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  Film: Nell Schofield previews Gone, Baby, Gone and Paris April 20, 2008 Reporter :Nell Schofield  Watch the videoFilm: Nell Schofield previews Gone, Baby, Gone and Paris It's a startling fact that 2,000 children are reported missing in America each day. 99% of those kids are found – some of them having been sexually abused - but that still leaves around 10,000 cases unsolved each year. The issue of child abduction and indeed how parents raise their offspring in the first place is the subject of a new film by actor turned director Ben Affleck. It stars his brother Casey and is set in their hometown of Boston. Ben Affleck couldn’t have chosen a more emotionally complex story for his directorial debut than Gone Baby Gone. Based on the fourth in a series of crime novels by fellow Boston boy Dennis Lehane, it centres on a relatively inexperienced couple of private investigators who are hired by a woman to help find her missing niece. Police from the Crimes Against Children Unit are already on the case but the young pair have the advantage of connections on the street and as they delve deeper into the mystery these prove to be increasingly valuable. Affleck's brother Casey stars as Patrick Kenzie, the PI who's lived his life on the block where the kid went missing and even went to school with the abducted girl's mother. Helene is a trashy kind of woman variously described as "an abomination", "arsenic" and worse. And Amy Ryan is a stand-out in the role. It earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress but even before that, she had everyone on location convinced that she was the real deal. Ed Harris is another force to be reckoned with as Remy, the hard nosed cop assigned to assist Kenzie and his partner Angie, played by Michelle Monaghan. Harris's wife Amy Madigan also features as the missing girl's aunt who can't have children of her own and seems to care a whole lot more about her niece than her sister does. And then there's Morgan Freeman as police captain Jack Doyle, a man with a surprising amount of vested interest in this particular case. Author Denis Lehane, who also wrote the novel that formed the basis of Clint Eastwood's film Mystic River, again dealing with the death of an innocent. There's a hell of a lot at stake in Gone Baby Gone. What starts out as a straight forward investigation gets more and more murky as the characters wade through the thick grey areas between right and wrong, ending up in a very uncomfortable place that leaves you questioning your own attitudes to these same moral dilemmas. What emerges is a sense of how precious life is and how we all have a responsibility to nurture it. It's a theme that's also explored in a new French film about a young man facing death and the effect that has on everyone around him, including his recently separated sister. Juliette Binoche plays Elise, a social worker whose life takes on a new dimension when viewed through the prism of her brother’s impending death. Even going to the markets becomes an invigorating experience bursting with possibilities. For another set of siblings on the other side of town, it's the death of their father that causes them to look at life anew. Paris is a kaliedescopic portrait of the Eternal City and its many varied inhabitants by writer/director Cedric Klapisch who brought us that wonderful film The Spanish Apartment and its sequel Russian Dolls. It stars Romain Duris, who played the central character in those two previous films, Fabrice Luchini as the historian in the midst of an existential crisis and a whole host of other interesting actors. If you can't get to Paris yourself, this film is probably the next best thing. And it's message is clear: seize the day while you can. |
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