DVD reviews: Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 | The Help
Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
E1, £19.99
THOUGH there’s no way to describe any of the Twilight sequels as good, this penultimate instalment does have an endearing awfulness that makes it easier to endure the saga’s soapy melodrama, sullen cast and dodgy sexual politics. That’s primarily down to how utterly and unashamedly deranged it is. Breaking Dawn may indulge the fangirls with an hour or so of K-Stew and R-Pattz stressing over their imminent wedding nuptials and honeymoon etiquette, but after dispensing with this, Kinsey director Bill Condon starts cranking up the genre loopiness with one of the most bizarre storylines in any modern film franchise. It revolves around Bella (Kristen Stewart) falling pregnant and realising that the half-vamp child she’s carrying is killing her from the inside, something that spins the film off into the sort of body horror territory one might expect to find in a David Cronenberg film or an Alien movie. What makes it oddly compelling, though, is that the film presents this narrative shift as being completely normal rather than jaw-droppingly weird. Whatever your feelings about Twilight, they’re not conventional blockbusters and there’s something admirable about that.
The Help
Walt Disney, £19.99
THERE’S not too much to admire about The Help. Much fancied throughout the recent awards season it may have been, but in filtering the harsh realities of the Civil Rights movement through the experiences of a white protagonist, it manages to transform a tale of struggle into a feelgood piece of fluff. Adapted from Kathryn Stockett’s 1960s-set bestseller, its sole selling point is Viola Davis’s quietly powerful turn as a Mississippi housemaid coerced by an aspiring journalist (Emma Stone) into sharing her life story for the purposes of a book. Where the rest of the characters conform to one note racial stereotypes – be they folksy, fried-chicken cooking servants (including Oscar and Bafta winner Octavia Spencer) or their uptight, racist Southern dame employers – Davis manages to cut through the layers of syrup to give us a sense of a woman seething with rage at the inhuman and unjust world to which she belongs. How depressingly fitting that she was beaten to the Oscar by Meryl Streep’s woeful turn as Margaret Thatcher.