The Page Turner: French chicks get nasty

Not a page turner as such, this delicately slow and quietly nasty fable of jealousy and obsession has a certain French frostiness, with a touch of knowing sub-Hitchcock camp, and is entirely based on the premise that the female is deadler than the male. Lots to relish there, then.

The simple story of two women – one young, one older; one successful, the other whose ambitions have been thwarted; both yearning, in their way, for something that cannot be named – it's a film whose violence is deadly silent (except for one deliciously vicious and utterly warranted physical moment) and whose power depents entirely on the controlled, understated performances of its two female leads. For any woman who has been jealous, competitive, dependent, spiteful, it will ring a bell. Whether it's a chick flick – that is, whether it speaks more to women than men, by accident or design –is debatable.

It's nothing if not subtle. Perhaps too subtle. Give me Whatever Happened to Baby Jane – another classic of female jealousy and sado-masochism – any day.

Notting Hill: Just say no

I didn't waste space in my book writing about chick flick turkeys. It was far more gratifying to spend time on all the great movies out there. There's enough critical snobbery about the genre as it is, and I was more interested in celebrating than sneering.

I did permit myself just one short rant, however, on the subject of what I believe to be the most over-rated chick flick ever. Written more out of exasperation than anything else (I expected so much more from the people who gave us Four Weddings and Bridget Jones – and there are *four* Julia Roberts movies in my top fifty), this is what I said...

Five years after the phenomenal success of Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994), Working Title came up with this cynical return to formula. Scripted by Richard Curtis, who knows a thing or two about people-pleasing, Notting Hill should, by rights, be far funnier, fresher and more romantic than it is. Hugh Grant, who proved in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) and About A Boy (2002) – both of which also came from the Working Title stable – that he could do so much better, bumbles and bores as William, a book shop owner. The usually effervescent Julia Roberts, meanwhile, here all lank straightened hair and sulkily jutting jaw, gracelessly plays “the most famous film starin the world” as if she’s having a really, really bad day.

And as for her big line, the one that is supposedly set to get us all weeping – “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her” – words simply fail. Girl? Boy? The two of them have as much chemistry as a couple of dead fish.

Bella (Gina McKee), the token wheelchair-user – who is also infertile (the revelation of which is passed over and forgotten in seconds) – and Honey (Emma Chambers), Will’s “kooky” sister, are woefully underwritten, while Rhys Ifans provides unbelievably annoying support as Spike, Will’s supposedly hilarious friend. All in all, Notting Hill is a sad waste of talent, money and time.