At The Movies: Living is life-affirming, new Asterix & Obelix flick has few bright spots

Living (PG13)

102 minutes, opens on Thursday exclusively at The Projector

4 stars

The story: A civil servant in 1953 London learns he has terminal cancer. Bill Nighy earned an Academy Award nomination for his quietly devastating turn as a drab, lonely widower reckoning with his impermanence.

If anyone is going to reinterpret Japanese master Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 classic Ikiru, which was itself inspired by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella The Death Of Ivan Ilyich, it may as well be a Nobel Laureate no less than British-Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro.

Living was, unsurprisingly, Oscar-nominated for his adapted screenplay, along with Nighy for Best Actor.

Director Oliver Hermanus neatly transposes the bureaucracy and cultural reticence of 1950s Japan to post-war England, where Nighy’s Mr Williams apathetically shuffles documents at his desk every day as the head of London County Council’s Public Works Department.

Shrivelled and solemn in his funereal suit and bowler hat, Williams is a dead man walking long before his grim diagnosis. He now wants to “live a little” – but does not know how.

He tries a boozy night out with a local bohemian (Tom Burke). But it is the spirited youth of a junior female employee, wonderfully played by Aimee Lou Wood (Sex Education, 2019 to present), that becomes his awakening – so what if their blossoming friendship attracts gossip?

Williams resolves to spend the few months he has left redeveloping an abandoned bomb site into a children’s playground, and Nighy remains a masterclass in understatement as his character, with sudden vigour, badgers the city authorities to see the construction through.

The poignancy lies in the modesty of the project.

What makes life worthwhile? Williams finds his purpose in the face of death, and his graceful and moving rebirth is a reminder to live while alive.

Hot take: The story of a dying man is elegantly transformed into a life-affirming parable both optimistic and joyful.

Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom (PG)

111 minutes, opens on Thursday

2 stars

The story: The year is 50BC. Gaul’s indomitable pair of title warriors come to the aid of a Chinese princess (Julie Chen), journeying from their village to save the Middle Kingdom from a coup even as Julius Caesar (Vincent Cassel) leads his Roman army east in his imperialist campaign.

The Asterix series of Franco-Belgian comics, created in 1959 by Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, endures as a French cinema blockbuster franchise.

Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom is the first of the five live-action adventure comedy movies without French star Gerard Depardieu in the role of Obelix.

Gilles Lellouche is the new Obelix and he looks befuddled. How is it that his best friend Asterix (Guillaume Canet), he must be wondering, is now a vegan fretting over the ingredients in their magic potion?

Canet doubles as director and wrote the original story, the first of the films to not be based on any of the 39 published volumes, and he has made the endearing heroes churlish and dumb with his wrong-headed idea to modernise them. It is an ugly sight, watching Asterix and Obelix row.

They also pine for unrequited loves: Asterix for the princess and Obelix for her bodyguard Kah Ra Tay (read: karate), played by Leanna Chea.

The duo’s latest foreign crusade is a €65 million (S$94.7 million) folly that sidelines the bromance for bad puns and slapstick, anachronisms such as a Citroen 2CV chariot, a bloated cast that includes Swedish footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and special effects, especially in the epic final battle against the Romans.

Cassel is at least mightily droll as pompous Caesar, hamming it up with Marion Cotillard’s Queen Cleopatra, who breaks his heart by leaving him for gym teacher Tabascos (Florent Manaudou).

Hot take: There are few bright spots in this Gaul-ling retelling of a beloved comic book.