The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 29

Triumph out of tears Derek Malcolm SUPPOSE you could call Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands a very superior weepie. But that would be somehow to denigrate what is a firstclass piece of film-making, acted in a way that sometimes takes the breath away. It is the best piece of direction he has ever accomplished and, coming after the unfortunate failure of Chaplin, it is an unalloyed triumph. He has been well blessed in the making of this fictionalised story of Lewis, Oxford don and writer, and his love for Joy Gresham, the American poet who died of cancer all too soon after the marriage. William Nicholson's screenplay, adapted with great skill for the screen from the original theatre and television plays, has a cast to accomplish it that most directors would dream about.

What we are presented with is an old-fashioned piece of storytelling that exhibits all the virtues of the often underrated British cinema of the past and very few of the overly theatrical vices. It stands as a splendid corrective to the glib swishings about of some contemporary cinema and only right at the end succumbs a little to gilding the sentimental lily with swelling music and a finale that posits a not totally convincing hope over despair. Centrally, it has a mountain of a performance from Anthony Hopkins as Lewis. But after The Remains Of The Day, this one, which doesn't get an Oscar nomination, goes a step further. Here he has to show the breakdown of repression and inhibition and then the terror of losing the person who has forced unconditional love out of him.

It is extremely doubtful if anyone could have done this better, at least without advertising his skills like Pacino tended to do in Scent Of A Woman, last year's Oscar winner. Hopkins remains watchable throughout, but it is as often for what he doesn't do than for what he does. This is a very difficult trick to accomplish and it is the mark of someone who now knows exactly what screen acting is about less rather than more. And he is aided by a portrait of Joy Gresham from Debra Winger that matches him step by step. The fact that she's got the Oscar nomination and he hasn't is really not important.

What is vital is that the pair play together so well and do not give separately holding performances. To add to all this, the two are sur. was my gallant, seductive, calculatedly awestruck escort. I can only assume that he offered the same opportunity to all the actors. What he offered is what few actors can resist: "Come play with me and create something you've never done before." Every actor will seize the opportunity to transform.

I personally have no professional in: terest in portraying on screen or stage. I find the passage to transformation in one line of dialogue, one gesture, another actor in rehearsal or a pair of shoes offered by a costume designer. The shoes we chose for Betty Weathers were lavender wooden platform mules. I put them on, took few steps and found the movements Screen SHADOWLANDS Dir: Richard Attenborough With Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger 131 minutes, cert Odeon West End and Kensington, UCI Whiteleys THE BALLAD OF LITTLE JO Dir: Maggie Greenwald With Suzy Amis, Ian McKellan, Bo Hopkins 121 minutes, cert 15 Metro BRANDED TO THRILL Season of Seijun Suzuki films ICA Cinema Daily double bills at 6pm and 7.45pm, until March 17 rounded by the kind of cameos which make foreigners boggle at the riches of British character act- ing. Edward Hardwicke, for instance, as Lewis's brother and secretary, is a revelation, at least to anyone who didn't already know how good he is.

While familiar faces like those of John Wood, Michael Denison, Peter Firth and Robert Flemyng never put a foot wrong either. There remains and this has had to be a bit of a list because this is a performance film Joseph Mazzello as Joy's son who, coming straight from Jurassic Park, shows a talent and maturity that few other Hollywood kids could muster. The orchestration of all this is important, and one feared that Attenborough, who wears his heart on his sleeve as a director, might invite our tears rather than wait for them. Perhaps he does at the end. But generally the film is accomplished with bravura rather than bravado.

Like the good actor he is, he seems to know that if you have a cast such as this, you don't mess about over-directing them. But you still have to direct, and this is by some way the most mature and certain of all his films. He would have been an idiot to blow this chance, but that doesn't make him less of a hero for taking it so well. Roger Pratt's cinematography and Stuart Craig's production design aid him superbly. Maggie Greenwald's The Ballad Of Little Jo has been dubbed the first feminist western in some circles, but don't let that put you off.

This is the substantially true story of the youngest daughter of a wellto-do Eastern family who, disowned by her father for getting pregnant, left for the very wild West, where she lived most of a hard life as a man until a Chinese immigrant persuaded her into women's clothes again. The film has two distinct virtues. of a woman who delights in the physical world of men with blackheads to be squeezed. The shoes made me slightly off-balance, so I had to adjust my posture to steady myself. I had to walk with short; determined steps so I wouldn't slip and I had to sway my whole body in a rhythm dictated by whatever ground I was walking on.

These physical restrictions freed my imagination. I was able to go beyond my own behavioural gestures and embrace the character's. I watched Altman encourage this kind of work and enhance it with his directorial tions. What he got in return is a movie full of average, cruel, hilaria ous and gratingly banal people. Just what I think Carver had in mind.

The first is Suzy Amis's brave portrait of Josephine Managhan, which might well have signalled an Oscar nomination. The second is Greenwald's luxuriant portrait of the old West beautiful, lonely and acutely dangerous. The disadvantages are the slow pacing of the film, which makes it seem longer than it is, and a discursive approach that somehow prevents the film becoming the most effective sum of its parts. Ian McKellen, as a brooding mining superintendent, Bo Hopkins as the local ranger who gives Josephine the job of looking after his sheep in the wilderness, and David Chung as the Chinese immigrant worker, also adorn the cast. But it is undoubtedly Amis's film.

She is extraordinary. So too is Seijun Suzuki, the Japanese director of yakusa movies, 14 of whose films are on show in a season at London's ICA cinema from tomorrow, when the director himself will also be discussing. his work. Suzuki who makes his Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger in Attenborough's Shadowlands Hong Kong counterpart John Woo look somewhat conservative will not be everyone's draught of violent poison. But his film-making remains a wonderful subversion of commercial genres, wildly over thetop, stylistically imaginative and totally watchable for its sheer (possibly ironic) audacity.

A Celebratory Evening, including discussion with Seijun Suzuki, is on Friday at 7pm at the ICA, The Mall. London SW1. Details: 071-930 3647. 'Powerful DAILY and TELEGRAPH Moving" IN 1866, A WOMAN HAD TWO SHE COULD BE A WIFE OR SHE COULD BE A WHORE. JOSEPHINE MONAGHAN MADE THE BOLDEST CHOICE OF ALL.

SHE CHOSE TO BE A MAN. 'Provocative, astonishing and haunting" The Ballad of Little Jo 15. A FILM. BY MAGGIE GREENWALD POLYGRAM FILMED ENTERTAINMENT FINELINE FEATURES PRESENT A FRED BERNER JOCO PRODUCTION OF A MAGGIE GREENWALD FILM 'THE BALLAD OF LITTLE 10' SUZY AMI5 8O HOPKINS LAN MCKELLEN DAVID CHUNG RENE AUBERJONOIS AND CARRIE SNODGRESS CASTING BY JUDY CLAMAN JEFFERY PASSERO COSTUME DESIGNER CLAUDIA BROWN MUSIC COMPOSED AND PERFORMED BY DAVID MANSFIELD EDITOR KEITH REAMER PRODUCTION DESIGNER MARK FRIEDBERG PolyGram DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DECLAN QUINN EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS ERA DEUTCHMAN JOHN SLOSS PRODUCED BY FRED BEANER BRENDA GOODMAN Filmed Entertainment WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY MAGGIE GREENWALD RELEASED BY RANK FILM DISTRIBUTORS A STARTS TOMORROW METRO Rupert 071-437 Street 0757 W1 12.30 315 6.00 8.45 ALSO TYNESIDE NEWCASTLE 091 232 8289 (possibly on.