I joined the Cheltenham Film Society a couple of weeks back. I went along with some friends of mine and was surprised to meet a few other people I knew there, includ­ing my aunt and uncle Helen and Stephen. Its a small world isn’t it?

Anyway, tonight’s film was House of Sand and Fog, starring Jennifer Connelly (who always surprises me by actually being a good actress) and Ben Kingsley.

It was very clever, in that through­out the film, you never quite decide where your sympath­ies lie. A large part of me wanted Behrani [Kingsley] and his family to win out, yet I didn’t want Kathy [Connelly] to lose out at all (even if she did bring her downfall upon herself somewhat). The only person that you really end up dislik­ing is Lester [Ron Eldard], who starts out as the friendly police­man but ends up being a bit of a psycho nut job.

Its a fantastic film, but its really not the most light-hearted in the world. In fact it verges on being downright depress­ing. I got to the end and thought “What the hell is she going to do with her life now?”

Myself and Ben [not Kingsley] were discuss­ing it on the way home — is it even possible to make a really good happy film? Its just that the really good films always seem to be gritty, intense psycho­lo­gical dramas (or that seems to be the way at this film society). Is it even possible to portray shiny happy intense gritty realism?