Lexi Cinema London

From 11 May

Director Whit Stillman’s (Metropolitan, The Last Days of Disco) first film in over a decade sees Greta Gerwig (Greenberg) star as Violet Wister, an East Coast college student with obsolete values and a timeless wardrobe. With her cabal of cuties she sets about re-educating the boorish campus fraternity boys, encouraging them to attend dance classes and partake of perfumed soaps.  All the enlightened behaviour management goes by the board, though, when Violet’s biddable boyfriend betrays her.

Beneath the arch and whimsical surface of Damsels lurks a pretty hard-nut look at male/female politics, but it is seductively easy to just enjoy its sass and style! The witty script features some of the year’s best one-liners, and Greta Gerwig – leaderine of the Mumblecore sorority – delivers her role with relish.   It’s a cherishable role that owes in equal parts to Doris Day and Jane Austen’s Emma.   You might also enjoy the chance to see Adam Brody again, who has been a bit hard to spot since The OC.

From 11 May (Les Bien-aimes)

Given the honour of closing the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, director Christophe Honoré’s feature pays homage to French musical comedies of the 1960s. This isn’t something readily associated with French film but think Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (which, incidentally, saw the debut of Catherine Denueve) for flavour. Still sublime, Catherine Deneuve here takes the lead as an ageing former prostitute recalling her wild heyday in 1960s Paris to real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni, in the hope of sparing her a few pitfalls.  Of course it doesn’t work, but it provides the framework for twin story lines interweaving across 40 years, and an intricate patchwork of historical events.  Like Honoré’s 2007 film Love Songs, this is infectious and life-affirming storytelling. Plein de joie de vivre, folks!

From 18 May

After fleeing England and the plague of bad luck that seemed to attach, the Collins family – and scion Barnabas (Johnny Depp) – have the world at their feet. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy…until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: changing him into a vampire and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb by grave robbers looking for the family silver, and he emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better…

A family saga, Tim Burton style!  And when you bear in mind that this is the fifth time Burton and Johnny have worked together (starting with Edward Scissorhands) you know to anticipate an arch art director’s field day.  Based on the US 1966-71 soap opera of the same name which had a rabid (sorry!) fan following and has enjoyed cult status ever since, this will no doubt find many new converts.  It was distinguished at the time – pre Anne Rice – by being about the only example of a reluctant vampire, with Barnabas driven to find a ‘cure’ for his condition as much as driven to reunite and reinstate the dysfunctional Barnabas family.   A witty, wicked romp!

I commend the film to you with the British Board of Film Certificates’ guidelines on this film:  “Contains moderate violence, horror, gore, sex references and soft drug use.”  Sounds like a mighty good night out!

Sat 19 May 11:30, Kids Club

In a world destroyed in a war between man and machine, a hand-stitched doll with the number 9 written on its back comes to life. The world he has awakened in is frightening, but he quickly learns that he is not alone and that there are others like him, also with a single digit written on their back. The first one he encounters is 2 who tells him something of what happened to the world.  9 soon learns that the mysterious disk he carries and some of the other dolls who are prepared to die for the good of humankind may be the last hope for man’s salvation.