WICKED LITTLE LETTERS**

Watching WICKED LITTLE LETTERS right after Wolf Hall, it's hard not to conclude that Timothy Spall is in his villain era.  In this film, he plays a dyspeptic religious zealot holding his outwardly meek daughter Edith (The Crown's Olivia Colman) in abusive thrall.  She comes across as earnest and morally upright, and when a small 1920s English town is terrorised by filthy anonymous letters, everyone believes her when she fingers the local Irish working-class woman Rose (Jessie Buckley). And then, in a setup entirely mirroring that of the far superior WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL, it's the young Indian female police officer (Anjana Vasan) who actually has the intelligence to bring the true criminal to justice, in the face of her white male superiors' condescension.

The problem with this film - apparently based on true events - is that it is not what it was advertised to be. Rather than a ribald rural lark it's actually a serious drama about domestic abuse and bigotry. Which is also fine. But the direction from Thea Sharrock (ME BEFORE YOU) and script from writer Jonny Sweet do not inject any sense of peril or suspense. I didn't care for any of these characters, they didn't feel real, and I always knew whodunnit. I also found it weird that - as much as I love colour-blind casting - everyone was making a big deal about the policewoman being a woman, but no-one at all was making a big deal about her being a woman of colour. So the film moves along fairly predictably in a sort of mediocre and competent way and at the end of it one wonders what was the point.

WICKED LITTLE LETTERS has a running time of 100 minutes and is rated R. It was released in the UK in February 2024.

JOY**

Director Ben Taylor (Sex Education) and writer Jack Thorne (ENOLA HOLMES) deliver a rather earnest but tepid biopic about the scientists who developed IVF.  Maybe earnestness is what this topic requires, but it does rather strain the two-hour running time.

The cast is, however, mostly great.  James Norton plays biologist Robert Edwards, fizzing with excitement and energy and impatient with barriers.  He teams up with near-retirement obstetrician Dr Patrick Steptoe (an understated and moving Bill Nighy) whose ability to delicately extract the candidates' eggs allows Edwards to attempt to fertilise them in vitro. Tanya Moodie is wonderfully stern and pragmatic as the fictional NHS Nurse who has to manage the patients and the ward.  The only weak link is Thomasin McKenzie as the real-life research nurse who project managed the entire affair, Jean Purdy.  There is something in her line delivery that I found unconvincing. 

My suspicion is that there is a far more interesting film to be made about the opposition to the research - whether religious (represented here by Purdy's mother - an always excellent Joanna Scanlan) - scientific - or simply bureaucratic. We get some of that here but it is rather lightly skated over. I also feel that the film would have been more interesting if it had focussed on why Jean Purdy was not given due recognition for decades and despite Edwards' campaigning.  Basically I wanted something grittier and more nuanced than the rather Keep Calm and Carry On plain vanilla approach taken here.

JOY has a running time of 115 minutes, is rated PG-13, and was released on Netflix last month.

FIREBRAND****

Karim Ainouz's FIREBRAND is the story of Henry VIII's sixth wife, Catherine Parr.  Fair warning, this is a highly fictionalised account of her life, as told by screenwriters Jessica and Henrietta Ashworth and based on a novel by Elizabeth Fremantle.  The real Catherine did not apparently know and admire the radical preacher Anne Askew (the marvellous Erin Doherty - the best of the Princess Annes in The Crown).  And what happens in the final act stretches credulity.  And yet I do feel that this earnest and handsomely made film gets to a deep truth about the aged Henry and Catherine.

From what we can tell, Catherine does appear to have been fiercely capable, a generous educator and mother to Henry's various children, and an intelligent religious thinker. Her influence on England through shaping the thought of the young Princess Elizabeth is profound.  As played by Alicia Vikander she manages to make herself quiet and amenable but also has the courage of her religious convictions AND the ruthlessness to humiliate a younger rival.  She is a power player within the bounds that society allows her. 

And from what we can tell, the aged Henry was a deeply unhealthy, spoiled and irascible man, capable of cruelty and tyranny. Indeed, the lens through which this film tells the marital story is one of domestic abuse. We have a wife who must watch her words in order to pacify a terrifyingly quick-tempered husband.  Her every move is designed to preserve her own life and enable religious reform.  But she is physically terrorised, doubted for her loyalty, not just to Henry as a man and but to the Crown.  He loves her - we think - as much as he has loved any of his wives - but he will viciously physically attack her if provoked. 

All of this adds up to a claustrophobic and horrific atmosphere at court.  The forces against Catherine are variously the male relations of Henry's children, jockeying for power, and Bishop Stephen Gardiner (Simon Russell Beale) who is against religious reform. And then there is Henry himself, as played by Jude Law, obese and sneering but with the odd flash of charm that makes us see why Catherine may well have convinced herself she is in love with him. This is truly a fantastic performance from Jude Law.

But the really pivotal relationship in this film turns out to be between Catherine and Anne. It is Anne who urges Catherine to action and holds her to account, and Anne who sheds a tear for Catherine's lost soul in a deeply moving final act. 

A film - and performances - not to be missed.

FIREBRAND is rated R and has a running time of 121 minutes. It played Cannes 2023 and was released in the USA in June. It opens in the UK this weekend.

HEERAMANDI: THE DIAMOND BAZAAR (TV) ****

 

Sanjay Leela Bhansali is an Indian auteur who specialises in lavish, big-budget costume dramas that feature stunning women in beautiful outfits singing heart-rending songs that Bhansali also writes. He is the Indian director as indulgent maximalist, though without the stunning landscapes of, say, a David Lean. Rather, Bhansali's control extends to creating huge sets in which his dramas are encased, lending them a claustrophobic, artificial air that often matches their narrative themes. This is nowhere more true than in his first TV series, HEERAMANDI.

Heeramandi may translate literally as The Diamond Bazaar, but subcontinental viewers will know it as the name of the red light district of Lahore, now in post-partition Pakistan.  But western viewers should banish any image of streetwalkers and take Geisha culture as their context. The madams of these opulent brothels train young girls in classical poetry, dance and music in order to seduce long-term aristocratic patrons or Nawabs. As such they form a triad of dependence with those Nawabs and the ruling British.  The Nawabs support the British because the British guarantee their lavish lifestyle and privilege relative to ordinary Indians.  And in turn the Nawabs financially support the courtesans of Heeramandi.  

The great irony of the series is that while the courtesans become politicised, they are essentially ending their own profession. Without the British there will be no Nawabs or patrons, and we know from history that many of these artists did end up as common prostitutes to survive. The gilded cage may be brutal - love cannot guarantee escape, and these woman are effectively slaves - but perhaps that is safer than life beyond it.

The series takes place in the 1920s and its two warring protagonists mark the contrast between tradition and modernity. Manisha Koirala (DIL SE...) is stunningly cruel as the traditional madam, Mallikajaan. She is a supremely successful businesswoman precisely because she rejects all sentimentality, even when it comes to her own family. Her antagonist is Fareedajaan, played by DABANG's Sonakshi Sinha. Sinha is very much a creature of the 1920s in her dress, hairstyle and even how she entertains, with cocktail parties rather than mujhras. Both actresses deliver outsized, high camp performances as selfish and successful woman, exploiting Nawabs, the British and their own family members alike. 

The tragedy plays itself out with the younger generation of courtesans. Richa Chadha (GANGS OF WASSEYPUR) is heartbreaking as Lajjo, a courtesan betrayed by her patron and self-medicating with alcohol and delusion. The role of the heartbroken and betrayed courtesan is a trope in Indian cinema, and Bhansali's exploits the viewers' familiarity with it to add layers of pathos. 

And then there is the political awakening of Bibbojaan (Aditi Rao Hydari) who uses her training in seducing men to provide information for the revolutionaries and ends up echoing the iconography of Nargis in Mehboob Khan's MOTHER INDIA.

Where the show is weaker is in its love story. Bhansali's niece Sharmin Segal is a lacklustre screen presence as the thinly written poetess Alamzeb.  Her love story with the Nawab's nephew is rather feeble and by the numbers.  Similarly, the British characters are all caricature baddies.  Characters become political and bury hatchets on a whim.  But all this can be forgiven as we gaze at the stunning outfits and puzzle over the inherent tension between the self-titled "Queens" of Lahore exerting power within their gilded cage, but ultimately being brutalised by the system they claim to run.

HEERAMANDI: THE DIAMOND BAZAAR was released on Netflix on May 1st.

MARY & GEORGE (TV)****

MARY & GEORGE is a sumptuously produced costume drama set in the court of King James I of England. Despite being known to most English schoolchildren as the sponsor of a new translation of the Bible, historical sources tell us that he was definitely homosocial and most likely bi- or homosexual.  In this retelling from D.C.Moore, based on a work of history by Benjamin Woolley, any ambiguity is eradicated. James was most definitely homosexual - able to sire children with his Danish Queen - but taking pleasure in a series of young beautiful men.

This gives our heroine Mary Beaumont her chance at societal advancement, wealth and power. Born a serving woman, by the time we meet her she has already successfully faked an aristocratic lineage and buried her first husband. She marries a country booby in order to maintain her children, and grooms her son George to seduce the King. That they both achieve great power and set up her descendants as those the Dukes of Buckingham is a testament to Mary's intelligence, ruthlessness and strategic brilliance. 

Iconic actress Julianne Moore (MAY DECEMBER) perfectly embodies this complex and ambiguous woman. She is no feminist - happily sacrificing a rich heiress to her mentally ill and violent younger son. But one cannot help but admire her resilience and resourcefulness in a world where she had no lineage and few legal rights. It is testament to Nicholas Galitzine (RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE) that he matches her beat for beat. When we first meet his George he is young, fragile and drifting. By the end he is out-strategising both his mother and the King. He remains compelling throughout. In smaller roles, I admired Tony Curran's ability to make James so much more complex and indeed admirable than just a "cockstruck" dilettante. I also very much liked Sean Gilder as Mary's new husband, and Nicola Walker gets all the best lines as the scabrous, independently wealthy Lady Harron.

The production design, costumes, music, and locations are all beautifully done. The show is a joy to watch, and as far as I can tell, the broad historical outlines are close to the real history. My only real criticism of the show is that it cannot maintain the brilliantly funny brutal comedy of its opening episodes and that once the Villiers get closer to power, a dark pall falls over the show.  I felt that somewhere around episode 5 the drama lost its intensity and zest and we drifted toward the inevitable grim ending.  I wanted more of the bawdy language and nakedly open powerplays - notably between Mary and Lady Harron.  The show suffered for the latter's loss.

MARY & GEORGE is available to watch in its entirety in the UK on Sky. It releases next month in the USA on Starz.

DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991) *****

In preparation for the release of the new adaptation of THE COLOR PURPLE I decided to finally watch the critically acclaimed DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST by writer-director Julie Dash. This is a film that debuted at Sundance in 1991, but where other indie debutants like Richard Linklater went on to get many feature films financed Julie Dash disappeared from view.  If one laments the fact that the original THE COLOR PURPLE didn't win an Oscar, despite its eleven nominations, consider the further and ongoing racism of Hollywood that Julie Dash could create a film of such unique and beautiful vision as DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST and never make a feature again.  Which is not to say that her presence has not been felt. Beyonce's Lemonade is just one of the examples of films that reference Dash's visual style and social concerns. And the new COLOR PURPLE apparently also references her now iconic visual style.

The movie takes place in the saltwater Gullah community off the coast of South Carolina in the early years of the twentieth century.  Their story is told by the wise old grandmother of the family, Nana Peazant, and by an as yet unborn daughter.  We learn that their isolation was a blessing, freeing them from large-scale plantation slavery and preserving their specific language, religion and customs.  Much of the film takes place in conversation amidst the beautiful sun-drenched sands of the island, with strong women shaping their history and future.

The story is not told in a straightforward linear fashion but we soon discover that this community is in its dying days, and the younger members of the family feel the draw of greater opportunity on the mainland.  That brings with it cultural contamination - from Christianity and Islam - but also the actuality of white violence.

Where THE COLOR PURPLE has a surfeit of plot, and is structured in a conventional manner, DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is poetic and loose and enchanting. The former is anchored on Celie's house, to where characters return and retreat, and the ownership of which is a key plot point.  By contrast, the Gullah woman seem to be eternally outdoors and connected to the water and sand and trees.  This maybe speaks to the fact that the seawater Gullah have managed to retain their African heritage in a way that the mainland post-slavery society that Celie lives in has been thoroughly alienated from its proud heritage. In THE COLOR PURPLE, Nettie has to return to Africa to discover her culture, but even then arrives as an outsider, a missionary, with a patronising civilising influence. In the Gullah community, Africa survives and is proximate.

The glory of DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is the time spent with these fascinating women, contrasting their differing attitudes toward spirituality and the choice of where to live.  Cinematographer Arthur Jafa creates stunningly beautiful beachscapes populated by people in gorgeous white dresses against trailing moss. It's no wonder these images have been so influential. The only thing that felt anachronistic and dissonant watching it now was composer John Barnes' synth heavy score.

DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 113 minutes.

THE COLOR PURPLE (1985)*****

In preparation for the remake of THE COLOR PURPLE I thought I would revisit the original screen adaptation. It was directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Menno Meyjes and based on Alice Walker's iconic novel of black southern female misery.  At the time this must have seemed like rather an odd combination of director and writer for such material - two white men, known for their work in blockbuster action movies. Indeed, the race of the directorial choice attracted a lot of criticism, as well as Spielberg's coy depiction of its lesbian storyline.  I feel that both of these criticisms fail to consider the context of the time: the need to attract commercial backers and keep a PG-13 rating for the mass market. They also fail to acknowledge the opportunity to see so much black talent in front of and behind the lens - with stunning debut feature central performances from Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, as well as a masterful score from Quincy Jones.*  A more convincing criticism of both book and film is its depiction of black male sexual violence.  Added to this, one might criticise the racism of the film industry. While the film was nominated for eleven Oscars, it didn't win a single one. 

The book and film take place over the first half of the twentieth century in the rural South. Their protagonist is Celie - a black girl so oppressed that she is raped by her father and her incestuous children taken from her.  She is then given to another violent man as his wife, dudgeon and surrogate mother to his children.  The only love in Celie's life is her sister Nettie, but they are cruelly separated by her husband and she spends much of her life believing Nettie is dead.  The only friendship Celie has is with her stepdaughter-in-law Sophia, whose fierce temper and assertiveness are an inspiration and then a tragedy.  And the only lover Celie truly has is Shug, her husband's long-time mistress, who teaches Celie what real sexual pleasure can be.

The standard criticism of Spielberg films is that they are sentimental and gauche. There is sentiment here but it is all earned. Whoopi Goldberg's debut as Celie is so heartbreakingly sincere that one cannot help but glory in her small moments of happiness and love. I was similarly deeply moved by Shug (Margaret Avery), the stunning singer, in her final homecoming to her disapproving pastor father. And there is something quite haunting about Sophia's humbling, portrayed by an otherwise vivacious and scene-stealing Oprah Winfrey. 

There is so much else to admire in this film beyond the economic script and great performances. Allen Daviau's cinematographer portrays both the lush warmth of the South as well as the oppressive claustrophobia. There is both beauty and violence in this film. But for me, it's all about Whoopi Goldberg and Quincy's score. This is tremendously powerful film-making.

THE COLOR PURPLE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 154 minutes.  *I am curious to see how the new film - based on a musical adaptation of the book - will better the final "coming home" of Shug to a thrilling gospel score.) 

POOR THINGS***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 11

Iconic director of scabrous black comedies, Yorgos Lanthimos (THE FAVOURITE) returns to our screens with a steam-punk set, sexually charged satire so dark and strange that is left me gasping for breath.  Along with ZONE OF INTEREST, this film is doing something so audacious, so compelling and so far removed from the ordinary run of films that it deserves all the awards.  Whether it proves too strange, disturbing and provocative to appeal to a mainstream jury remains to be seen.

Emma Stone gives an astoundingly brave and career defining performance as Bella Baxter, a Frankenstein creation of adult woman and childlike brain.  We watch her rapid acquisition of language and intellectual ideas and sexual desires. Better explained in the source novel by Alasdair Gray, as she only knows her adult body, she has no shame or internalised misogyny. Bella is as free with her body as her thoughts.

Bella was brought to life by her guardian, Godwin (Willem Dafoe) and lives in an elaborate steampunk world of Lanthimos' vivid imagination. In Lanthimos' conception "God" is himself a victim of his surgeon-father's experiments.  Bella finds herself falling for the harmless, earnest Dr McCandless (Rami Youssef) but elopes with the charming, rogueish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn. It is here that her adventures, and ours, really begin, thanks to an uproariously funny and award worthy performance from Mark Ruffalo - apparently having the time of his life - and Lanthimos' beautifully reimagined  Mediterranean cities and Victorian hotel rooms. A shout out too for casting the iconic Hanna Shygulla as a wise old woman called Martha and Kathryn Hunter as a jaded Parisian madam. 

I cannot begin to describe the delights of a film that gives full flower to Lanthimos' dark gothic imagination - whether the production design of Baxter's house and successive interiors, to the wildly transgressive costumes that Bella wears, to the jarring, disturbingly brilliant score from Jerskin Fendrix. It is as if every element of the crew comes together in to deliver a heightened, sensual experience that frames and enables Stone's outlandish but also deeply moving performance. This is complete film-making of an extra-ordinary level of skill and accomplishment.  This is not to be missed, and on a big screen if possible.

POOR THINGS has a running time of 141 minutes and is rated R. It played Venice and London 2023. It will be released in the USA on December 8th.

MAESTRO*** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 7

MAESTRO was the first of two films I watched today that were well directed and acted, but where the chosen subject matter was not worthy of the efforts taken. Basically this film can be summarised as "wife is cool with her husband's bisexuality until she isn't, but stays married anyways".  I mean, okay. Domestic drama is okay I guess.  And there's a lot of great dramatic acting showing this. But oh my god, with these performers, and this direction, it could've done so much more.

The film is written by, directed by, and stars Bradley Cooper of THE HANGOVER fame.  He is making a very deliberate career handbrake-turn into wannabe auteur status by telling the story of Leonard Bernstein - acclaimed composer, conductor, educator, performer.  What's interesting, and ultimately frustrating, is that he chooses to do so solely through the lens of Bernstein's marriage to the actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan - SHE SAID). 

In a sense, this is a really interesting thing to do. Montealegre was apparently a significant artist in her own right. She was apparently drawn to Bernstein's genius and was progressive enough to accept him as bisexual and to tolerate his affairs as long as he was discreet. Until she wasn't. She stays, but explains it as a kind of sick joke of not knowing herself enough. She thought she was modern enough to not mind, but was actually more in need of Bernstein's attention than she had anticipated. 

As for Bernstein, in Cooper's conception, his promiscuous bisexuality was merely another aspect of his greed for life in general. He wanted more of everything. He rejected people's expectations that he would focus on becoming "just" the first great American conductor, or another great American composer. He wanted it all. He wanted to compose a film score, or a broadway musical, or teach at Tanglewood, as much as he wanted to write a great orchestral work or conduct a great orchestra. And in this life of having it all, those around him were just squeezed out for time. 

The tragedy of this film is that in this beautifully-acted, rendered domestic drama, we never see the wider social or political ramifications.  Because for Leonard Bernstein his identity WAS political.  Being Jewish, not anglicising one's name, playing in Palestine and then Israel, was indeed a political act.  Being bisexual, indiscreetly so, was and arguably remains a political act. But Cooper isn't interested in that. Until he is.  In a tonally jarring near-final scene we find an old, widowed, fat, sweaty Bernstein dancing in a 1980s nightclub with a far younger male student. Had I been watching a film about consensual bisexual affairs or a version of TAR?  I felt blind-sided by this scene.  I wished the film had been dealing in this stuff all along. But it hadn't, so why the left-turn now?

Still, there's a lot to like in this film, and I will for sure watch Cooper's next directorial venture. The first hour in particular is kinetic and assured, with real visual flair.  Matthew Libatique's cinematography is as good as anything he's done since BLACK SWAN.  And kudos to Cooper for getting Bernstein's physicality, voice and conducting style, not least thanks to some absolutely superb make-up and prosthetic work. As for Mulligan, there's a single dramatic confrontation in the marital apartment that is a tour de force for both, but especially her. She is always excellent and especially so here. In smaller parts, I really liked Maya Hawke as their eldest child. 

But if you're coming for Bernstein the musician you are going to be disappointed, as I was. We only truly see about seven minutes of him conducting near the end of the film. It's the finale of Mahler 2 and it's stunning to behold. Like Bernstein, I wanted more. 

MAESTRO has a running time of 129 minutes and is rated R. It played Venice and London 2023 and will be released on December 20th on Netflix.

MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS****

MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS is a three-star film turned into a four-star film by the both delightful and moving central performance from Lesley Manville, as well as some sharper than expected writing.  I came to the film for whimsy and froth but thanks to Manville we get something deeper and more acute in its diagnosis of post-war class snobbery.  

Manville plays a post-war cockney cleaning lady who is taken for granted and grifted on by her rich employers (Anna Chancellor - magisterially awful).  Good and ill fortune (not least her war widows pension) give Mrs Harris the money to go to Paris and buy a couture dress from Christian Dior - her heart's desire. She has to contend with the snobbery of the Dior saleswoman - an equally haughty Isabelle Huppert, but soon wins over the ladies of the sewing room, the models, and the accountant (EMILY IN PARIS' Lucas Bravo) with her good humour, good heart and ready cash.

Naturally, she gets her dress, and is the agent of romance, and all against a soft sunlit Paris that is creamy-delicious to look at.  But there's always the dark backing of reality and Mrs Harris is no fool. She knows when she's being condescended to, and to see her face crumple when a certain character pigeonholes her as a servant is to have your heart break.  The genius of Mrs Harris is that, amid the whirlwind, she never loses herself. She is proud of what and who she is, despite society's attempts to make her feel less than. And I've never felt a delightful ending more earned and joyous. 

MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS has a running time of 115 minutes and is rated PG. It is available to rent and own.

THE WOMAN KING****

THE WOMAN KING is a curiously old-fashioned and satisfying action epic that brings to an untold (at least in the west) story of the Dahomey empire the same kind of sword and sandal grand sweep of films like GLADIATOR.  Director Gina

Prince Bythewood (THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES) proves to be an impressive helmer of large-scale battle sequences. Cinematographer Polly Morgan conjures up majestic landscapes and the visceral heat of the red-earthed soil.  And Terrence Blanchard gives us a score that both has orchestral majesty and the bone-stirring war-cries of native songs.  This is a film to stir us and impress us.  Just look at Viola Davis' newly jacked physique. She and her female warriors look every inch the part.  But this film also gives us real emotion and doesn't shy away from the terror of war, far beyond the typical machismo of male-led films.  When Davis' General Nansica relates how she was the victim of rape, we are with her in her trauma.  When her deputy Izogie (Lashana Lynch) and her newly trained warrior Nawe (Thuso Mbedu) are captured, we feel their peril.  Maybe this isn't such old-fashioned film-making after all.

The only thing that lets this film down is its rather wooden dialogue from screenwriters Dana Stevens and Maria Bello, and a rather thinly drawn set of antagonists in John Boyega's King and his wife. What the film posits is a callow king who is torn between taking the riches of slavery (his wife's advice) and standing up to the neighbouring Oyo tribe and diverting his own economy toward palm oil production (Nansica's advice).  Sadly the King does little but look aggrieved and his wife is a caricature rich spoiled woman.  The film could've done more to show her motivations, given that her position is actually the one that the Dahomey empire took.

THE WOMAN KING is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 135 minutes.

EMILY****

I sat down to MR MALCOLM'S LIST wanting to love it and left bitterly disappointed. I sat down to EMILY resenting its premise and yet loved it! Two costume dramas. Both directed by feature film debutantes.  So very different in style and ambition.

First the premise.  I hate when we have to explain genius. When we have to explain why Grammar school boy Will Shakespeare wrote so beautifully by arguing that he was actually an aristo.  When we have to explain why Emily Dickinson could write with such passion and fervour though barely leaving her virginal solitude.  The same goes for Emily Bronte. She in unknowable - her slight life barely explaining the enduring power of her savage, dark, brooding masterpiece Wuthering Heights.  And so it is tempting to modern minds to graft onto her slender biography a torrid sexual affair that speaks to her knowledge of love denied.  I hate this stuff.  But I also loved this film.

Emma Mackay plays Emily Bronte as a smart young woman full of energy and mischief and intellectual curiosity but hemmed in by Victorian provincial rectitude - not to mention the symbolism of confined corseted clothing. She loves her family but is perhaps envious of her brother being able to try his talent as an artist and writer, and angry at his dissipating himself on drink and drugs. The film posits a sexual awakening with the new curate (Oliver Jackson Cohen), who respects her intellect, encourages her to write, but is unwilling to throw off convention in continuing their love affair. 

The film is written and directed by Frances O'Connor, an actress who costume drama fans will remember for her spirited Fanny Price, quite unlike anything in Jane Austen's actual Mansfield Park. Here, she reimagines Emily Bronte as a proto-feminist proto-modern writer in a manner that feels entirely plausible and authentic. She is helped in realising her vision by Nanu Segal's stunning landscape cinematography and most particularly by Abel Korzeniowski tremendously inventive, all-enveloping, stunning score. But mostly this is about Emma Mackay, showing once again her talent and ability to bring sensitivity, intelligence and spirit to any role she touches. 

I hope to see more from both O'Connor as director and Mackay as actor. You'll know why when you get to a tour de force central scene at a seance where both Mackay and O'Connor conjure up a feeling of such intense grief and compassion and such spectral fright as to show two women really harnessing all their artistic power. This is film-making to seek out and applaud.

EMILY is rated R and has a running time of 130 minutes. It is available to rent and own.

MR MALCOLM'S LIST**

MR MALCOLM'S LIST is a regency Austen-esque self-proclaimed rom-com that is actually devoid of sexual chemistry or satire.  It sits upon the screen like a dead fish, plodding faithfully to its entirely predictable conclusion, under-written and limply acted. The only exception to this turgid tedium is Zawe Ashton's arrogant but vulnerable Miss Thistlewaite, who drives the plot and the only real attempt at comedy.  

The plot, such as it is, is out of a Sweet Valley High novel. Mr Malcolm is a fastidious but rich bachelor - think Mr Darcy.  He snubs the superficial Miss Thistlewaite so she decides to lure him into falling in love with her friend Selina, before Selina rejects HIM with her own list. The problem is that Selina and Malcolm are actually ideal for each other, and Miss T is also exposed as a snob for not accepting the courtship of Captain Ossory, who is beneath her in the social pecking order. 

I love Austen. I love Austen inspired rom-coms both high-brow and low. I love Bridgerton!  So I should be the ideal audience for this film.  I was in its corner. The indie costume drama is a rare thing and one cast in a refreshingly colour-blind way even rarer. I sat down to watch it hoping it would be brilliant.  I suspect the faults lie in two directions, as director Emma Holly Jones conjures up some lovely use of landscape and interior.  First of all, Suzanne Allain's script, based on her own novel, is very dull indeed. Second of all, Freida Pinto is hopelessly miscast and/or underwritten as Selina. She is meant to be independent of mind and a grounded, vital foil for Mr Malcolm (or so I infer).  Here she comes across as meek and milquetoast as Fanny Price.  Plus there was zero chemistry between her and Sope Dirisu's Mr Malcolm. I couldn't have cared less whether they got together or not. We get further with Theo James's Captain Ossory romancing Zawe Ashton's Miss Thistlewaite but that story isn't given time to breathe. Also, not to sound ageist, but I don't understand why a film about two young twenty-somethings is cast with late thirty-somethings?

Overall, one to avoid.

MR MALCOLM'S LIST is rated PG and has a running time of 117 minutes. It is available to rent and own.

THE WONDER*****

THE WONDER is one of the best movies I have seen this year: sublime cinematography and score; a breathtakingly good central performance from Florence Pugh; and a script that takes us deep into discussion with ourselves about the nature of faith and family. Kudos to director Sebastian Lelio - who seems to specialise in giving us films that interrogate and shine a light on complex female characters in tough situations - whether in GLORIA, A FANTASTIC WOMAN or DISOBEDIENCE - the latter also deeply concerned with the interactions of religious extremism and our physical experience.

The woman in question here is Florence Pugh's Libby - a Crimean War nurse and widow despatched to central Ireland to sit watch over an apparently miraculous young girl called Anna (Kila Lord Cassidy) who has sustained herself for months despite not eating.  People are already travelling from far and wide to observe this miracle, and Anna's demeanour is one of serene acceptance of her role. Her mother and father are deeply religious and resist Libby's common sense scientific injunctions to let the girl eat, even if by forced feeding.

Libby's ally in scepticism is the journalist William (Tom Burke). He bears the scars of earlier experience, just like Libby, and they find common cause against the insular town elders and priest (Toby Jones most notably and Ciaran Hinds).  

It soon becomes clear that we are living in a world where the consuming or withholding of food is a weapon and a punishment and a martyrdom. This is an Ireland not far gone from the horrors of the Famine, which touched William's life particularly tragically.  We are also in an Ireland so doused in religion that fasting takes on meaning and martyrdom, and perhaps penance. Survival by merely eating is then relegated to the profane. Modern viewers cannot help but see prefigurement of further colonial injustices with the forced feeding of hunger strikers, and their modern day self-described martyrdom. And of course, where there is religious control we are now - sadly - conditioned to expect abuse.

The highest praise goes to Florence Pugh in a performance that is full of humanity but also resolute strength and intelligence.  I also loved the real-life mother daughter combination of Elaine and Kila Lord Cassidy. The former in particular is playing one of the most ambiguous and elusive roles as Anna's mother and I am still debating her motivations.

Behind the lens we must start with DP Ari Wegner (THE POWER OF THE DOG) who creates a film of oppressive interiors where the Dark Ages of religious belief feel as though they have been manifested in a house.  This contrasts with Libby and Will walking through open wild moors allowing us to breathe for a moment.  Then we have an excellent script - written by Alice Birch who also adapted Pugh's breakout film LADY MACBETH.  The screenplay is adapted from a book by Emma Donoghue, most famous for ROOM. It is so full of layered meaning and slipperiness that I am left in awe. Last but not least we must mention composer Matthew Herbert (A FANTASTIC WOMAN) with an eery, spectral score that gives the scrupulously period film an uncanny and anachronistic feeling that hints at the subject matter that transcends the era of the film.

THE WONDER is rated R and has a running time of 108 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London 2022 and is now on release on Netflix.

ENOLA HOLMES 2****

I was an enormous fan the original Enola Holmes film and I’m please to report that the sequel, reuniting most of the talent in front of and behind the lens, is just as smart and funny. It’s even more pleasing that the central murder-mystery is really well-constructed, and that the movie manages to incorporate its real history of the rise of the women’s labour movement with a light touch that is genuinely moving, rather than being crude or too on the nose.

The film opens with Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) struggling to find customers who take her detecting skills seriously. In desperation she takes the case of a missing match-girl which leads to the wider mystery of why so many of these factory workers are dying of typhus and why the profits at the factory have mysteriously rocketed. This brings Enola into the path of her famous elder brother Sherlock (Henry Cavill) whose case about corruption at the highest levels of government and industry is seemingly connected with Enola’s.  

Along the way, we get to re-connect with Enola’s aristocratic love interest Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), the martial arts supremo Edith (Susan Wokoma) and of course the proto-feminist that is Enola’s mum (Helena Bonham Carter).  And of the new cast members, David Thewlis is particularly scene-chomping as the nasty policeman, Inspector Grail. We also get a marvellous cameo from Sharon Duncan-Brewster, who was so impressive as Liet-Kynes in the recent DUNE remake.

The resulting film is fast-paced and often Guy Ritchie-inspired in its kinetic fight scenes.  There’s plenty of fun and even some meta-comedy at the expense of the knowing fourth-wall breaking catchphrase “Tis I!”

The only character I can’t get my head around is Cavill’s Sherlock, playing against type because his character has far less action than the female characters. He mostly looks grave and concerned and doesn’t entirely convince in his early scene as a drunk.  It’s interesting to see that the writers have given him a sidekick - Dr Watson - in the final credits scene. Let’s see how Cavill does in a more conventional buddy-comedy role.

ENOLA HOLMES 2 has a running time of 129 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is released on Netflix today.

LIVING - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 5

LIVING is a delicate, quiet, deeply affecting and faithful adaptation of Kurosawa's 1950s film Ikiru, brought to the screen by screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro and director Oliver Hermanus.  How ironic that a Japanese-British writer and South African director should make a film that so piercingly investigates what it is to be that most English of things - an elderly, middle-class civil servant - an English "gentleman" of a certain period - perhaps epitomised by our late Queen - of English decline, of the stiff upper lip, of just getting on with it and not causing a fuss.  Then again, one could argue that this kind of investigation has been at the heart of Ishiguro's stunning oeuvre from the start, and what better writer to take an iconic Japanese film and inject it with Englishness.

Bill Nighy gives the performance of his career - the kind of award-worthy performance that makes you wonder why he wasn't offered more challenging dramatic roles decades ago - as the stiff, near silent civil servant whose entire job seems to be blocking action in a Kafka-esque byzantine bureaucracy. As Mr Williams shuffles another manilla folder into a pile on his desk his guiding principle seems to be that "it can do no harm" to rest there for a few more weeks. 

The news that Mr Williams has mere months to live jolts him into self-reflection. He attempts a seaside jaunt to live it up, being guided with care by Tom Burke's roué. But this seems out of character and tacked on. The real enlivenment comes from his relationship with a young former colleague played by SEX EDUCATION's Aimee Lou Wood in a break-out role of real warmth, honesty and gentle humour. Mr Williams envies her vitality, and unable to communicate with his son, as much of a procrastinator as his father, he confides in her, and finds the inspiration to now make what small difference he can - to actually do his job by shepherding the building of a children's playground.

The resulting film is tender, beautifully observed and shown with quite some directorial flair.  As with the best drama, it's all about what isn't said, and the pauses between the words.  There's also some excellent, dryly comic set piece passive-aggression when Mr Williams turns the bureaucracy on its head by effectively sitting and making people feel awkward. Credit to Oliver Hermanus and his team for beautifully capturing the look and feel of post-war London - not least Sandy Powell's costumes. There's real panache in the way Hermanus depicts the seaside episode in particular, set to music, with little dialogue but everything expressed in glances and responses.  This is very fine film-making indeed.

LIVING has a running time of 102 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film has played Sundance, Telluride, Venice, San Sebastian,Toronto and the BFI London Film Festival. It will be released in the UK on November 4th and in the USA on December 23rd. 

CORSAGE - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 3

CORSAGE is a stunning piece of imaginative film-making from writer-director Marie Kreutzer, featuring a memorable performance from Vicky Krieps (THE PHANTOM THREAD) as the iconic Austro-Hungarian Empress Sisi.

Kreutzer's approach is to take a bold ahistorical approach to get to the emotional truth of an incredibly famous, beautiful woman, trapped in a loveless marriage and burdened by the obligations of her public role.  It is similar in approach - though bolder in its leaps of imagination - than Sofia Coppola's MARIE ANTOINETTE - far more successful than Pablo Larrain's hysterical SPENCER, though less honest in its treatment of Sisi's eating disorder.  The key difference is that in both of those movies, the central women were depicted as passive victims, whereas Krieps' Sisi is the architect of her own liberation.

The movie opens with Sisi about to turn 40 in 1870s Vienna, the mother of a teenage Crown Prince and a precocious and dutiful daughter. She is obsessed with her weight, skin and youth, starving herself and riding, fencing and doing gym exercises to maintain her figure. She doesn't want to have sex with her husband, but is also jealous of a young girl that he flirts with. At first we think she is in love with her riding instructor but then realises she just gets off on him (and her husband) looking at her adoringly. As with Princess Diana, we get the impression that she is both trapped by society's superficial and unreal expectations of her, but that she has also internalised these misogynistic expectations of beauty and turned into a narcissist. Certaintly, her treatment of her confidante and lady in waiting speaks to her putting her own happiness before that of all others. 

The wonder of Krieps performance is that Sisi never seems passive or a victim even when she is: she's actually spiky, bitchy, rebellious and wild, to the point of neglecting her duties with her indulgent cousin Ludwig of Bavaria. She's also incredibly athletic and not lying when she says she's a better rider than her instructor. It helps that Kreutzer chooses not to show us the excesses of Sisi - her absurd hair and beauty regimen - her more waspish comments about fat people - her serial infidelities. This is a much less extreme and yet more extreme Sisi - less fat-shaming and more feminist -  one more palatable to contemporary tastes. 

As to the rest of the film I love that Kreutzer shows us people in full costume dress with retinues of obsequious servants but places them in derelict locations filled with anachronistic props. It sounds too on the nose, but it actually works really well to underpin how rotten the edifice of the central European monarchy was at that stage, and the sham of these great imperial monarchs with their rotten teeth and fake beards.  Kreutzer's Sisi just takes that fakery one step further. 

CORSAGE has a running time of 113 minutes. It played Cannes, where Vicky Krieps won an acting prize. It is playing in Official Competition at the BFI London Film Festival. It will be released in the USA on December 23rd and in the UK on December 24th.

This is not a review of DON'T WORRY DARLING

....because my husband and I left the screening after an hour of tedium. He suggested I title this non-review, Worry Darling, but I responded that this would imply a level of engagement and giving a shit that simply wasn't earned.

To be clear, I came into the screening without prejudice, and with some hope of a good time given how much I liked director Olivia Wilde's debut feature, BOOKSMART.  But as the soon as the movie began there was an eery feeling of being trapped in a mash-up of all the fake-world dystopian greatest hits, with all of the style and little to actually say that was new and of note.  A cursory googling of the remainder of the plot reveals that my husband and I had predicted the plot twist and inevitable ending.

I do rather wonder how this movie was greenlit. In a world where STEPFORD WIVES is so commonplace a concept in popular culture - where we've all watched Westworld and Good Life - where we've all seen THE VILLAGE - did anyone stop to ask if Wilde had anything new to say on the subject of men trying to control women in a fake 1950s world?  

Even the look of the film is derivative. There's nothing in the way the characters are dressed that costume designer Janie Bryant didn't do better in Mad Men. And as for Wilde's choice of framing and camera shots, this all felt overly stylised but not to a constant theme - as if she were throwing together every outlandish idea without a real directorial vision of what she was trying to achieve. Worst of all there was no slow build of tension and unease, as in Jordan Peele's superb GET OUT. For a film that wants us to hate a misogynistic husband for telling his horrified wife to stop being hysterical, this movie is hysterical from about 7 minutes in.

In front of the lens, Florence Pugh is a rare talent and carries this film such as we saw it. Harry Styles is basically Harry Styles as her husband. One wonders if they wrote in that he was British because he couldn't be arsed - or simply - literally - just didn't have the acting talent - to do an American accent. The only performance that felt raw and moving was that of Kiki Lane as the profoundly and rightly disturbed Margaret, but we saw precious little of her, as reported on her social media. 

DON'T WORRY DARLING is rated R and has a running time of 123 minutes. The film played Venice 2022 and is on release in cinemas.

CYRANO**

 

French poet-playwright Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac has been adapted for screen since the dawn of the silent era - most notably with Steve Martin and Gerard Depardieu taking on the role of the tragic romantic hero.  In this adaptation by Erica Schmidt, from her own successful stage musical., the lead actor is Schmidt's husband and GAME OF THRONES' Peter Dinklage, playing Cyrano as a witty, articulate soldier who is crippled by self-doubt not because of the play's large nose but because of his dwarfism. Cyrano is in love with his childhood friend Roxanne (HALEY BENNETT), but fears she will reject him because of his appearance. So, when she falls for his handsome but inarticulate fellow soldier Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr - THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7), Cyrano offers to write Roxanne love letters on his behalf.

Matters take a grim turn when Roxanne is courted by the rich and predatory De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn - ROGUE ONE - in full pantomime villain mode), and Cyrano helps Roxanne and Christian marry in secret before the two soldiers are sent to war. 

The resulting film is spare and elegantly constructed but filmed in a maddeningly, almost GODFATHER II chiaroscuro which the pretentious director Joe Wright clearly feels is emblematic of hidden truths and deception.  Poor Ben Mendelsohn is not asked to give a performance of any depth and neither is Kelvin Harrison Jr. There is far more to Haley Bennett's passionate, smart and rebellious Roxanne, although she is made to be so perceptive and witty it's hard to believe she wouldn't a) rumble the ruse and b) love Cyrano for his intellect from the start. There's also something deeply uncomfortable for a modern audience seeing a young woman duped in this way, into a marriage with a man she cannot help but soon find out is not who she thought he was. 

And did I mention this was a musical? With bad music that has a kind of weird country rock feel that works against its setting, costumes and dour, po-faced mood?

The only two reasons to watch this film - and the two stars I have awarded it - are as follows: first, Peter Dinklage is charismatic and compelling and heart-breaking as Cyrano.  Second, there is a particularly good and deeply sad song by soldiers on the eve of battle.

CYRANO has a running time of 123 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is available to rent and own.

MOTHERING SUNDAY* - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 9

Eva Husson's MOTHERING SUNDAY is, I am sad to report, a total failure of a film. It has nothing in it to capture the interest of the viewer, and may even verge on the exploitative. This is all the more frustrating because it's an adaptation of Graham Swift's critically acclaimed novel of the same name, which told the story of a famous author and how an affair she had when working in service in the 1920s set her on the path to greatness. The problem is that this film shows us nothing of that greatness - we see no literary merit or acute perception by means of voiceover or later extracts of novels. Rather, the film merely declares the woman a success.  As a result, we are unconvinced, and don't understand why we should be interested in this author's origin story.

As the film opens we are in the last days of World War One.  The tone is one of suppressed grief and rage.  Three upper class families meet over a weekend in Henley. It becomes clear that one of them has lost both of their children in the war: the father (Colin Firth) represses this knowledge with banal cheeriness while the mother (Olivia Colman) looks sullen and detached but occasionally flares up into tears and deeply selfish condescension. Another family has lost two sons already, and the third, played by Josh O'Connor has inherited all their hopes and burdens. He must now study law and marry his deceased brother's fiancee.  He rebels by shagging the neighbour's maid (Odessa Young) and vast amounts of the film consist of them lying naked on a bed, or - once he departs for an engagement lunch - her wandering aimlessly naked around his house. This is basically 70% of the film. Will anything happen? No. Not even when a major event happens. There's no confrontation. No exposure. No dramatic tension. Nothing but boredom.

We then flash forward at intervals to the maid's second love - a black philosopher. Oh, we think, this could be really fascinating. How does a black man navigate Oxford in the 1920s? What prejudice do they face as a mixed-race couple? But no. Zero drama or character exploration here. Pretty girl gets typewriter and supportive boyfriend. Writes novel we don't see. Is apparently brilliant. We don't see it. Grows up to be Glenda Jackson. Is insufferably arrogant. Who gives a shit?

The film was so dull I started wondering what the point of the nudity was. Is it that it's meant to be sex positive? If so, cool. Apparently this is what writer Alice Birch does, or did, in her adaptation of Sally Rooney's Normal People. But I couldn't help wondering what people would say if a male director made a film that basically just followed a pretty young naked girl around with no apparent dramatic purpose.

MOTHERING SUNDAY is rated R and has a running time of 111 minutes. It played Cannes, Toronto and the BFI London Film Festival 2021.  It will be released in the USA and UK on November 19th.