http://greypath.com/node/20071Win 1/5 Mulan, Oranges and Sunshine or My Afternoons with Margueritte DVDsIcon Film Distribution DVDs
Icon Films.(DVD 's)
Five winners of each DVD
Review by Betty Lewis
My Afternoons with MargueritteWe had tickets for this lovely film some time back, and now we have the newly released DVD.
This was a wonderful film,starring Gerard Depardieu who had critics saying it was one of his finest performances.
‘ My Afternoons with Margueritte’ is the story of a 50 yr old barely literate man, Germaine, who meets up with a little old lady in a small public garden. Margueritte is passionate about reading, so while Germaine feeds the pigeons, she reads to him, explaining what the written words and passages mean , and they form a bond.
Germaine starts to discover the magic of books, a world that he imagined that he was excluded from.
This is a very touching story, so make sure you have the tissues handy.
Runs for approx 82 mins.
Oranges and Sunshine.From the Academy award winning producers of the Kings Speech comes this remarkable account of real life events .
In 1986 a British social worker Margaret Humphreys was accosted by an Australian woman who tries to tell her how at only four yrs of age she was unwillingly put on a boat and sent to Australia .
This woman wants Margaret to help her find her family, but to Margaret’s surprise a week later she hears of another man , and then another, with similar stories.
As Margaret starts to investigate the government archives, she begins to unravel the terrible truth about the thousands of children who were shipped out from the UK to Australia without their parents consent or knowledge.
This is an extraordinary true story about one woman who took on two Governments in her quest to reunite thousands of child migrants with their families back in the UK.
I felt there was too much emphasis on the sexual abuse that some of the children were subjected to, and this tended to detract from the real reality of the new life these children had to adjust to.
It has some coarse language and mature themes. Runs for approx 104 mins.
Starring David Wenham,Hugo Weaving and Emily Watson.
MulanFrom the makers of Three Kingdoms & Hero comes this heroic story of a Chinese girl-warrior
Mulan ( played by Wei Zhao)who makes a noble sacrifice to save her aging father from war.
She disguises herself as a male soldier and enlists in the army.
Spurred by loyalty and honour, she leads her fellow soldiers with remarkable courage and tactical
brilliance in the battlefield- making her a legendary hero.
This story Mulan was made famous originally, by a cartoon film, and that’s the DVD review copy I thought I was getting, so it was a lovely surprise to find it was not the cartoon film,but a new release featuring several well known Chinese actors.
As usual there are several spectacular battle scenes, as always in these Chinese films, fairly violent and very noisy.
The language spoken is Mandarin but with English sub-titles.
This film runs for approx 114 mins.
Australian Competitions Club
