This is another film stultified by self-conscious direction and faddish photography. I have had enough of blurry, shaky, false colour cinematography for the rest of my life. Watch a Clint Eastwood directed film and see story-telling, in-focus, at its best. See also The King's Speech for developing characters. A Few Days in September had a good cast with wonderful actors like Binoche and Tuturro, although Binoche was not capitalised. Unlike other reviewers, I found the young people's discourse right on the mark for generation Y. Tuturro's psycho character might be an accurate parallel for what the American state thought was acceptable at the time of the story. Who knows, American international behaviour has been much more bizarre that Tuturro's character at times. Maybe too, a Venetian contact provided the large case and heavy calibre rifle locally rather than has been suggested that it was taken through customs. Despite its serious flaws, I enjoyed the story, and just seeing Binoche a lot in close up, such a wonderful face to photograph. To the director, don't forget that someone has to watch the film and does not need to get irritated by art for art's sake, especially when it "ain't Picasso". The version I saw did not have sub-titles and this hurt the film for me because my other languages are not European or Arabic. I look forward to more of Binoche and Tuturro but not blurred vision. It was not, as Binboche suggested, another way of looking at things.

The only thing remotely exciting in the first half of this movie was if and when the sexual tension between Irène (Juliette Binoche) and David (Tom Riley) would end in a tryst between the sheets before one or both of them were killed by William Pound (John Turturro), a poetry spouting psycho.But then, David's half-sister Orlando (Sara Forestier) appears to hate him and all Americans so much that they will end up together. Who knows? There sure isn't anything else going on as we wait to see if Elliott (Nick Nolte) knows about 9/11.Quelle surprise! The winner is..., and it only took 85 minutes of the movie to get there! The conversations between Irène, Orlando and David kept the movie interesting until the predictable end.

Reviewers talk quirky, but offering a different view of an event in September 2001 has to take a roundabout journey to give space for us to rethink events we regard as given. This is not about what the old generation can teach the new - it's about the shifting power balance in the world, a confidence that is about to slip like a picture gone out of focus, a few days before September 11. Through a glass darkly, we feel the imminent change about to happen, the jockeying for position between old, new and confused, but the viewers' foreknowledge gives the plot line extra significance and meaning that would make it otherwise a spy chase thriller and not much more. How often do you see on modern films the kinds of discussions that are in this film? A European perspective, a new kind of world, where even the chauvinist French drive German cars,and the American Empire is given twenty years to live. More films need to be made that explore the truth, separate the paranoid from the conspiratorial, the kooky from the careful look. This films does the latter - thanks to masterful casting and,ahem,unorthodox execution. Binoche has given a sophisticated performance.

Santiago Amigorena co-wrote one of my favorite French movies of the last few years, Marion Vernoux' Rien a faire, so I checked out Quelque Jours en settembre with high hopes. Whilst it would be untrue to say those hopes were dashed this IS a film that in refusing classification will alienate as many, if not more, than it intrigues. Any movie that boasts John Turturro as a hit man named William Pound - or indeed as a hit man at all - has to be intriguing to say the least but almost as if that were not enough for Amigorena he embellishes the character by having him spout poetry in addition to being in analysis via cellphone. The film veers wildly and erratically between black comedy, thriller, incest, world politics and travelogue and to expand on just one of those labels it's a thriller shot at the pace of a Merchant/Ivory period piece. The out-of-focus sequences favored by Amigorena break the rules because they are NOT always from the point of view of Juliette Binoche - who periodically removes her eyeglasses to justify the effect but against this the camera-work plays down the two principal locations, Paris and Venice, and is refreshingly free of 'touristy' angles. It was, of course, only a matter of time before someone got around to speculating on the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 and this is, I suppose, as relevant as any but will inevitably seem like a let-down to the bubble-gum set should they wander in by mistake. For the rest of us it's highly watchable on several levels which is more than sufficient.