The Artist quickly sprang from being a niche arthouse movie to a worldwide box office success, with a bunch of BAFTAs and Oscars, including Best Picture. But is The Artist really worthy of all the noise? It might just be.

Upon its initial release it was reported that people were walking out of the cinema on the grounds that they did not realise it was a silent film. Now for those of you who are regretting that decision and for those that didn’t get round to seeing it the first time, The Artist is available to buy on DVD and Blue Ray.

The Artist is Michel Hazanavicius’s modern silent (stay with me) masterpiece. On the surface it’s a very simple and accessible tale of love, fame, and loneliness within the film industry…but if you dig a little deeper it becomes a different beast altogether.

The Artist is set within the late 1920s, a time when the “talkies” were first introduced to the film industry. It was a time when some people saw the introduction of sound as a disastrous moment within the film industry. It was feared that film would lose its essence, and select actors, directors and academics detested the idea of introducing sound to a primarily visual art form. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin)is one of these actors; the catalyst to the narrative is the introduction of sound and George’s rejection of it.

George Valentin falls into a spiral of self destruction as he is unable to accept the evolution (or destruction) of the film industry. His wife leaves him and the only true friend he seems to have is his little Jack Russell, the true hero of the movie. George meets a young and beautiful actress called Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), a star of the talkies. Will she be able to pull George out of his pit of desperate depression? Or will he become lost and bitter, forever reminiscing on the past?

With the recent surge of 3D in film and the introduction of 48 frames per second in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, are we beginning lose track of the essence of cinema? Do these expensive bells and whistles really enhance our viewing experience or is it merely a desperate attempt to keep film fresh, exciting and profitable? Much like Federico Veiroj’s A Useful Life (2011), The Artist pays homage to the early and often forgotten forms of cinema; it’s both a critique of the film industry and a gentle reminder that film is first and foremost a visual medium.

Whilst it’s going to polarise viewers due to its aesthetic and technical presentation, there is no doubt that as a final product it succeeds on every level.

Overall Verdict: The Artist subverts the notion that silent films are a thing of the past and it reintroduces the golden years of cinema for a new generation of viewers.

Reviewer: Sam Barnett

Apart from one brief glimpse of the outside world, House of Tolerance takes place entirely in an opulent Parisian brothel at the dawn of the 20th Century. It’s a film that doesn’t so much deliver a plot but rather shows us a few months in the lives of its central characters, a group of jaded sex workers, including disfigured Madeline (Alice Barnole), opium-addicted Clotilde (Celine Sallette) and trainee Pauline(Illiana Zabeth), working under the unforgiving eye of their madam (Noémie Lvovsky). Their work days are at best depressingly mundane and at worst tragic.

Betrand Bonello’s film is an eerily detached exploration of the lives and mindset of its central close-knit group of prostitutes – turns it out it isn’t all Moulin Rouge style can-canning and hanging out with famous artists. Theirs is a bleak existence where the best they can hope for is a client who will show them some respect and where they are constantly at risk of succumbing to disease or, as in the horrifying prologue, a psychotic customer.

It’s a film that to make its point has to be slow paced and although Bonello gives the film a lavish, painterly look and injects moments of surrealism (including an anachronistic soundtrack) and despite the characters being well written and acted, it does drag. It’s also a film with slightly worrying misogynistic undertones. The women in House of Tolerance are subjected to a lot of humiliation and abuse. This is an accurate depiction of the lack of respect prostitutes received in turn-of-the-century Paris and probably still do today, and it’s always shown from the perspective of the victims but it still feels a little exploitative seeing it on screen and you suspect many viewers won’t understand the condemning position the film is taking and will simply take it at face value as sleazy entertainment.

Most viewers won’t see House of Tolerance as entertaining at all; it’s a gruelling experience to watch both because of its deliberately slow pace and its occasional flashes of unflinching violence and degradation. But despite that it feels worthwhile and leaves several haunting images in your mind, not least the last shot of the film, which suggests that even a century after the film is set there are still people living similarly bleak lives to those of its main characters.

The only extras are a making of the film’s prologue, footage of rehearsals and interviews with Bonello and some of his cast. After having watched the film it’s actually reassuring to watch these features and see the actresses involved looking healthy and happy.

Overall Verdict: A thoroughly deglamourized and bleak depiction of live as a 19th Century prostitute, House of Tolerance is not an easy watch but makes it’s point well.

Special Features:
A House of Illusions – The making of the film’s prologue
Rehearsal sessions
Interviews with director and cast

Reviewer: Adam Pidgeon

a very fine line between charmingly quirky and irritating. Lena Dunham’s film walks along that tightrope, occasionally threatening to slip but just about reaching the other side intact.

Her film, which wrote, directed and stars in, comes very much under the ‘mumblecore’ genre. She plays Aura, a fragile student who has graduated from the University Of Nowhere and returned to New York to her mum’s apartment. Mum Siri is a living nightmare – uptight, repressed and very angry about something. Mum is also in league with Aura’s sister Nadine, and together they make her feel as welcome as a minor foot infection.

Aura meets up with an old friend, Candice, who gets her a job as a hostess in a lowlife bar. There she meets a handsome but flaky chef, who competes for her affections with another boy, Jed, who is crashing in her mum’s flat.

Anyone who has seen Miranda July’s You And Me And Everything We Know will know what to expect here. Aura is overweight, with bad skin, needy, irksome and bullied, yet somehow Dunham manages to instil her with some sympathy and pathos. Her two suitors, one a film nerd and one a book nerd with a pill addiction, are equally unsuitable and have the effect of rooting for her to get rid of both of them.

It’s the sort of film where the characters congratulate each other on their similes: “Pills are like lying on a bearskin rug in front of a fire” – “Nice”. The soundtrack is indie, the clothes are ill-fitting, and there are references to several other films that are far more honest than this one, even Picnic At Hanging Rock.

Yet having said all of that, it’s strangely, weirdly watchable and even compelling. I suspect Dunham, having got this clearly autobiographical story out of her system, will go on to better things. The title by the way refers to the toy furniture her mum takes in her job as a professional photographer.

Overall verdict: Classic mumblecore indie fare which will irritate many and charm a few, with a sympathetic central performance.

Reviewer: Mike Martin