Mary Reilly (Stephen Frears, 1996)

Doubtless it delighted some to find a take on the Jekyll-and-Hyde story from the perspective of a maidservant. Sadly, there the novelty ends.
We're back in good old murderous, noxious Victorian Britain Town (here, intended to be Edinburgh), mostly rendered lifelessly within a single recreated block at Pinewood, which doubtless beats those unauthentic locations in foreign parts like Prague that at least gave films like From Hell, for all its other faults, a headstart on atmosphere. Insert a goodly scattering of big names with various approaches to the thorny issue of accent: Julia Roberts as the title character manages a generic Irish mumble which is dropped when more articulation is required, whereas Glenn Close's brothel-madame cameo opts for Katherine Hepburn after a fight in a gin-palace. Perhaps wisely, John Malkovich doesn't bother at all as the troubled doctor, nor does he think it necessary to depict more than Valmont's cruder cousin as the doctor's alter-ego, who doesn't even credibly scare the bejesus out of Roberts's rabbit in the headlights.
On the side, you always expect Timothy Spall or Jim Broadbent to be lurking in the wings in these films. Here we get Michael Gambon and Michael Sheen instead.
Married to the flat TV photograhy, the LSO widdles gamely along as incessantly as if we were dealing with a silent film. As is usually the case, such Wurlitzery over-compensation cannot hide a script wholly lacking in insight, for all that the new angle adopted might promise.

3/10

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008)

Allen rouses hopeful murmurs of a return to form with this largely inoffensive piece of fluff, featuring his current flavour of the month in the shape of Scarlett Johansson.
Financed in part by the city of Barcelona, the film amply repays their investment with a seemly travelogue of Gaudis and Ramblas. This is overlaid with a floating narrator, presumably purporting to be faux-naif and sardonic in the style of John Hurt's weighty tones from Lars von Trier's Dogville and Manderlay, but frequently ending up coming across as merely gormless and therefore not acting as a sufficient counterpoint to the impressionability of the two American leads, led along by Javier Bardem's languid libertine.
What we have on display here is familiar territory, with sensuous, unstable, wordly Europeans pulling orderly, conservative Americans in their tow. Allen may stay behind the camera for once, but is sure to project himself into the characters of - as his alter ego - Rebecca Hall's nervy and nebbish Vicky, and, as a wish-fulfilment exercise, Bardem's all-conquering Juan Antonio. We sail sleepily and pleasantly through Allen's usual landscape of inexplicably wealthy creative thinkers until Penelope Cruz enters and finally shakes up the torpor with an abrasive and pyrotechnic turn as Juan Antonio's suicidal ex-wife, albeit also as a broad stereotype of the hysterically passionate Latin.
Still, the characters remain likeable and the pattest of conclusions are avoided. Viewers fearing a repeat of the pontificating triteness of Whit Stillman's Barcelona (1994) may end up breathing a sigh of relief.

6/10