Review of A Woman in Winter

Introduction

Hands up who remembers Richard Jobson as Sky Television`s film critic during the 1990s? Well, at least until the bods at the company waved the big green under the snout of the nation`s most famous critic, Barry Norman, who was becoming increasingly fed up with the BBC. So yes, `A Woman in Winter` is written and directed by Jobson, a former film critic (and member of Scottish punk band The Skids), fulfilling the old adage that all film critics want to be film-makers, and criticising is their way of letting off pent-up steam over the fact that they aren`t. Although this doesn`t extend to DVD reviewers, who simply do what they do to get free stuff and to laugh at the hate mail.

`A Woman in Winter` is Jobson`s third effort as a writer/director after `16 Years of Alcohol` and `The Purifiers`, both of which met with ho-hum reviews, not least of which Reviewer`s Rich Goodman describing Jobson`s debut as a, "Tedious and dull... over-stylised empty shell of a film". The story here is that of Michael (Jamie Sives), an Edinburgh-based astrophysicist who strikes up a spontaneous love affair with visiting French totty Caroline (Julie Gayet), the course of which bears a striking resemblance to the activities of a supernova Michael and his band of pasty-faced scientists are observing in the deepest reaches of outer space... or something.

Video

Anamorphic 2.35:1, the wallet-friendly process of shooting on digital video and transferring to 35mm means `A Woman in Winter` should look good, but lose some of the sterile immediacy associated with the DV format. To a certain degree, it does. However, there`s a fairly distracting flaw with the visuals, and whether it`s down to the transfer to 35mm or the transfer to DVD is anyone`s guess, but there`s a ridiculous amount of background and foreground activity in the form of film noise, buzzing away throughout. Like an irritating sheen over the entire film, it`s akin to the effect you see on a well-worn VHS tape. It appears to be worst down the left hand side of the frame, and spoils what should be an otherwise magnificent looking film which uses a queer, unnatural and dreamlike sense of lighting which gives the visuals a hypnotic charm. The blacks won`t win any awards for richness or depth, and there are hints of artefacting during transitory fades, but these are all minor next to the irksome noise effect.

Audio

Being a Tartan release, you are, of course, treated to a bevy of soundtrack options; DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0. That said, while the film has a lovely and serene `plinky-plonky` score, it`s a dialogue-heavy film that`s near silent when there`s no speech, with no whiz-bang spot effects or rousing orchestral manoeuvres, so the multi-channel mixes are all but redundant. However, they`re all solid in what they do, with good volume and clarity. Worth mentioning is the silly positioning of the layer change on the DVD. Not only is it very noticeable, but it also appears just as a character commences dialogue, and so it sounds like it`s cutting the beginning of the dialogue off. Now, whether it does or not is hard to tell, as the speech is in French, and the English subtitles don`t translate what`s being said, but it makes the change more evident all the same; especially if your sound system gets miffed and likes to kick out a pop when a DVD changes layers in the middle of a scene.

Features

Richard Jobson offers a [director`s commentary] full of silent pauses, anecdotes and ambivalency towards explanation in equal measure, and enjoys explaining away his creative decisions and offering small insights into the more elusive themes and plot points in the film. There`s an interesting 20-minute [making of featurette] in which Jobson expresses his distaste (he actually uses the word "hate") of films with stories that are "black and white". Heaven forbid, Richard! There`s also an [Arab Strap music video] which may or may not be just the best thing ever. But it`s probably not.

Conclusion

`A Woman in Winter` is a bit of a damp squib. It wants to be a haunting, profound and metaphor-filled love story, but instead, for the most part is an utterly over-ambiguous, vacuous and vacant example of, "Nice body, no brains". The central love story and sum of the plot is a cold romance that completely fails to engage, with the leads seemingly acting in completely different films (Gayert`s is far superior) and its sense of brittle, porcelain love removes it from the grounding of reality and sees it walking a fine line between fantasy and absurdity; Bogie and Bergman this isn`t. And of course, this is all done with a pace which makes Wim Wenders look like Michael Bay; the film runs in at only 98-minutes, but gosh darn if it doesn`t feel like it lasts for a week. If Richard Jobson has a worst enemy, his name is Richard Jobson.

For all its misgivings, it`s undoubtedly a visually accomplished piece, but the sense of awe at the hazy, trance-like aesthetics goes to pot after 15-minutes, when the meticulously, painstakingly composed frames feel overstated, and Jobson`s constant flaunting of the inventive ways to use optical effects start to grate. While `A Woman in Winter` could never be accused of being perfunctory film-making, all the effort has gone into the wrong department. When the only thing that warrants genuine interest is a shot of Julie Gayet`s nipple around half way through, you know you`re thigh deep in a highly uninteresting story. Are the over-the-top visuals an exercise in covering up the loose and unconvincing central tale? Maybe. Even Brian Cox (during his brief stint with svelteness and hair dye) and his small role aren`t enough to lift `A Woman in Winter` from wallowing in its sour sense of self-importance and stewing in its own juices of pretentiousness. When Jobson eventually does try to venture into interesting places by hot-switching the narrative to something resembling a Rod Serling teleplay, it gives the film a much needed shot of adrenaline for all of five minutes, before relapsing back into a state of dormancy, the new direction feeling entirely tacked on and utterly wasted after over an hour of suffering a brash British director testing the elasticity of tedium`s tendrils. `A Woman in Winter` may leave a lot to be desired as a piece of cinema, but it does prove that if the film-maker shtick doesn`t work out, Richard Jobson has a career waiting for him in creating fancy-schmancy desktop wallpaper and screensavers.