Reviews

For me, this film was about the nature of sexual relations between men and women. That is, romance and love are cons and don't exist. Sex is purely physical and the only true feelings associated with it are pain, fear, and disgust. And the only good thing to come of it is reproduction. If Catherine Breillat truly feels this way about it, then she's to be pitied. The lie is exposed in the fact that a real woman would have taken this self-absorbed male model for a walk along the Seine and kicked his ass in it during the first 10 minutes. On the other hand, as a directorial exercise, it is brilliant. You can experience and enjoy the imagery (explained in detail in previous posts) and story without buying into Breillat's pathetic philosophy.

For the average American movie-goer, this film has three strikes against it. It's about old people, whom young Americans are conditioned to consider as useless and stupid. It's about death -- real death, not fake-blood-splattering death. And it's about the pleasures, heartbreaks, and general messiness of lifelong friendships which are generally nonexistent in modern America. But for the adventurous souls who dare to dine here, Last Orders is a feast. The cast gives lessons in the art of screen acting, and the director shows us how simply and effectively flashbacks can tell a story. The working-class, British accents sometimes render the dialogue unintelligible to American ears, and the jokes are sometimes obscure, but the feelings are always genuine, and the sense of lives lived, in youth and in old age, always rings true. Bob Hoskins creates another classic character. Michael Caine can do no wrong. Helen Mirren's beauty can't be concealed by the heaviest of age makeup. Tom Courtenay is brilliantly understated. And David Hemmings eyebrows are awesome!

This is a perfect example of a great director who was not a writer, but whose ego was not capable of recognizing this fact; thus the interminable rewrites that exasperated the cast. This is a beautifully photographed and acted motion picture in service of a deeply flawed story. A good (not even great) screenwriter could have turned what is merely an interesting work by a great director into a film that truly showcased Kubrick's gifts and was worthy of being his final work. It's a pity.