THE ROOM NEXT DOOR** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 11

The anticipation of iconic writer-director Almodovar's first ever English language film starring two exceptional talented actresses in Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore was high. I am sad to report that while the film is handsomely produced and surface-glossy, it lacks any real depth. And without any crunchiness in the writing the actresses have little to do but be .... nice.  The result is a rather vanilla, unbrave film that skirts over the profound issue that it is tackling.

The film is based on a Spanish book and I wonder if the source material has more conflict within it.  In Almodovar's version all the big questions have been decided and all debate is shut down.  Tilda Swinton plays a war correspondent called Martha who has incurable cancer and decides to commit suicide.  She procures a tablet on the dark web and asks her friend Ingrid (Julianne Moore) to be in the room next door when she dies. That's it. That's the plot. (Although it's padded out with unnecessary flashbacks to her ex-partner's death). 

The decision has been made and Martha will not allow Ingrid to try and persuade her out of it.  And we are not going to see any of the unpleasantness and pain of actually killing yourself in this way. Don't get me wrong - I am in favour of euthanasia - but this film situates it in a beautifully designed house with a beautiful woman in a beautiful outfit lying on a deckchair in a beautiful garden with elegant pink snow failing. I find that rather disingenuous.

The real problem with this highly stylised depiction of the friendship and the decision is that there is no conflict and no depth to the conversations between the two friends, other than maybe a discussion about career vs motherhood that never really convinced me. Compare and contrast with Swinton's own discourse on this subject in WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN.  People have praised the performance - heck this film won the Golden Lion at Venice - but I really struggled to see what the fuss about.

I would suggest that if you are actually interested in this topic that you watch documentarian Ondi Timoner's desperately moving film LAST FLIGHT HOME.

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR has a running time of 110 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and London 2024. It goes on release in the UK on October 25th and in the USA on December 20th.

NICKEL BOYS*** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 11

It is hard to believe that NICKEL BOYS is  the debut feature film from director RaMell Ross given its technical audacity and accomplishment. That Ross' major technical choice did not work for me is a shame but does not detract from the fact that we are witnessing a powerful and impressive new directorial voice. I understood the reasoning behind his decision and admire its bravery.  I will watch whatever he does next with interest.

The film is based on a deceptively short but searing novel by Colson Whitehead.  I read it on a flight from Munich to London and was deeply affected by it. It tells the fictionalised story of a brutal reform school in Florida where the black boys inside are abused, exploited and many of the murdered.  We see its horrors through the eyes of Elwood, an intelligent young man set for higher education whose path is diverted by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He scrupulously documents the abuses at the school and hopes to expose them, much to the horror of his best friend Turner, who is far more cynical and world-weary.  Decades later, the murders at the school are exposed and Elwood can finally give his testimony.

RaMell Ross begins his film with half an hour of context that shows the world in which the Nickel Academy exists.  Elwood is being raised by his beloved Nana (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in the standout performance of the film).  He benefits from a kind and politically active teacher who encourages him to study. Ross chooses to tell the story by showing Elwood point of view.  As a result, his face is withheld for quite some time.  In a bravura shot, we see Elwood reflected in the back and forth of his Nana's iron.  

We then transfer to the Academy, run by the corrupt Spencer (Hamish Linklater - THE BIG SHORT) and our POVs increase to include that of Elwood's friend Turner. So at least we can see the boys in each other's points of view. I understand why RaMell Ross chooses the immediacy of this style, especially considering the plot reveal in the contemporary timeline. But it distanced me from the subject matter and the characters. It brought me out of the film rather than immersing me in it.  I also think that it maybe wasn't executed as well as it could have been done, balancing the hand-held constant motion with the needs of the viewer. I felt like I had motion sickness at the end of the film.

That said, I still think this is a film to be admired. Unfortunately the POV style gives the actors little to do, but Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor gives a deeply affecting performance.  The sound design and score are superb. And the final epilogue that gives us a montage of artefacts and revelations is stunning.  When the film ended and the credits rolled you could feel the shock and silence of the audience as they struggled to digest what they had witnessed. It was powerful stuff.

NICKEL BOYS has a running time of 140 minutes and is rated PG-13. It played Telluride and London 2024. It goes on limited release in New York on Dec 13th and in LA on Dec 20th and in the UK on January 3rd 2025.

MARIA***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 10

Pablo Larrain's MARIA is a stunning film about iconic opera singer Maria Callas featuring a central performance by Angelina Jolie of such fragility and bravery that it destroyed me. It's a cinematic achievement at least on par with Larrain's Jackie Kennedy biopic, and arguably surpasses it. Every aspect is perfection.

The film focuses on the final week of Callas' life, sequestered in a grand Parisian apartment with her faithful housekeeper and butler (Alba Rohrwacher - HUNGRY HEARTS and Pierfrancesco Favino - WORLD WAR Z). Callas is dying of liver failure, ligament failure and is addicted to a variety of drugs.  Illness, dramatic weight loss, over-singing in her youth - whatever the reason - her voice has also failed her.  Publicly she claims that she will never perform again, but she is secretly rehearsing, with pitiful results. Added to the loss of her voice, we also know that she is suffering from heartbreak. Her big sister (Valerie Golina - PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE - in a deeply moving cameo) tells Maria to look forward but this entire film is of a woman trapped in her past.  Her mother pimped her out as a singer in Nazi occupied Athens and maybe more. Her first husband robbed her blind (though this is not shown here).  Her beloved Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer - The Turkish Detective) stopped her from singing, maybe made her have a forced abortion, and then left her for Jackie Kennedy.  Only her paid employees show her any love or concern for her health.

Robbed of love and health and finally her voice, Maria retreats into a drug-induced journey through her past.  Her drug Mandrax is personified by Kodi Smit-McPhee (Disclaimer) as a young interviewer. As befits a woman who has been a public persona her entire life, Maria chooses what to withhold, and what narrative to spin. She is deliberately enigmatic and mysterious. But this is a kind of defence mechanism and an act of desperation, and her spin is unsuccessful, not least in the way she discusses her maybe pregnancy.

Angelina Jolie is magnificent and fearless in this role.  Her final aria sung in a nightdress to an empty apartment (and a crowd outside, unknown to her) had me in tears. We believe in every ounce of lifelong heartbreak.  She is a diva and she is desperate. She is vulnerable and commanding all at once. Kudos to the technical team who found a way to blend Jolie's own singing with Callas' iconic recordings, particularly in her final week, where her voice is unsteady and uneven. I always believed that Angelina was singing, and this is no mean feat. We see her lips and vocal chords and body tremble and convey emotion.  It absolutely makes the film credible and moving.

Kudos also to cinematographer Ed Lachman (CAROL) for so beautifully capturing sunlit 1970s Paris, but also the crisp black and white flashbacks to Callas at her peak, and the grainy dreamed interviews with Mandrax.  This is a film whose technical brilliance is completely at the service of the narrative. And what a narrative.  Steven Knight - of Peaky Blinders fame - creates a script that in a short time gives us a lifetime of pain and hurt. And that uses music, always Callas' own music - to express her feelings and propel the narrative. For those of us who know these aria by heart, the lyrics, the knowledge of Callas' life, and Jolie's performance, blend into something transcendent.  

My only question is whether the film will work as well for those not familiar with Callas' work, given Pablo Larrain's refusal to give subtitles and translations of the opera. He explained before the screening that he tried to avoid surtitles when watching opera as a child and wanted to relate purely to the performance. I kind of agree, but feel this may be a barrier to some audience members.

MARIA has a running time of 124 minutes and is rated R. It played Venice and London 2024. It will have a limited theatrical release on November 27th and then will be released on Netflix on December 11th.

QUEER** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 10

This is a long film for little plot or interiority.  It proceeds as follows:  ageing disheveled junkie called Lee hooks up with younger man called Eugene who may or may not actually be queer in 1950s Mexico.  They travel to a tropical jungle to take ayahuasca, have a trippy experience, then part. Decades later the older guy is apparently still in love with the boy. And even this overdoes the level of narrative propulsion which is basically nil. I never felt as though I had a handle on whether Lee was actually in love or in lust until the final five minutes of the film. I didn't feel invested in the relationship or the intricacies of whether Lee was a trick or a love interest for Eugene.  There's a limit to how far you can watch Daniel Craig drink tequila in a linen suit.

Still, there are a few redeeming features to this film.  The needle drops featuring Nirvana and Prince are anachronistic but effective.  There's a wonderfully unexpected and bonkers and against type cameo from Lesley Manville (Disclaimer).  Director Luca Guadagnino and his leads, Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey, are admirably brave in depicting gay sex. And as I said before, the final five minutes were genuinely moving. But boy there was a lot of self-indulgent, handsomely produced, but utterly dull chaff to wade through to get to the grain.

QUEER has a running time of 135 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and London 2024. It goes on release in the USA on November 27th and in the UK on December 13th.

WE LIVE IN TIME* - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 10

WE LIVE IN TIME is a sub-Richard Curtis attempt at a tragicomic romance from director John Crowley (BROOKLYN) and writer Nick Payne (A SENSE OF AN ENDING). The film is so mannered and meet-cute and interior designed to within an inch of its life that I was utterly alienated from it. Its utter lack of authenticity robbed me of emotional engagement with what should’ve been a deeply emotional film.

Andrew Garfield (THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE) gurns his way through the film as the nerdy and conventional Tobias (oh yes!) who is run over by the 2024 version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl played by Florence Pugh (DUNE: PART TWO).  Pugh’s Almut Bruehl (oh yes!) is a cool, unconventional, highly competitive, bisexual hipster chef. They fall in love, break up over whether to have children, she gets cancer, they have a kid, she gets cancer again, wins a cooking competition and dies.  That’s literally it.  

There’s no emotional growth or even emotional tension beyond a small spat at the start when the man asks the woman if she wants kids.  The excruciatingly embarrassing and improbable meet-cute is trumped by an even more excruciating and improbable birth-cute?  Worst of all, there’s no dramatic tension because the film has a non-linear structure.  

What a waste of a fine actress.

WE LIVE IN TIME is rated R and has a running time of 107 minutes. It played Toronto and London 2024. It was released in the USA on October 11th and will be released in the UK on Jan 1st 2025.

THE APPRENTICE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 9

Roy Cohn was one of the most toxic and pervasive influences on America in the past century. The irony was that the morally corrupt lawyer was also a closeted gay man, supporting the Reagan administration in its anti-AIDS policies as he himself was dying of AIDS. He is such a notorious and influential figure that he was portrayed by Al Pacino in the HBO adaptation of Angels In America. That was a performance so strong and so well-written that I can quote lines to this day.  But in this new film, Jeremy Strong (Succession) has surpassed it.

Jeremy Strong's Roy Cohn is a despicable man. Racist, homophobic (ironically) and a capitalist red in tooth and claw.  His patriotism lies in an any means necessary preservation of right-wing governance. His legal practice relies on blackmail and intimidation. Strong plays him as a wiry deeply-tanned man of unflinching self-confidence.  But he also plays him as a man who loves and is loyal, and who throws that love and all of its protection on the awkward star-struck suburban hick Donald J Trump.

In this film we see Roy take Trump under his wing, blackmail away his Federal lawsuit on racially discriminatory leasing and achieve a massive City tax abatement for Trump's first large Manhattan development deal. Roy teaches him to always attack, to create his own truth, and to never ever concede defeat. He also teaches him to dress expensively - in those awful boxy dark navy Brioni suits - in order to wash the suburban cheapness off of him. 

Why does he do this? The film implies that maybe there was sexual attraction at first. It's hard to imagine the obese tangerine hairball as attractive but he was young once. But soon the relationship has become far more paternal. Cohn recognise that Fred Trump is a toxic bully - driving one son to alcoholism and the other to a kind of macho posturing as self-protection.  

This makes it all the more heartbreaking when a now superficially successful Trump, at the height of his 80s pomp, turns his back on a now very sick Cohn.  It's testament to Strong's performance that despite the fact that I despise the real life man, I felt desperately sorry for him in his final scene. He looks both proud of his monstrous creation and heartbroken that he has been disavowed. 

And what of Sebastian Stan's young Trump? This is an equally masterful performance. When we first meet him he is gauche and uncertain and obsequious.  By the end of the film he is inflated in ego and stomach alike, impotent thanks to amphetamines, balding and intimidated by his wife. But he has absolutely absorbed Cohn's lessons and become the author of his own mythos. He has adopted the pursed lips and scornful eyes and hand gestures synonymous with the Trump that we know today. And yet Stan never becomes a caricature.  

As Cohn is buried, the one-way love story of Roy for Donald is over, and the one-way love story of Trump for Trump has begun. He is having the fat sucked out his body - a symbol if ever there was one of excessive bile and obscene gorging on the carcass of America. 

Kudos to director Ali Abbasi (HOLY SPIDER) and writer Gabriel Sherman (INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE) for having the guts to tackle this project, even at the risk of making Trump seem sympathetic at the start and Cohn seem sympathetic at the end. I am particularly impressed that they had the guts to include a scene where Trump, his ego insulted, rapes Ivana.  This is something she alleged in her divorce proceedings and which he accused her of cooking up. The motivation for it seems utterly in keeping with what we know about his narcissism. The scene made me consider the role of the actress Maria Bakalova in the fever dream that has been MAGA America - acting the part of a rape victim in this account of Trump's life, and then being treated as a sexual favour by the real life Rudy Giuliani in BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM.  

But if the courage of all involved in this film is to be praised, then we must also condemn the gutless moral midgetry of every self-avowed liberal Hollywood distributor and streaming service that didn't have the balls to take this movie on in the face of Trump's bulshit legal threats. 

THE APPRENTICE has a running time of 120 minutes. It played Cannes, Telluride and London 2024. It opened in the USA on October 11th and in the UK on October 18th.

SATURDAY NIGHT - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 8

This is not a review of SATURDAY NIGHT as, for logistical reasons, I had to skip the final thirty minutes. That said, I was not that invested in it and I doubt I missed anything.

The problem may be that for British people, SNL is not part of our cultural fabric. And even from a contemporary perspective, whenever I come across skits on social media I don’t find them especially funny. So for sure I know about Ackroyd or Chevy Chase or Billy Crystal but these guys feel pretty vanilla to me. I appreciate George Carlin but he’s not really part of the SNL crew. And as for Belushi, it’s complicated and complicated in a way that the first hour or so of this film did not seem willing to engage in.

I am also not sure that the ninety minutes leading up the first ever episode of SNL fifty years ago really warrants the full Robert Altman treatment, or whether writer-director Jason Reitman (GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE) has the technical ability to make that shooting style feel organic rather than forced.  So yes we get the rapidly moving camera weaving in an out of dressing rooms and the stage and the control room and it’s all meant to feel claustrophobic and chaotic and kinetic. But it’s also felt stagey and shouting attention to its own cleverness in a way that was distracting. The overlapping Altmanian voices were probably better at conveying atmosphere but again to what end when the character arcs become harder to follow.

Worst of all, Reitman and fellow writer Gil Kenan (MONSTER HOUSE) seem desperate to inject some stakes into proceedings but I wasn’t convinced.  Producer Lorne Michaels has too much material. Okay fine just move half your skits into next week’s show. It’s not as if it’s topical satire. And as for Belushi going missing no shit he’s a raging drug addict: you have too much material just fill the gaps! 

All of which is to say that what I saw of the movie was not for me with the exception of every time writer Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey) was preaching revolution to the franchises or ripping into the censor.  That was absolutely delicious.

SATURDAY NIGHT is rated R and has a running time of 109 minutes. It was released in the USA on October 4th and opens in the UK on January 31st 2025.

NIGHTBITCH*** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 9

For around sixty minutes of its running time, NIGHTBITCH is a film that has the following messages: giving birth is physically savage; transitioning from being an urban career woman to a suburban stay-at-home mum is emotionally savage; and your still-at-work husband is probably going to have trouble empathising. As messages go  it’s not rocket science or particularly new but in Amy Adams hands it is compelling and wonderfully playing against type.  How marvellous to see her lean into spite and anger and animalistic power and feminist separation! And so the film should have continued.

But, the film does continue and it bottles it. The message of the back end of the film seems to be that actually being a single mum and mounting an art exhibition is, in fact, super easy, and a dickhead husband can suddenly become super-supportive, and one can be happy and have it all in suburban Williams-Sonoma bliss! 

I blame writer-director Marielle Heller (A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD) for her milquetoast approach both to the early doors body horror and the messaging of the back end.  I also felt that for a single-issue movie it’s about 20 mins too long. 

It makes for an interesting contrast with yesterday’s superb SISTER MIDNIGHT, which had similar-ish subject matter but has far more imagination and conviction.

NIGHTBITCH is rated R and has a 98 minute running time. It played Toronto and London 2024. It opens in the USA on December 6th.

SISTER MIDNIGHT**** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 8

SISTER MIDNIGHT is a strange, weird, mordantly funny, Indian arthouse film written and directed by Karan Kandhari. It stars Radhika Apte as a young bride called Uma who spends her claustrophobic days in the small shack she shares with her shy and bewildered husband.  The feckless young couple are about as successful at coupling as the King and Queen in MARIE ANTOINETTE and Uma is singularly unsuited to being a housewife.

It’s not entirely clear when the film takes a turn into surreal fantasy but let’s just say that Uma’s unhappiness expresses itself physically in the most twisted and wonderful fashion.  But what raises the movie above mere comedy is that it shows how Uma finds companionship and solidarity from her fellow women - whether best friend Shitel or the local hijras. The message of the film is that men are simple fools, society is full of bigots, but there is solace in sisterhood and self-acceptance.

I loved everything about this film - from its Western and Indian needle drops - to its precise framing and camera movements (very Wes Anderson) - its sparse script - and its hilarious and fearless lead performance from Apte. Kudos to all involved.

SISTER MIDNIGHT has a running time of 110 minutes.  It played Cannes and London 2024. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

A REAL PAIN***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 6

Jesse Eisenberg is such an accomplished writer, director and actor that he makes creating a laugh-out loud comedy that is also heartbreaking and profound seem effortless.  His tight 90 minute dramedy A REAL PAIN is one of the stand -out films of this year's festival: full of humanity, vulnerability, and centring a beautiful performance from Succession's Kieran Culkin.

Eisenberg and Culkin play two cousins, David and Benji, who travel to Poland to honour their recently deceased grandmother. David is clearly on edge - nervous around a cousin that he clearly loves but mortified by Benji's behaviour. It's a strange mix of envy at Benji's charisma and fear of what happens when he crashes. Culkin plays Benji as a larger than life, filterless, big kid who can be thoughtless and casually cruel but is obviously very fragile and loveable too. 

The cousins join a small private tour of Poland for Jews interested in the Holocaust. Their own grandmother was a survivor, and the tour group comprises people who also lost loved ones, as well as a new Jewish convert who himself survived the Rwandan genocide. As they journey to Lublin they see remnants of an old vibrant Jewish community with the concentration camp Madjanek clearly visible from the centre of town.

It is testament to Eisenberg's writing and direction that this topic is handled with due sensitivity but that this film is also absolutely hilarious. Best of all, it resists trite neat endings or emotional resolutions. It is a film that it is utterly confident about what it wants to say and gets the tone absolutely right in saying it. 

A REAL PAIN is rated R and has a running time of 90 minutes. It played Sundance where Eisenberg won the screenwriting award. It opens in the USA on November 1st and in the UK on January 10th 2025.

ANORA** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 7

Hhhmmmmm ANORA.  I think the problem is that it’s two films - an hilarious crime caper - and then a serious drama about a damaged woman who struggles to recognise love - but the first undercuts the second. So we get what is meant to be an emotional breakdown and breakthrough at the end. But we’ve had to slog through Wacky Races to get there.

The film stars Mikey Madison as Anora, a stripper living in the heavily ethnically Russian Brighton Beach area of New York. She picks up a feckless son of an Oligarch who pays her handsomely and then drunkenly decides to marry her so that he can avoid going back to Russia. Both Anora and Vanya are delusional.  She wants to think she isn’t a hooker and that it’s a real marriage so that she can escape her working class life. He knows full well his parents won’t let the marriage stand and frankly I am amazed they didn’t just shoot Anora and take him home.

Instead, what we get is a comedy caper in which Anora and Vanya’s family’s goons try to hunt down the errant boy so that they can get an annulment before the parents arrive from Russia. It’s full of genuinely funny physical comedy but goes on way too long. And then the aforementioned handbreak turn back into serious heartbreak. 

That final scene is what I wanted from ANORA - and what I never really got.  And it made me wonder if writer-director Sean Baker actually cared about the character.  Because she really is rather thinly drawn as a superficial, foul-mouthed desperate gold-digger for ninety percent of the film.  I was watching an actress who I knew could do more being constrained by the ditzy genre format.  And let’s be frank - all the women in this film are thinly drawn cliches - the bitch gangster wife, the bitch hooker, the bitch rival stripper.  Isn’t that just a tad misogynistic?

Which brings me to this year’s Cannes jury awarding this film the Palme D’Or and EMILIA PEREZ the Jury Prize. Both are superficially female-centred films but neither gives us a three-dimensional credible portrait of a woman.  Maybe we need more female writer-directors for that. 

ANORA is rated R and has a running time of 139 minutes.  It played Toronto, Telluride and London 2024. It opens in the USA on October 18th and in the UK on November 1st.

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY**** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 6

For my generation, Christopher Reeve is the ultimate superhero - the dreamy, earnest Superman who flew through the skies with Lois Lane. (Sidebar - people think we only got strong female characters now, but I grew up with Princess Leia and Lois Lane, both massively professionally capable and far from blonde Barbies. What a time to be a kid!)  So when Superman was thrown from a horse and paralysed it was shocking and tragic.  He appeared once again at the Oscars making a moving and stirring speech, and then - at least for me - disappeared from view until his death ten years later.  This accomplished new documentary, from directors  Peter Ettedgui (MCQUEEN) and Ian Bonhote, fills in those gaps.

The Christopher Reeve that emerges from this film is an earnest theatre kid who makes it to Juilliard and rooms with his lifelong best friend Robin Williams.  He gets the break to be Superman and off-broadway co-star William Hurt cautions him against it.  Reeve finds international fame but also feels trapped in a certain kind of role, and people's impossible expectations of him as a perfect hero.

In fact he was a complex and flawed man, as we are all flawed. His father did a number on him, raising him in a type of toxic masculinity of hyper-competitiveness and impossible to meet expectations. Reeve was also surrounded by broken marriages and had trouble committing. He met a British woman filming SUPERMAN and had two children with her but didn't marry her and left her to go back to a single life in New York. Five months later he met the woman who would be by his side when the accident happened - Dana - and would actually marry her and have another son.

It's testament to Christopher's family, including his first partner, that they all agree to appear in this film and speak with honesty and vulnerability of what those broken relationships did to them. His elder two children argue that he was more of a present parent after the accident when hyper-competitive athletics were off the table. It's also testament to all three parents that the children seem so close and supportive of each other. I had no idea that the younger son Will lost his mother very soon after losing his father, and his big half-brother really stepped in to provide support. All three were at the London Film Festival screening and it was a privilege to watch this deeply moving film in their presence.

And what of Christopher post-accident?  He launched a foundation and became an activist for scientific research. Some in the disabled community bristled at his search for a cure, and Dana corrected that balance by focussing on care and quality of life. Both seem utterly admirable in their energy and commitment and courage. I was equally moved by the support given by his closest friends, not least Robin Williams. And it utterly broke me when Glenn Close, interviewed extensively here, says she thinks that Robin would still be with us if Christopher had not died.

I would recommend this film to those who loved Superman as children and still feel a thrill when they hear that score. It gives so much depth and insight to the man behind the cape and the extraordinary family who rose to the challenge of his catastrophic accident. I cried, but I was also uplifted. He is still my Superman.

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY has a running time of 106 minutes and is rated PG-13. It was released in the USA last month and will be released in the UK on November 1st.

EMILIA PEREZ*** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 6

EMILIA PEREZ is a deeply odd and sporadically successful film from French auteur Jacques Audiard (A PROPHET, DHEEPAN).  It comes to London having won the coveted Cannes Jury Prize and features a story and characters rarely centred on screen.  Some of the musical numbers are stunning. But I found myself over-stuffed, confused and adrift.

Despite the film's name, the protagonist is actually a lawyer called Rita played superbly by Zoe Saldana (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY).  When we meet her she is a poor but smart lawyer frustrated at the lack of opportunities her skin colour condemns her to.  The opening numbers as she writes a speech in a food market, and then discusses her options with some cleaners, are brilliantly rendered with powerful dynamic choreography. 

Rita's life is changed when a drug lord called Manitas (Karla Sofia Garcon) hires her to facilitate his gender reassignment surgery and to hide his wife Jessi (Selena Gomez - Only Murders In The Building) and their two young sons in Switzerland.  That should be the end of their relationship but four years later the now Emilia Perez asks Rita to facilitate her return to Mexico, and to also bring back her children and their mother who will live with their "Auntie".  

Once again, this should be the end of their relationship, but Emilia and Rita end up founding a charity to find the disappeared people of Mexico, victims of the drug war that Manitas was complicit in. Along the way, Emilia finds love with Epifania (Adriana Paz) and Jessi finds love with her ex-lover Gustavo (Edgar Ramirez).  It's only at this point that Emilia's control is upended and in fear of losing her children, Manitas' nasty language and manner break through Emilia's polished new persona. 

There's lots to love in this film. As I said the two opening numbers and Saldana's critique of Mexico's corrupt rich at a fund-raising gala are fantastic. It's rare and moving to see a trans story centred, and to see what Manitas has to sacrifice to live her authentic life.  We absolutely feel her pain at not being able to confess to being her son's father. I also admired the concise way in which the love story between Emilia and Epifania is told. Kudos to Karla Sofia Garcon for pulling of a layered and complex role. 

But there's a lot to criticise too.  First, Rita is a cipher not a protagonist.  After the prologue we never really understand her motives or see any kind of life outside of Emilia. She is just an observer.  I needed more time with her, or to see more layers to her in the contemporary storyline. The same goes for Jessi who is just a ditzy superficial floozy until basically the final five minutes of the film. What a waste of Selena Gomez' talent? And Epifania is similarly shortchanged. It's like a weird trans version of the Bechdel problem. In the most uncharitable reading, who are these women outside of Emilia except for people who she manipulates into satisfying her desires?

Finally, some plot holes. If it's so secret and dangerous that Manitas is having gender reassignment surgery, why does Rita fly the Israeli doctor over to Mexico?  And if Manitas' little boy realises Emilia smells like Papa, then why doesn't Jessi?  I know that in some ways she just think Emilia looks like her cousin Manitas but it's clear Emilia is a trans woman. Can she not figure it out? That she doesn't makes her character even more stupid and frankly unbelievable.

EMILIA PEREZ has a running time of 130 minutes and is rated R. It played Cannes where it won the Jury prize and the ensemble female cast won Best Actress. It will be released in the USA on November 1st in cinemas and then on November 13th on Netflix.

THE WILD ROBOT***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 5

THE WILD ROBOT is an utterly delightful film - visually stunning, occasionally funny, and deeply moving.  I haven't felt this invested in an animated film - or this awed by the visuals - in quite some time. Kudos to director Chris Sanders (LILO & STITCH): may this film earn him his well-deserved Oscar. 

The movie is based on a series of books by Peter Brown and tells the story of a robot called Roz (Lupita Nyongo) who learns to escape her programming and feel love.  In her crash landing and frenetic first day on the island Roz killed a gosling's family and becomes his adoptive mother. She assigns herself the task of raising him to eat, swim, and fly the winter migration.  But the cute little gosling, Brightbill (Kit Connor), imprints himself on her and soon she is just another harassed, confused and loving mother to her adoptive son.  

Roz is helped in raising Brightbill by a wily but ultimately warm-hearted Fox called Fink (Pedro Pascal). But the other animals on the island look on in bewilderment and mockery. They are scared of the "monster" robot and of her predatory fox friend. And let's be clear: there's no LION KING style gentle allusion to death in this film - it is faced head on and suffuses every scene. These are animals whose fear is necessary to survival. But Roz teaches them that kindness is also an option, and that together they can survive a harsh winter.

The resulting film is one of carefully calibrated peril but also deep warmth and heart.  This is nowhere better exemplified in the character of Longbill (Bill Nighy), a wise, kind old goose who will lead the winter migration. We have never heard Nighy so warm and encouraging.  But all the voice cast are superb. Nyongo moves from a Siri-esque relentless optimism to something more real and modulated. Connor is just adorable as Brightbill. And Pascal is both funny and deeply vulnerable as Fink.

And last but assuredly not least, this movie looks stunning.  The rendering of the animals, the wilderness, and the night scenes in particular, was a feast for the imagination.  I felt utterly immersed in, and delighted by, the world. This movie is truly something special and I highly recommend it.

THE WILD ROBOT is rated PG and has a running time of 101 minutes. It played Toronto and London 2024 and was released in the USA last month. It will be released in the UK on October 18th.

ENDURANCE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 4

The story of Sir Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance is one of those tales that obsesses land-lubbers like me.  I have always been fascinated by explorers who push themselves beyond the limits of ordinary endurance and especially those tails of against-the-odds survival. I am a sucker for docs on Everest, or films like SOCIETY OF THE SNOW, and an armchair specialist on Shackleton. So I came to the new documentary with high expectations, made even higher knowing that it featured restored and colorised stills and moving images from expedition photographer Frank Hurley thanks to my beloved BFI National Archive.

The film tells two stories in tandem. The first is that of the original expedition over a hundred years ago. Through contemporary photos and films, and audio and film recordings of its members, we hear of their journey to Antartica aboard the Endurance. We see how the ship is caught in pack ice and had to be abandoned. We see the men make camp on the ice, and then have to take to boats and row to an island on which they cannot survive.  At which point Shackleton takes one of the boats and four other men and attempts to reach the whaling station on South Georgia - an improbably journey and an improbable rescue. The men had been away for years, while a World War was raging. Most immediately signed up for service.

The story captures the imagination because it's one of failure but also of improbable survival. And it's also the story of a man who was a rogue, financially incontinent, and made several bad choices, but who also had tremendous courage and did his best by his men. 

The second story in the film is that of a 2022 expedition to discover the shipwreck of the Endurance, led by an international team of scientists and the popular British historian Dan Snow. We feel their excitement at finally uncovering the wreck and wonder at the HD scan of the largely in tact ship. 

Directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin (NYAD, FREE SOLO) and Natalie Hewit ably cut between the two stories and create a sense of excitement and tension even though we know the outcome of both stories. I particularly loved seeing the colourised archive footage which made the story seem vivid. And I also loved the way in which items in the wreckage were matched up to the iconic photos and movies at the end.  It made the whole thing feel real and contemporary rather than a tale of derring-do from the Edwardian era.

As I said before, I was primed to love this film and I was not disappointed. But I hope it will resonate with audiences less familiar with the Shackleton story.  Moreover, with its use of both archival footage and AI to recreate the expedition's voices, this feels like a documentary that shows mastery of how films can be created now and in the future. 

ENDURANCE has a running time of 103 minutes. It had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

DAHOMEY***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 4

French-Senagelese director Mati Diop's documentary DAHOMEY comes to the London Film Festival feted with the Berlin Golden Bear.  It's a relatively short film at around 70 minutes and alternates between spiritual fantasy and cold hard political debate. The resulting film is austere, provocative and urgent.

The movie opens in a French museum where pandemic-era masked curators are packing 26 artefacts originally looted from Benin by French colonists. Among them is "number 26" - the statue of a powerful nineteenth century king - who in an eery voiceover bristles that these men do not know his name.  We follow the camera inside the packing crates as lids are sealed shut and screws drilled in. We hear the engines of the airplane hum. And then we see the unboxing in Benin and the processional route of these artefacts to their new home.

As Mati Drop made clear in her post-film Q&A, it is ambiguous how far the cheering crowds and singing women are genuinely excited to see the return of these artefacts or whether this is a staged "Mise En Scene" courtesy of the President.  And this neatly brings us to the latter half of the film where we hear university students debate the meaning of the artefacts' return.

Should they be grateful that their President and France's President Macron did a deal? Or should they remain angry that only 26 out of 7000 artefacts have come back?  Should they see this as an historical occasion or a political act, designed to shore up the popularity of both presidents? In one of the most incisive comments we hear a young woman describe her frustration that the entire debate is being carried out in French, rather than Fon or any of the other native languages, because Beninese youth are only taught French in school.  Another young woman asks what resources will be made available so that the children in rural areas can come to the capital and see these artefacts, learn about their history and feel pride in it.

As the movie closes we are on the streets of the capital, with Diop's camera calmly moving among the street-sellers and bars, much as the movie opened hovering over trinket-sellers by the Eiffel Tower. The camera lingers on a poster advertising a skin-whitening cream - another legacy of learned and imbibed racism. And then we close the film but not the debate.

I found this to be deeply provocative and layered.  It spoke to what the return of these looted objects means to their home countries - and made me consider the role of our own great historical collections. And in all the editorials I have read about the return of the Benin Bronzes, this film is sadly unique in centring young African voices. 

DAHOMEY has a running time of 68 minutes. It won the Golden Bear at Berlin 2024. It goes on release in the USA and UK on October 25th.

CONCLAVE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 3

Robert Harris' political procedural thriller, CONCLAVE, is one of his greatest novels and it has been beautifully brought to the screen by director Edward Berger (ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT) and screenwriter Peter Straughan (TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY). The resulting film is genuinely tense, visually stunning, brilliantly claustrophobic and occasionally hilarious.

Ralph Fiennes stars as the seemingly humble Cardinal Lawrence who is tasked with managing the papal election.  He is allied with the liberal Cardinal Bonelli (Stanley Tucci) who claims he does not want to be Pope, but come on, doesn't every Cardinal want the ultimate power?  They are united in opposing a return to reactionary religion whether in the form of the African Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), the American Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) or the Italian Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto).  

As each ballot is taken, we learn of reasons why each candidate is far from perfect. Lawrence chooses carefully what to expose and keep secret, even going so far as to break the papal seal on the dead Pope's locked door. And each ballot frames a debate about what the Church means - is it tradition or modernity - diversity or unity - progressive on race or progressive on sexuality?

What makes this procedural such an effective film? Well, the cast is exceptional. I would expect award noms for Fiennes and Tucci. But for me the highlight is Isabella Rosellini in a scene-stealing role, and the all-time most powerful on-screen curtsy. But more than the individual performances what makes this movie great is the deft way that Edward Berger creates his hermetically sealed world and helps us to understand its bizarre logic. We never cut away to waiting news crews or crowds in Vatican Square. Events beyond the walls might be heard but are not seen.  We are utterly immersed in the Conclave.  He takes us through the mechanics of the first ballot with precision and then elegantly edits the others.  He uses his editing and framing to give us a sense of moral corruption and stakes.  And then there are the visual flourishes that a 108 men in red robes against banks of white marble or teal cinema seats can give. The mood of the film is austere - the colour palette, score, even the amount of dialogue - is kept to the minimal. We are in a world where a glance, a sigh, a tug on a vape can be portentous. Bravo to a director who strips away rather than overloading us.

ALL QUIET  was a really good film that was perhaps lobbied into a greater awards tally than it deserved. Berger has moved far beyond that film with this one and it's likely awards will be even more richly deserved. Kudos to all involved.

CONCLAVE is rated PG and has a running time of 100 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London 2024. It will be released in the USA on November 8th and in the UK on November 15th.

DISCLAIMER (TV) Episodes 1-3** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 Day 2

There are two different TV shows in Disclaimer with two different sets of performances and two different tones. The show's fatal flaw is that this dichotomy fatally undermines it.

In the first show we have the tragic story of a middle class mother and father learning that their twenty-something son has died in an accident on the Italian coast.  We see the Met police officers devastate their lives with the news, and the identification of the corpse.  Lesley Manville (MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS) is stunning in the role of the grief-struck mother, with a rather outmatched Kevin Kline giving support as the father. 

Twenty years later the mother has died but the father has stumbled upon his son's holiday photos showing a romance between him and a young mother.  It turns out that his now deceased wife wrote a novelisation of what she believes happened on that holiday, and how her son died saving this young woman's toddler son. The presumption is that the young mother was a kind of desperate housewife, seducing the young man and then cruelly abandoning the scene of his death.  

In the contemporary storyline the father (Kevin Kline) publishes the novel and sends it, as well as the explicit photos, to the now very successful middle-aged woman (Cate Blanchett) and her family.  Just as Lesley Manville played the story straight, Cate Blanchett gives a deeply convincing portrait of a woman desperately scrambling to keep her luxurious and outwardly perfect life in tact. She is distraught when her own now twenty-something son reads the book and has a rather fraught relationship with him anyway. And the publication of the novel stirs up deep-seated resentments in her husband, who thinks she has put her career before being a mother.  

So that's the serious story. It is well-acted by the two leading ladies, Manville and Blanchett, and beautifully staged.  A scene with the two parents standing in the sea where their son died is particularly haunting.  That said, the precisely curated on-trend luxury of the contemporary house that Blanchett's character lives in reminded me of the kind of miniseries that Nicole Kidman seems to relentlessly star in now. We were one bad blonde wig away from The Perfect Couple.

The problem is that there is a second TV show going on here. And it plays as bad comedy, I hope unintentionally.  Casting Kevin Kline as the vengeful older father is a risk as he brings a mischief to every role.  He needs to be an angel of torment but he comes off as Puck, complete with comedy gestures of throwing a bomb into Catherine's life. It's just tonally off. And as I said, in the flashback scenes he is utterly outmatched by Manville.

The bigger problem is casting Sacha Baron Cohen as Blanchett's jealous husband. He can't help but play the role a little bit bigger than necessary, and of course we as the audience bring our own baggage and expectations seeing him on screen. Maybe the performance won't play as bad on TV when people are watching at home. But in a packed Royal Festival Hall it took one or two people to start sniggering and pretty soon the audience was laughing out loud at his line readings.

Similarly, the audience was laughing at the scenes where the younger version of Blanchett, played by Leila George, is seducing the gap year student. It's unfortunate writing - and maybe it's this way in the book given that it's ultimately his mum's imagination? Which is also creepy AF.  But anyways, it's the most cringe-inducing scene and poor Louis Partridge (ENOLA HOLMES) has to play a feckless boy who is the object of his own humiliation and our laughter. Like I said, maybe this is the point.  Either way it was awful to watch and totally undermined the serious emotional work being done by Manville and Blanchett.

The final fatal blow to this TV series is the intrusive and ham-fisted voiceover from Kline, Blanchett and Baron Cohen's characters.  The latter in particular is just laughably bad. None of them add anything to narrative propulsion. I gather that this is a feature of the novel but it simply does not translate to screen.

As I said, it may turn out that the literal incredible and laughable tone of the seduction scenes is the point. An imagined version of a past that has been hypothesised.  But until the final episode revelations of whatever the truth is, we are stuck with some pretty unwatchable TV. I doubt many viewers will stay the course.

DISCLAIMER started airing on Apple TV today.

BLITZ** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Opening Night Gala

Steve McQueen made a series of powerful TV specials under the banner of Small Axe, showing the experience of black people living in London in the 1960s.   In doing so, he was showing stories that had been under- or mis-represented.  The mission of his new feature film, BLITZ, is exactly the same. He wants to show the viewer just how multicultural London already was two decades before Windrush, and how the same prejudice blighted the lives of its black residents.  

As with Small Axe, some of the best scenes in BLITZ are those centred around music.  There's a tremendous flashback scene set in a dance hall where you feel the music pulse. There's an even better scene set in a luxurious Cafe de Paris style nightclub with a Cab Calloway style performer and the real-life pop star Celeste. And music is woven into other scenes - whether cockneys playing a washboard or gathered around a piano in the pub.  

It's hard to fault the way the film is put together. The recreation of bombed out East End streets - the peril and terror of houses on fire - the smouldering vistas the next morning. It's all immaculately recreated.  And it's hard to fault McQueen's earnest message of brotherly love. The problem is that this isn't a series of music -centred short films (as it probably should've been) but a feature film - and a feature film needs narrative propulsion and characters we care about.

We don't care about these characters because they are thinly drawn avatars.  Good guys vs racists. Saoirse Ronan's single mum Rita is good. The Fagin-style thieves played by Kathy Burke, Stephen Graham and Roddy from Slow Horses are bad. The almost angelic air raid warden Ife is good. And really good because he let's Rita's mixed-race son George feel proud of his blackness.  The nasty racist cockneys who want to put a sheet up to isolate the Sikhs are bad.  It goes on and on.

To make it worse, thin characterisation is met with thin dialogue.  And the poor kid - Elliott Heffernan - is given very little to do as George. He only exists to allow McQueen to follow his steps through the various vignettes that McQueen is actually interested in showing us.  

I also feel that - fatally - this film is miscast in its lead role. Ronan cannot do a convincing East End accent and she also cannot sing.  Having her lip sync to someone else's voice brings us out of the film.  For a character whose life is expressed in music - whose love for her son and father is shown through music - this is a real problem.

BLITZ is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 113 minutes.  BLITZ will be released in cinemas on November 1st and on Netflix on November 22nd.

JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX**

Writer-director Todd Phillips has created a deeply odd, turgid and ultimately frustrating sequel in JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX.  Once again, it stars an emaciated and gurning Joaquin Phoenix as a homicidal incel called Arthur Fleck. In the first film he went on a killing spree including shooting a talk show host on live TV, much to the joy of the disaffected both within the film and apparently in real life too.  In this sequel, Arthur is standing trial. His defence attorney (Catherine Keener) argues that his is suffering from schizophrenia - that Joker not Arthur committed the murders - and that Arthur needs medical help.  Problem is, the trial is being sabotaged by Joker's newfound love interest, who very much loves him for his chaotic, violent avatar rather than the traumatised man underneath.  That's basically it as far as plot goes. Even moreso than the original, this is a claustrophobic, slow-moving walk through Arthur's psyche, often-filmed in slow-motion too.  Worse still, where we might have had dialogue or action in the first film, this is replaced by breathy, slowed-down, depressing versions of classic show-tune love songs.  It's not that they're badly put together. It must take a lot of effort on Lady Gaga's part to sing like a normie.  And the orchestration is really great. But ten songs later I found myself - like Arthur - begging Lady Gaga to stop singing and actually talk.

What's really wild about this film is that Todd Phillips seems to have taken all the hysterical criticism of the original film to heart.  It's as if he has made this film for an entirely different audience - people who hated its prequel. At some point around two thirds of the way through the trial something happens that seems to shock Arthur into disavowing his Joker persona.  Even worse, it's not the thing that would more logically explain it - the powerful and moving evidence given by Gary Puddles. (Note that while critics will focus on Phoenix and Gaga, it's Leigh Gill as Puddles who gives the most affecting performance of the film.)  Rather, Arthur seems to be motivated by a far smaller incident in jail. Anyways, whatever the motivation, with this character shift Todd Phillips basically seems to be saying to his audience, shame on you for enjoying the first film like all those dumbass characters inspired by JOKER, and here's a dull overlong musical as your penance!

Still, there are flashes of brilliance in this film. An overhead shot that references THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG. Lady Gaga drawing a lipstick smile on prison glass, and Arthur coming into focus behind it and smiling as Joker. In a sense, she is the more interesting, or scary, or psychotic of the two characters. Or maybe she's just another fangirl? Sadly she's too underwritten to know.  I liked the subtle, out of focus way we see another Joker emerge at the end of the film, and the nod to Harvey Dent's disfigurement. I rather liked the Steve Coogan cameo as a TV interviewer. And I liked having two Industry alum in the cast.  But ye gods, this is a long long film for precious little entertainment.

JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX has a running time of 138 minutes and is rated R. It is on global release.

IT ENDS WITH US***

Absent the controversy surrounding Blake Lively's press campaign, IT ENDS WITH US is a perfectly decently made relationship drama about a woman who finally escapes her husband's domestic violence.  It stars Lively as Lily Bloom  - an on-the-nose named heroine who grew up with domestic violence and is horrified when she realises she is in exactly the same situation. She was swept off her feet by a handsome surgeon (played by director Justin Baldoni) and caught up in a fun friendship with his sister (played by the wonderful comedienne Jenny Slate).  But what at first seem like unfortunate accidents - a reflex slap - a trip down the stairs - eventually become clear as deliberate acts of violence. This is all brought to the fore when Lily reconnects with her childhood sweetheart Atlas (absurd name again!) played by 1923's Brandon Sklenar.  

The film has been criticised for making domestic abuse look romantic or by falsely selling the audience on the content of the film. I am not sure a movie based on a major bestseller can be accused of misleading its built-in audience.  Moreover, it's important to recognise that these stories have a layer of romance and charm and charisma.  Domestic abuse victims are emotionally manipulated into believing that the abuser really does love them. It does start off feeling like a romance. Even in the immediate aftermath of violence there can be declarations of love and promises of redemption.  I also feel that Blake Lively does a really good job of conveying how a strong, smart woman can be gaslit and also start diminishing herself as she pre-emptively appeases her abuser. 

Overall I found this to be a well-made and engrossing film. If anything is unbelievable, it's how fast Lily has the strength to leave her husband. Maybe that can be explained by her childhood experience. But we know that in reality it takes domestic abuse victims a number of times before they finally get the courage and practical support to finally leave, if they ever do.  

IT ENDS WITH US has a running time of 130 minutes and is rated R. It is available to stream.

INDUSTRY SEASON 3 (TV)***** - warning for spoilers

When I first watched Industry at the BFI London Film Festival I was sceptical. The first episodes of season one seemed a caricature of a pre-GFC City - one fuelled by foul language and drugs but long-since superseded by a risk-off, highly regulated reality.  But as I stuck with the show I realised that while it may be far off the mark of the actual industry it was trying to represent, it was doing something far more interesting and compelling - creating a set of character studies of profound darkness. This reached a fever pitch in season 2 as our psychopathic analyst Harper Stern (Myha'la) was finally cut loose by her boss Eric Tao (Ken Leung) - the anchor relationship of the show thus far was finally broken.  Where would it go in season 3?

The answer is that season 3 focuses on Yas - the spoiled rich girl who can charm anyone and flirts with all, but who has, by her own admission, never actually been in love. The season begins by yanking her solidity in wealth away from her. Her father has been exposed as a sexual predator. He was found dead off his yacht shortly after Yas caught him having sex with an employee in her cabin. The mystery of Yas' role in his death is dangled before us throughout the season.  When faced with paparazzi intrusion and the threat of being held financially liable for her father's debts, Yas shows us that she can be just as narcissistic and immoral and... well... psychopathic as Harper. Maybe that's the writers' point: that the financial industry attracts high-functioning psychopaths.  She is offered the bourgeois stability of a mediocre life with Robert, who has been in love with her from the start. Or she can marry a drug-addict, literally-entitled, incredibly wealthy void of a man. She chooses the latter because he offers her political protection.

And here perhaps a word on season three's highest profile major addition - Game of Thrones' Kit Harrington as Harry Muck.  He features large in the first few episodes and then disappears from view until the epilogue. It's a weird absence.  He plays a tech entrepreneur championing green energy. Pierpoint is handling his IPO and it's a disaster but that's okay because Muck's uncle runs the British media and the government bails him out.  Once again, the writers are making a highly cynical point about the collusion between elites - whether aristocratic, media, political or financial. The season has a highly cynical attitude toward corporate attitudes toward ESG and DEI in general. To wit, Harper Stern. 

Harper, forced out of Pierpoint, is working for a hedge fund that invests in ESG names. She basically betrays that fund manager, forms her own spinoff with Petra (Sarah Goldberg) then betrays Petra who has kind of already betrayed her anyway. She ends up running a predatory short-only hedge fund out of New York investing the money of ruthless British aristos.  I felt that I didn't really learn anything new about Harper this season. Her role was necessarily more limited as the attention shifted to Yas.  Do I care what she does next? Maybe not. Psychopaths will be unvaryingly self-interested and ruthless. I am not sure this holds much dramatic promise.

Of far more interest was Ken Leung's Eric Tao - Harper's former mentor and veteran investment banker. This season Eric is going through a divorce and a mid-life crisis.  As everything he has poured his soul into is burned to the ground we get a stunning final scene in which he confronts a picture of himself as a young analyst - full of promise and naïveté, buying into that capitalist dream.  Poor Eric - well not that poor - he leaves with a 20 million payout - winds down his trading floor as Pierpoint's new middle eastern owners shift trading to London.  Where does the old dinosaur go next. Maybe to New York - as with Harper?

The final major character that we should spend a moment on is Rishi (Sagar Radia - superb), not least because he gets a standalone episode that is one of the highlights of the season. We have come to know him as a foul-mouthed, nasty, bullying trader but one who is effective at his job. In this episode we realise that he is actually a desperate gambling addict, in hock to a loan shark. He has also married a rich white woman whose obnoxious family patronise him. This episode sees his bets get caught in the mayhem of the Liz Truss micro-regime and Rishi pushed to the edge of suicide. It takes the viewer through the ringer. I genuinely thought he wouldn't make it. Maybe the only false note of this season is how it ends for his wife. It felt ludicrous and shocking but maybe that was the point. I will withhold judgment until we see how it plays out next season.

In the newer roles, a shout out to Miriam Petche who plays the ridiculously named Sweetpea Golightly - a new analyst with an Only Fans account - who comes from the post Me Too generation and isn't putting up with any shit. She also has the smarts to figure out Pierpoint is basically bankrupt, much to the credulous laughter of people like Robert who she tries to tell. I was pleased that she got a way out from Pierpoint. Let's hope she keeps her morality and her smarts as the new season unfolds.

INDUSTRY SEASON 3 has just finished airing on HBO and was released on the BBC this week.

BETWEEN THE TEMPLES***

BETWEEN THE TEMPLES is a melancholy, bittersweet, romantic drama, written and directed by Nathan Silver. It stars RUSHMORE's Jason Schwartzman as a middle-aged bereaved Jewish cantor who is near suicidal and has lost his will to sing. Into this gloom steps his childhood music teacher, played by the iconic comedienne Carol Kane (THE PRINCESS BRIDE, SCROOGED). She discovers that she would like to have an adult Bat Mitzvah and so the tables are turned, and the pupil becomes the teacher. They strike up a friendship that becomes intimate but chaste. He seems to be unlocked and energised by it. She seems more reticent, especially when it becomes public. It is here that I felt the film sagged a little, unsure as to how to resolve its tensions.  I also felt the grainy 16mm filming style was unnecessary and somehow distancing. But for all that, this is a film that is genuinely moving and wryly funny. 

BETWEEN THE TEMPLES is rated R and has a running time of 111 minutes. It is available to stream.