The American

This afternoon I tried to watch a French film that had been subtitled into English in Hong Kong. You could detect this by every other sentence ending with the mysterious word 'ah'. No, really ah.

Since it also had a Russian soundtrack, it was basically unwatchable as the director had intended (though it looked beautiful ah) so I watched The American instead. Ah.

Last week I read the book, which I liked, although I felt the ending was a sneaky one to spring on the reader, and the whole thing was very much a psychological study that promised to be difficult to bring to the screen.

I think Anton Corbjin did well with this, although it does make for a slow moving 105 minutes: George Clooney walks around. George Clooney drinks an espresso. George Clooney visits the post office. George Clooney drinks another espresso.

(We all knew George enjoys coffee already, via his adverts endorsing Nespresso machines, so that wasn't very educational.)

So it's nice to look at (very good use is made of the stunning landscapes and there's a beautiful aerial shot of a car driving down a set of hairpins, or what looks to be a cobbled pavement that alters perspective and is revealed to be the roofs of the town) but nothing. Much. Happens.

Having read the book I was prepared for this, but my fiancee wasn't, so while I saw some significance to George trudging around the alleyways of the ancient Italian hilltown, to her it was just Mr Clooney having a bit of a walk. Not necessarily a bad thing for a film to go at its own pace, but even at the end, with the few moments of excitement that occur, you're left feeling that there was something missing out.

I didn't particularly like the adjustments made to the plot, but I accept without most of them, the narrative would be fairly incomprehensible if you weren't familiar with the book, and it is only 'based on', rather than an adaptation of, A Very Private Gentleman. But there are a few things that I had problems with.

It's much less clear why he's Signor Farfalle than in the book; the ending seems a little more Hollywood than I expected, and there's one shot which seems like a trick being played on the audience, near the end when George Clooney is sitting in the truck stop - do we see something that happened, or just what he imagines the woman is doing?

Overall it is a fine way to while away the afternoon. It never looks anything less than wonderful; there's just the sense that too much is left unsaid; a whole argument between George's character and Clara is completely omitted, which felt more like injudicious editting than leaving something to our imaginations. But still, the whole thing is pretty faithful to the original text. Ah.