Due Date & Delicacy

Two films on review this time around since I only watched the first thirty minutes of one before turning it off in despair.

Due Date was that film which I had hoped would be entertaining, especially since the baby has its own due date before too long, however it started badly and began to get worse before it was untimely ripped from my computer screen.

Two single dimensional characters, both different in their own ways I guess, and yet also both so self absorbed that you really couldn’t care less what happens to them, with idiot prowess conspire to get themselves thrown off a flight and then have to share a road trip to get where they want to be...and that’s pretty much all I’m prepared to say...

So onto Delicacy with the gorgeous Audrey Tautou (my wife won’t mind me saying that I’m sure!) She plays a woman who falls in love but then loses her husband in a freak accident a couple of years into their marriage. In shock she shuts down and pours herself into work.

But after a couple more years without explanation she suddenly kisses one of her new co-workers, and as they begin to spend time together, an odd sort of romance ensues.

This is a very enjoyable and very cute film that leaves you with happy feelings, and yet there is a slight lack of substance too. The male lead is funny and a little gawky which makes the romance all the nicer (probably giving hope to some of us males out there), but for me at least the funniest thing about him was that he was meant to be Swedish.

There is a great line when he is asked why he left Sweden to which he replies “the question is why more Swedes don’t leave Sweden”. There is also a bizarre scene right in the middle conducted entirely in Swedish where his mother complains about him not eating enough Sill. This was not subtitled and so I wonder if many viewers got it.

I guess the story is about getting over loss and how it is still possible to find some sort of happiness even if the love of your life has gone forever, but the unexplained kiss which kick-starts it all has an air of unreality to it, an event unlikely to happen to most people.

As a feel good film however it should not be dismissed on that basis and in this world of austerity and continued bad news it might be enough to give us all the little glint of hope that we need.