which won her the best actress award at Cannes this year, and Oldman elicits vividly credible performances from a fine cast that also notably includes Laila Morse, Edna Dore, Jamie Forman, and the aforementioned Charlie Creed-Miles. Nil By Mouth may be the feel-bad movie of the year, but it is also one of the most honest, authentic and compelling.

"The Game" (15) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

One of the most stylish, accomplished and disturbing movies of recent years, David Fincher's Seven struck like a bolt out of the blue after his inauspicious debut with Alien 3. Seven seemed an almost impossible act to follow, a view that is borne out by Fincher's third feature, The Game, which suffers by comparison yet remains compelling, intriguing and directed with consummate assurance. Had The Game preceded Seven, the trajectory of Fincher's career might have seemed more logical and the new film might have been greeted with less qualified enthusiasm.

The Game features Michael Douglas in the latest of his risktaking line of firmly etched, morally flawed men - as Nicholas Von Orton, a cynical and ruthless millionaire investment banker, divorced and living alone in a vast San Francisco mansion. His work is his entire life and he is a cold, callous operator.

The film opens on his birthday as he turns 48, the age his father died, and he is haunted by memories of witnessing his father's suicide. His younger brother (Sean Penn) gives Van Orton a birthday present which draws him into a truly elaborate game tailored specifically to each participant. "Think of it as a great vacation," he is told, "except you don't go to it, it comes to you."

The game gets started before he even realises it and as he is drawn deeper and deeper into its disorienting twists and turns, Von Orton becomes angrily frustrated at losing control over his precisely ordered life. As he grows more and more bewildered and infuriated, the audience - which sees everything from his point of view - begins to share this puzzlement and irritation, so irrational and preposterous seems so much of what happens. It is difficult to discuss this extended central section of the movie without giving, er, the game away. However exasperating it may become in Fincher's teasing scheme of things, it ultimately rewards the perseverance essential to stay with it and it culminates in a well-sustained and ultimately satisfying sequence when clarity dawns again.

Like Seven, The Game is charged by the ominous atmosphere that Fincher so cleverly creates and by his sheer technical virtuosity, and it benefits significantly from the astute casting of Michael Douglas who is on screen for virtually every scene. As a woman who may or may not be a waitress, Deborah Kara Unger (from Crash) is the only other actor given the space to make an impression in a cast in which Carroll Baker and Armin Mueller-Stahl, like the underused Sean Penn, feature all too fleetingly.

"Temptress Moon" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin

Expectations inevitably were high when the leading Chinese director, Chen Kaige, followed his Cannes prize-winner, Farewell My Concubine, with the lush period drama, Temptress Moon, which reunites him with the handsome leading actors of his previous film - Gong Li and Leslie Cheung. About 15 minutes have been shorn from Temptress Moon since it had its world premiere at Cannes last year, principally in the prologue set against the political changes in China in the 1910s.

To avoid another Chinese censorship problem, Chen set this film in the past, but with the intention of mirroring the changes in his country today; nevertheless, it was banned in China. It is set primarily in the 1920s, 10 years after the abdication of the six-year-old emperor, Pu Yi, and the advent of the republic.

While the early scenes suggest the broad historical sweep of Farewell My Concubine, Temptress Moon is a much more intimate drama. It is centered on the young, opium-smoking Ruyi (Gong Li) who, on her father's death, is charged with managing the affairs of the family's palatial estate in a country town near Shanghai. She incurs the wrath of the household elder when her first decision is to say farewell to her father's concubines, sacking all of them.

Leslie Cheung plays Zhongliang, the brother of Ruyi's sister-in-law. Resentful at being treated like a servant in the household, he leaves and is recuited into crime in Shanghai, making a lucrative living as an opportunistic gigolo who blackmails the married women who fall for him. When he returns on a visit, Ruyi falls hopelessly in love with him - but, still bitter, he spurns her even though he secretly loves her.

Although not as substantial as Farewell My Concubine in terms of content, Temptress Moon registers as a langorously developed classical melodrama with its two stars each displaying luminous screen presence, and the young Kevin Lin impressive as Ruyi's loyal poor relation who falls hopelessly in love with her. The production values are as meticulous and opulent as we have come to expect from Chen Kaige - the art direction, costume design, music, and in particular, the fluid, gorgeously lit steadicam images captured by its gifted cinematographer, Christopher Doyle.

Hugh Linehan adds: "Fathers' Day" (12) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

The French writer/director Francis Weber has done rather well out of the recent American fashion for re-making European movies. He re-made his own comedy, Les Fugitifs, as Three Fu- gitives in 1989, and wrote the screenplay for La Cage Aux Folles, re-made by Mike Nichols last year as The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams. Williams also stars in this Ivan Reitman-directed re-make of Weber's buddy comedy Les Comperes, along with fellow comedian Billy Crystal, in what must have seemed like a dream package to the film's producers. Unfortunately, this uninspired star vehicle fails to raise much of a smile, much less a laugh.

The plot premise is threadbare - Williams and Crystal don't know each other, but they both had affairs 17 years before with Nastassja Kinski's character (making an inauspicious comeback to the Hollywood treadmill). Kinski separately tells each man that he is the father of her teenage son, who has run away from home, and begs for help in finding him. Both "fathers" set off in pursuit of the boy, soon realising they've been duped, but teaming up to continue the chase.

The dynamics of the buddy genre are faithfully replicated here - one man is a wisecracking, cynical lawyer, the other an unemployed dreamer with a talent for impressions (no prizes for guessing which is which). Together they undergo various uninspiring escapades, while Crystal, of course, finds his hardboiled personality being softened by the supposedly loveable Williams, who unfortunately lets that blasted inner child of his out for yet another run.

Fathers' Day has many problems - not enough gags, semi-detached direction and Williams's self-indulgence, to name a few - but its most fundamental flaw is the way it sacrifices its storyline in order to let its two stars lark about for our edification. The unfortunate supporting cast, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld fame as Crystal's wife, and Jared Harris as a sleazy drug dealer, are left twisting in the wind as our two heroes go through their lacklustre routines. To be fair to Crystal, he seems to be trying a little harder than Williams, but not hard enough to make Fathers' Day worth seeing.