A life among the ruins

Ziad Doueiri's West Beirut does not shirk the horrors of such a war. There is a chilling moment when a car suddenly explodes in a peaceful city street which brings home the random nature of bombing and artillery barrages with devastating impact. But the film, set in 1975, the year the

14-year-long civil war which was to tear Lebanon apart began, is not so much about the war itself as a memoir of what it was like to be young then. It was, at first at least, great fun.

Autobiographical in large part, it follows the adventures of two teenage Moslem boys, Tarek (played by Rami Doueiri, the director's brother), a teenager with attitude, and his more streetwise friend, Omar (Mohamad Chamas), who roam the streets of the city with a Christian girlfriend in tow, May (Rola Al Amin). The religious divisions of the war mean nothing to them. What war has meant is the end of school, a glorious freedom from the tyranny of classroom, and the prissy French schoolmarm to be exploited to the full by making films on the Super 8 camera Tarek owns. The city has been split into a Christian-controlled east, and a west run by the new Moslem militias where they live.

The store, which provides the films for the camera, is suddenly in a no-go area in East Beirut, but for these kids there is no such thing as a no-go area. Teenage fools rush in where adult angels fear to tread. They are running out of film. Getting a new film is the most important thing in their lives

As the three go about their self-centred ways, life around them falls ever more into chaos, buildings get damaged, people die, passengers on a bus are massacred, shortages start to occur in the shops, the militia bully the civilians, and neighbours fall out over trivial things which have suddenly assumed life-shattering importance.

Tarek's mother (Carmen Lebbos) wants to leave, his father (Joseph Bou Nassar) is intent on staying, pointing out the kind of less-than-welcoming reception that will await them in Britain or the United States. Better the devil we know, he argues.

There is a splendidly bizarre sequence when Tarek, one of nature's rebels, a pig-headed youth who can be irritatingly foolish, ends up hiding in a car which is driven out of West Beirut. He emerges in any sex-mad teenager's dream world, a brothel in no-man's land run by a splendidly obese, worldly-wise madame - her establishment is no respecter of factions - played magnificently by Leila Karam. The new arrival gets his eyes opened to say the least, although his safe conduct flag - a brassiere waved in the air - is an invention, albeit a plausible one, by the director, and the establishment rather more salubrious than the one in real life. The end of this rites of passage story set against a movingly-depicted world in crisis suggests that one of Tarek's parents does not survive,

but like pretty well everything else

in the film, this is not spelt out,

merely implied.

Set in Provence in the 1920s, Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources are arguably director Claude Berri's finest hour. In the first, hunchback tax collector Jean Cadoret (Gerard Depardieu) moves to Provence to take over the farm he has inherited, only to discover that his neighbour, the cunning Soubeyran, played by Yves Montand with magisterial authority, and his dim-witted nephew, Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil giving a masterly display of inbred rustic idiocy), have stopped it up. They want Jean to go bankrupt, after which they will acquire his land. But Jean is resourceful and brave, even if everything seems to conspire against him.

The film is ravishing to look at, the passage of the seasons beautifully shown, but the harsh reality behind that beauty, the unrelenting toil demanded of those who farm, is never shirked. In the sequel, set 10 years after Jean's death, his daughter, Manon (Emmanuelle Beart), carries on the feud, spurning the advances of her unwanted admirer, Ugolin. Although less satisfying than the first film, Beart's beauty makes up for the loss of Depardieu, in his prime when he made Jean de Florette, and Montand in one of his last roles. Auteuil remains to watch and marvel at. In this summer of re-releases, these two relatively recent films are not to be missed.

Nobody makes a bad film on purpose, unless, as with the play, Springtime for Hitler in The Producers, there are financial advantages. That Mick Davis has made one of the worst films in a long time is no reason for crowing, reason for commiseration. As a one-page treatment, The Match must have seemed a great idea, a hark back to the days of Ealing, The Maggie and Whisky Galore. It is about two pubs in a small village, each with a football team. They play an annual match and, if after a hundred years one of the pubs has lost every game, it will be surrendered to the rival. During the hundred years, one of the pubs has been turned into a bistro run by a frenetic chap called Gorgeous Gus - no, not Lord MacDonald, would that it were. He is played by Richard E Grant as if on heat, with a Scots accent which his voice coach wife should have done something about. The other, Benny's - the one the villagers,

played by the usual Scottish thespian suspects patronise - is a howff run by a sad old drunk played by Ian Holm. Can the laybouts in Benny's team win, or will the waiters at l'Bistro, a collection of macho thugs, win yet again? Does anybody in the audience care?

The problem is not Davis's direction, which is workmanlike enough. It is his script. The services of a good script doctor who could have invested some rationale into it might have helped and, given that Allan Scott is one of the producers, it is surprising one was not available. The hero, Wullie Smith, played by Max Beesley, a Ewan McGregor lookalike with all the charm of a carbon copy three times removed, is the local milkman. His employer, dairy farmer Bill Bailey (James Cosmo) is in love with his cow, Brigitte, and divorced from the owner of the local shop (Isla Blair), which is infested with mice. Their daughter, Rosemary (Laura Fraser, looking dangerously anorexic) is in love with Wullie, but plans to leave for London. Wullie nurses a secret pain and wears a calliper, although he no longer needs it. When a small boy climbing the local crag with Rosemary and his brother, his grip slipped

and his brother plunged to his death.

Meanwhile, Bill Patterson as the bread delivery man goes round in his van getting his assistant, Iain Robertson, to write down scandalous notes about the bourgeoisie. Why? Why do they share a bedroom? Why is Tom Sizemore hanging out in a Nissan hut as a drunk GI? Why does he suddenly fancy Ms Blair, the village being so small they must have known each other for years? What is the truth about the cow? What is the point about the mice? Why does the bread van break down? Why does Alan Shearer have a walk- on? Why does Sam Fox play the busy barmaid and only open her mouth once? Why does Russell Barr, playing someone called Nancy No Pants, get dressed up like Carmen Miranda? Why is Neil Morrissey sitting in Benny's drinking claret and telling everyone to ''Piss off.'' Why did I stay to the end?

Profesional ethics, actually, because there was nothing that happened one could not have predicted. The losers win, the boy gets the girl, and Richard E gets his comeuppance. The nadir is the scene in which he pulls down the posters for Benny's benefit night to raise cash for strips. One has been put up with super glue and his palms stick to the wall, whereupon his trousers fall down about his ankles, and a passing Westie pees on his socks. Davis has assembled some good actors - but getting good actors is one thing, getting them to give good performances quite another. Mind you, I am still wondering about Brigitte.

The photography by Witold Stok makes the most of some delightful scenery, but the score by Harry Gregson-Williams is banal and the flute should be banned for ever from being used in films about Celtic communities. In a month during which some good Scottish films are about to surface this one sticks out like a sore thumb. It is not beyond salvaging, but clearly nobody involved recognised that they had a load of second-hand drivel on their hands.

One takes no pleasure in saying any of this. An opportunity to make something genuinely charming has been wantonly missed. One need only look at Waking Ned to see that the goal of the makers can be achieved - but only with a decent script, good actors acting well, nice scenery, and competent direction. The Match has the last two, none of the rest.

Doug's 1st Movie is based on a popular cartoon show on US children's television, seen here only on the Disney Channel, which must mean that the characters are unfamiliar to pretty well everybody. It is about a little boy, Doug Funnie and his best friend Skeeter, who has a blue face, who live in the town of Bluffington. They find a loveable monster in Lucky Duck Lake, which has been polluted by the local big businessman, Bill Bluff, who sets about trying to conceal what he is doing. The environmental message is sound, but the drawing is dire. Let us hope it is Doug's last movie.

West Beirut (15)

105 mins. Directed by Ziad Doueiri

l Filmhouse from tomorrow, GFT from August 20

Jean de Florette (PG) 120mins

Manon des Sources (PG)

121 mins

Directed by Claude Berri.

l Filmhouse

The Match (15)

96 mins. Directed by Mick Davis

Doug's 1st Movie (U)

77 mins. Directed by Maurice Joyce

l On general release

A guide to films screened in Scotland in the coming week, plus the one it's worth staying in for

Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who

Shagged Me (12) HHH

A vulgar romp through the mildly blue, occasionally scatological, seaside postcard world - Donald McGill would feel at home - in which Mike Myers sends up the Bond films and their imitators with less subtlety than a Carry On. The jokes are, however, funny, and Myers' outrageous Fat Scots Bastard makes Rab C Nesbitt look like a jessie. To coin a phrase: Yeugh, baby! Yeugh!

It All Starts Today (12) HHHH

One of Bertrand Tavernier's best films, this story about a dedicated but pig-headed teacher, Philippe Torreton, in a primary school in a depressed area of Northern France, battling with bureaucracy while trying to give his pupils an escape from their underprivileged home lives, will strike home here, too. Tony should take the video on holiday for when the paperbacks and sundried tomatoes pall.

Koyaanisqatsi (U) HHHH

The title is an ancient Hopi Indian word meaning ''life out of balance''. Geoffrey Reggio's look at our relationship with the environment starts off seeming awfully pretentious, but once we get into the world of the cities, it exerts a mind-blowing power as the stop motion photography puts us in our place. The Philip Glass score is a knockout.

Star Wars, Episode 1 (U) HH

The two stars are for the special effects. Had the plot been any good and the actors, with the honourable exception of Liam Neeson as the senior Jedi Knight, managed to rise above the blue screen miracles behind them, it would have deserved more. Lucas is a pedestrian director, the dialogue risible, and the saga a ragbag of bits of legends of the world. Under 12s will enjoy it, but for those older, let me say it again. May the Force be with you. It might keep you awake.

And the one to watch on the box

Tin Cup,

BBC1, 9.30pm, Sunday

Given Carnoustie, which almost managed to make golf sexy, and certainly made it thrilling, here for your edification is one of the few really good films about golf and golfers - or men in checks. The other is Caddyshack, the 1980 comedy, starring Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray, memorable for the marauding fairway gopher and the scene in which the distinguished character actor, Henry Wilcoxon, playing a clergyman who hits a hole-in- one during a thunderstorm. He thanks God, raises his club in the air and is struck dead by a bolt of lightning while a crescendo from The Ten Commandments - Wilcoxon played Pharoah's general - blares on the soundtrack.

The worst film about golf was The Accidental Golfer, a 1991 Swedish production filmed in the Borders about some Swedes, here to play the game, who meet Jimmy Logan. Truly awful, but one of Scottish Screen Location's triumphs - the makers spent lots of money - it proved the biggest hit of the season in Sweden, but did not get released anywhere else.

Tin Cup, made in 1996, stars Kevin Costner as Roy McAvoy, an ornery golf pro reduced to giving lessons in a small Texas town. When big-time player David Simms (Don Johnson) turns up, Roy is forced to be his caddy. Dr Molly Griswold (Rene Russo), the local shrink, and David's girlfriend, asks Roy for golf lessons and a smitten Roy decides to win her by qualifying for the US Open. Mrs Simpson summed up the secret of Kevin's appeal perfectly when she said of Pal Joey: ''I worship the trousers that cling to him.''