ALICE, DARLING****

Actor Mary Nighy (MARIE ANTOINETTE) makes her feature debut with the beautifully observed, urgent drama ALICE DARLING.  The film, written by Alanna Francis, stars Anna Kendrick (PITCH PERFECT) as a woman trapped in a coercive control relationship. The problem is she's been making compromises and adjustments and catering to her partner's fragile ego for so long that she doesn't even realise she's being abused.  When we meet her, the normally ebullient smart Kendrick seems to small and quiet and numb it's a shock to audiences familiar with her presence.  

The good news for Alice is that she has two amazing friends, played by Wunmi Mosaku (Lovecraft Country) and Kaniehttio Horn.  They persuade Alice to join them on a special birthday weekend in the country, not realising that she lied to her partner to manage to get away. As the weekend unfolds they realise how controlling he is, and how lost their friend is, and miracle of miracles, they actually manage to get through to her too.  It's a wonderful and little seen testament to the power of female friendship.  Of course, in the real world we know that it takes abused women  many attempts to leave their abusers, so horrific is the damage done to their self-esteem and so claustrophobic the feelings of shame. As with TO LESLIE I found the ending a little.....American....and easy. But I loved the journey, the central performances, and the centring of the female experience of coercive control.  Mary Nighy may be a nepo baby but she is an assured director with a sensitive and authentic approach to difficult subject matter. Kudos.

ALICE DARLING is rated R and has a running time of 89 minutes. It played Toronto 2022 and is currently on release in cinemas and on the internet.

INDUSTRY - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Day 5

INDUSTRY is a new HBO/BBC TV series that has been written by two people who apparently interned in the City in this millennium and no doubt did some research beyond watching WALL STREET and reading Liar's Poker.  They seem to ignore  the fact that most jobs in the City are just rather banal, mundane, desk jobs in an environment of heavy regulation of relationships, drug use and harassment. Rather, they create a show that depicts a contemporary trading floor that feels circa 1987 rather than in a world shaped by the fallout from 2008. So our brave interns are all sex obsessed, take copious quantities of prescription and illegal drugs, and have a tenuous grasp of ethics. I suppose it is at least refreshing that they aren't babes in the wood to be corrupted by their evil bosses.  In fact our lead protagonist, Harper (Myha’la Herrold) is as dodgy as they come, faking her college credentials and trying desperately to cover up a fat finger error.  It's as though the interns themselves are living in some post WALL STREET era where they assume this is how interns behave and ethics work in investment banking.

All that aside, the show is fine to watch - and weirdly we saw episodes 1,2 and 4 and missing 3 didn't seem to make much difference.  The big twist at the end of episode 1 was very predictable.  A lot of the language around trading felt mis-cast. But I did find myself wondering what was going to happen to the characters next although it might be problematic that I found all of the kids rather unlikeable and only really cared about Ken Leong's boss Eric, and the client Natalie.  Will I watch the series when it's on TV in November? No. I'll probably re-read Liar's Poker instead. Drink straight from the source, kids!

INDUSTRY is playing the BFI London Film Festival 2020. It will air in the USA  on HBO and in the UK on the BBC starting on November 9th.