The awarding of the Palme D’Or at Cannes has become increasingly politicized in recent years; most significantly perhaps with Michael Moore’s victory in 2004 for the highly undeserving Fahrenheit 9/11, and a maybe a little more subtly in 2006 when Ken Loach won for The Wind That Shakes the Barley, there is the impression that the prize award is not so much for technical brilliance as it is for artistic and political intent. So when the 2007 Golden Palm was awarded to this Romanian drama with its thinly-veiled attack on anti-abortionism, critics were quick to declare that this was once again a deliberately political decision by the Cannes jury.

The film has certainly proved controversial; the Vatican of course denounced it, and screenings in countries where there is partial or complete prohibition of abortion have been limited, understandably given the polemical nature of the work. But this censure and censorship only goes to demonstrate just how powerful a work this is, and how effectively it communicates its central message: that the consequence of making the procedure illegal is to drive it underground, where it becomes clandestine, messy, unsanitary and most certainly dangerous.

The woman at the centre of the film is not the pregnant Găbiţa, but her roommate at college Otilia, who is helping her friend procure the termination. The film follows her on the day of the abortion, starting with their mundane early-morning preparations in their dorm. From early on, there is a clear sense of a time and a place; we are clearly still in the midst of the Communist Ceauşescu regime, as evidenced by the ever-present rationing, queueing for essentials and heightened security in public places. But the film offers no critique of this regime, this is merely the setting, and in a sense this could be anywhere, as long as that anywhere was somewhere with the laws that are about to be broken. As much as the film does not critique the Communist regime, neither does it seek to glamourise or romanticise about it, a trap that some recent films, most notably The Lives of Others, partially falls into.

The content of the film is unflinching, but never feels like exploitation, suggestive but not overly graphic. Director Mungiu seems to intuitively know what needs to be shown, and to show no more than this. The abortionist carries a case with him, alluding to a ‘probe’ in his description of the procedure; he eventually leaves the scene and Otilia, like us, has a morbid curiousity as to what the instruments he is about to use look like, and so quickly rummages through his case. In a scene highly reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, we see quick glimpses of these cold metal objects, and we have already seen enough. Indeed, it is during the extended ‘bartering’ scene where the real horror of the situation emerges.

The filming style is mostly handheld, giving a cinéma-vérité feel similar to that employed by those other Palme D’Or winners the Dardenne Brothers, and lending a gritty feel to proceedings, particularly effective in one scene towards the end where Otilia must locate a high-rise apartment block, for reasons which will become all-too-clear on viewing the film. The cinematography is desaturated, with greens and sickly blue-greys dominating a dark colour palette, adding to the air of queasiness that no-doubt in stirred by proceedings.

But the film is not about mise-en-scene; as I mentioned before, while this is clearly set in a time and a place, late 1980s Romania, this is almost an irrelevance to the storyline. What is key is the choice facing the characters; we are never told how Găbiţa has become pregnant, but we don’t need to be told this – the fear in actress Laura Vasiliu’s eyes when she is talking to the abortionist is enough to tell us all we need to know. It is actually left to her friend Otilia, scolding her boyfriend’s somewhat uncaring attitude to the situation, to raise the issue of what would happen if she were to fall pregnant, for the audience to consider the alternative to abortion. Găbiţa’s silence on the subject speaks louder than words.

The two central female performances are both extraordinary, but in different ways; while Laura Vasiliu’s Găbiţa is so completely fearful of what is about to happen, there is a steely resolve in Anamaria Marinca’s Otilia trhoughout, even though at times we can sense the same level of fear. Contrast that with a scene where she must temporarily leave her friend to go to a dinner party across town; at that party, older people laugh and joke and discuss recipies, but all the time Otilia is silent, wishing to be elsewhere, and still unable fully to comprehend what has happened, and fearful what is yet to come.

Much is beginning to be made about the so-called ‘New Romanian Cinema’, with Cristian Nemescu’s California Dreamin’ winning the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year, and critical acclaim enjoyed by the likes of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and 12:08 East of Bucharest showing the beginnings of a high quality of output from that part of the world. But as with all of these patterns, we must not forget that these films stand alone as great pieces of work, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days may well prove to be the best of the lot.

All of the elements appeared to be in place: the Nowheresville USA setting; the cartoon-like introduction; the overly bright colour palette; Belle and Sebastian, Moldy Peaches, Sonic Youth on the soundtrack. This had all of the hallmarks of one of those overly-kooky indie films which seem to be churned out for the Sundance market, almost like a factory line of production. In recent years this has given us the likes of Garden State, Little Miss Sunshine, Thumbsucker, Rocket Science, Napoleon Dynamite, and Running With Scissors, which have emerged into this post-Wes Anderson sphere filled with overly-stylised characters, needlessly hip soundtracks, and humour so deadpan that sometimes it is easy to forget to laugh.

Not that all of those films above were bad; Garden State was good, but could easily have done without the annoying kook of Natalie ‘don’t call me Hirschlag’ Portman; Little Miss Sunshine was also enjoyable, if a little cloyingly over-characterised at times. It’s just that there is now the idea that whimsy and more-indie-than-thou posturing can be a substitute for a decent script, and properly fleshed out and real characters the audience can care about. Thank heavens then for Juno. First-time screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman have managed to weave together the antidote to all of this mediocrity; a warm, touching picture, with a razor-sharp wit, and a cast of characters not assembled from some Sundance-by-numbers character archetype kit, but ones who seem like real people.

The film starts with the 16 year-old Juno MacGuff and friend Paulie Bleeker about to have sex, sex which ultimately ends up with our young Juno accidentally falling pregnant. The assumption on Paulie’s part is that her having an abortion is the sensible idea, but her trip to the clinic leads her to reconsider. Several columnists and pundits in the US media have pointed to the film being part of a new wave of ‘anti-abortion’ films, citing Knocked Up and Waitress as two other prominent examples. What utter rubbish. Anyone with half a brain could see that Juno is agnostic on the debate – this isn’t 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, folks.

Juno eventually decides to put the baby up for adoption, and locates a suitable couple in a newspaper ad, ‘near the adverts for used gym equipment’ as her friend Leah points out. They are Mark and Vanessa Loring, he a musician with whom Juno strikes up an immediate rapport with, and Vanessa extremely eager to be a mother. Everybody appears to benefit from the deal. But there are hints of things not quite right; Vanessa is maybe a little too eager to have a child, while Mark seems less than enthusiastic; and is there a chance that Juno would reconsider once she completes the full term?

To merely detail the plot points is to miss out a lot of what makes the film such a joy to watch. Ostensibly the situation is a simple one, but it is the individual characters, as well as the dynamic between each of them, that gives the film its depth. At the centre of it all is the title character, fleshed out wonderfully by the ever-blossoming Ellen Page. Her Juno MacGuff is smart, quick-witted and fast-tongued, with a dry, sarcastic sense of humour. But for all her bravado, as the film develops we can begin to see that she is also rather lost; for all her coarse language and haughtiness we get the sense that she is without any form of compass – ‘I don’t really know what kind of girl I am’, she concedes at one stage. Page’s performance is terrific, striding the emotional tightrope with the consumate ease of an actor twice her age.

What is also refreshing about the film is that the secondary characters are not merely there to make up the numbers, and seem to be almost as fully formed as Juno herself is – when she reveals the pregnancy to her father and step-mother, their reaction, after the intial shock, is a pragmatic one, offering practical advice and support; their response is a human one, not a melodramatic one. The dynamic between Juno and her friends of the same age is also a natural one, in particular with her best friend Leah; this dynamic recalls that of the two girls in Ghost World, Terry Zwigoff’s terrific film about growing up, emotional isolation and trying to find meaning in life. This is certainly one of this film’s key reference points, and perhaps aesthetically there is also a touch of American Splendor about the it.

I have said quite a lot already without even mentioning how fantastically funny the film is; cinematic comedy can so often be forced, but Juno is nothing of this sort, the laughs coming surprisingly thick and fast, but never feeling like an inserted afterthought; I particularly enjoyed the critique of the phrase ‘sexually active’ – never again will I hear those words without thinking it utterly absurd. A lot of ‘comedy’ films try too hard to show us overly comedic, or overly ridiculous characters with which to force us into laughing at; Juno has that rare lightness of touch where we just laugh instinctively. And it makes it look so easy.

There is simply too much to say about how great the film is, and most of it is difficult to fully articulate to anyone who hasn’t seen it. My first instinct after watching it was to watch it again immediately, because I wanted to be with those characters again, to go through Juno’s nine months of pregnancy with her all over again, laugh at all of the jokes again, and to watch again how this wonderful film manages to tell its story and evoke its colourful little world so effortlessly brilliantly. I’m not sure I can recommend it any more highly than that.

Critical heralding of a ‘return to form’ of a once-favoured director commonly derives from a sense of relief, as much as it is of the merit of the film itself. So it is no surprise that, after the dismal run of form which included such nadirs as Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, the new film from messrs Coen and Coen has been universally acclaimed as such. But bearing all the hallmarks of their classic work, No Country For Old Men is a thoroughly enjoyable black comedy-cum-thriller which is perfectly pitched, paced and executed, and features one of the most memorably psychotic screen villains in quite some time, and can quite rightly be claimed to put brothers Ethan and Joel back at the top of modern American filmmaking.

Returning to the Texas of Blood Simple, the story is simple enough: Llewelyn Moss, on a hunt, stumbles across a drug deal gone very wrong, locates a satchel filled with money and safely makes off with it. In the meantime, Anton Chigurh, a hitman, is shown violently escaping custody, conducting a series of random killings, before being hired to locate the missing money. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, upon the discovery of the increasing number of casualties, then finds himself in charge of trying to stop the killings and put an end to what is happening.

The bare bones of the plot appear to show a fairly familiar, linear storyline; Moss will run, Chigurgh will follow, with Bell bringing up the rear behind both of them. But knowing this is a Coen brothers film makes us expect for genre conventions to be messed with and overturned somewhat. The wild Texan setting gives us a clue; the film looks like it will play out like a neo-Western, with Good, Bad and most certainly Ugly elements intermingling in a Sergio Leone fashion. There is also hints of the bleak nihilism of Peckinpah at play here.

But much like The Big Lebowski disassembled, at the same time as playing homage to, the noir of Raymond Chandler’s universe, in particular The Big Sleep, here the Coens take our expectations and slant them on their sides. Just as Jeffrey Lebowski bumbled his way around LA never seemingly in control of his own fate, here too the protagonist Moss stumbles from place to place, motel to motel, knowing he must do something but never sure exactly what that something should be. Sheriff Moss, the ageing, jaded sheriff seen in a thousand Westerns, is similarly unheroic, preferring sitting in cafes reading the local newspaper over a coffee to the serious business of law enforcement. The key player in moving the action along is thus Shigurh, the hitman, yet even his actions seem haphazard. He is, for the most part, the only character in control of his own destiny, yet on several occasions he seems content to allow lady luck to decide the outcome of a situation, a man’s life decided by the toss of a coin. Fate, and sheer luck, is one of the key themes in the film – can the idea of predestination be possible in a world so seemingly arbitrary as this?

Sticking close to the original Cormac McCarthy novel somewhat restricts some of the Coens’ usual philandering, but given recent form this seems to have been a benificial reining in. There is their trademark cast of oddball cameos, including a succession of memorably deadpan receptionists, and a US border guard who takes his job a little too seriously. For all the onscreen violence, their signature blackly comedic tone is happily present, making it difficult to establish exactly when to laugh and when not to; at the screening I went to, smatters of chuckled waved across the auditorium at different times, before people became aware that not everyone else was laughing with them. Such are classic Coens films.

The leads are well cast; Josh Brolin as the confused but determined Moss, while surely only Tommy Lee Jones could have possibly played the weary Sheriff Bell. And then there is Javier Bardem’s Anton Shigurh. Gone is the handsome star of the likes of Jamón, Jamón and Carne trémula, gone is the pathos of his performance in Mar Adentro, his finest work so far. Instead we have a psychopath that even Fargo‘s Peter Stormare would be shit-scared of. Much has been made of his haircut, but Bardem’s physical transformation is a complete one, down to his killer stare and walk. What a revelation from this actor whose increasing range consistently suprises.

Regular Coens cinematographer Rogers Deakins, Oscar nominated for a sixth time here, once again comes up trumps with his magnificent eye for setting; while his work on Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was grand and spectacular, here there is the sense of the epic but also constrasted with the mundane claustraphobia of the endless succession of cheap, poky motels which populate the country. One other interesting feature was the almost entire absence of a musical score; Carter Burwell, composer for all of the Coens’ films so far, is perhaps best remembered for his haunting score for Fargo, one of the key aesthetic aspects of that film, but here his contributions are barely audible, let alone memorable. Yet it is remarkable how this absence is not noticeable to the viewer on first watch.

The film functions perfectly well as a thriller, a black comedy, a neo-western and possibly whatever else one wished to read into it. But the title gives more than a clue to the main theme; that 1980s Texas is indeed becoming no country for old men, that times are changing and new manifestations of violence and evil are emerging. Shigurh’s trademark weapon, a compressed air canister, seems strangely out of place in the western setting, and Moss never seems to be able to fathom out just what has caused the damage that it has. He is a relic, from another time to that of Shigurh and heroin deals and kids with green hair walking down the street. The film closes on a reflective note, one which seems somewhat detatched from the rest of this dark, richly comic fable, but one which seems to end it all rather fittingly.