BRIAN FITZGERALD (Jason Patric) and his wife Sara (Cameron Diaz) are blissfully happy with their son Jesse and two-year-old daughter, Kate.
Their lives change forever when they discover Kate has leukaemia, and the couple make a controversial decision to conceive another child – a genetic match – to save her life. Sara gives up her job as an attorney to preside over the family, and she watches in awe as youngest child Anna (Abigail Breslin) forms a close bond with Kate.
Visits to hospital become a normal part of childhood until Anna reaches 11 and announces she no longer wants to be a guinea pig. She hires lawyer Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin) to plead her case and potentially tear the entire family apart.
My Sister’s Keeper is a moral dilemma for the modern age. Adapted from Jodi Picoult’s heartbreaking best-seller, Nick Cassavetes’s film is an emotionally wrought and morally complex story of one family’s extraordinary fight to save their own flesh and blood.
The complex web of relations is handled sensitively. Voiceovers give an insight to the characters’ thoughts, but occasionally these sequences badly disrupt the flow of the narrative. Diaz delivers a competent performance but Oscar nominee Breslin once again steals the show, narrating both the opening and closing scenes.
Mamma Mia! (two-disc Ultimate Party Edition)
A FILM so bad I almost vomited on watching it at the cinema, it promptly became the UK’s biggest-selling DVD ever. This two-disc edition with bundles of extras will no doubt fill many a Christmas stocking.
Coco Before Chanel (15)
THE young Gabrielle Chanel (aka Coco) and her sister are abandoned by their father at a convent orphanage. Fast-forwarding a few years, Gabrielle (Audrey Tautou) and Adrienne (Marie Gillain) earn a meagre living as cabaret performers and as seamstresses at the back of a tailor’s shop.
Gabrielle catches the eye of wealthy Etienne Balsan who installs her as his plaything at a rural retreat, where she befriends celebrated actress Emilienne. The older woman is enamoured with the newcomer’s unusual fashion sense. Swimming against the tide of extravagance, Gabrielle dresses in male attire similar to her lover, Englishman Arthur Capel, who intends to spirit her away.
But fate has other plans. Coco Before Chanel is a welcome dose of Gallic chic chronicling the rise to fame of one of couture’s most revered icons. Anne Fontaine’s biopic is impeccably coiffured and tailored, employing authentic models and jewellery from the Chanel Conservatory, augmented by costumes which mimic the cuts of the originals. The film takes a few liberties, but remains largely true to fact.
