HOT MILK** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

HOT MILK is the directorial debut from screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz (IDA) based on a novel by Deborah Levy.  Fiona Shaw gives a characteristically superb performance as a narcissistic manipulative mother, Rose, who may or may not be faking her inability to walk to keep her only daughter, Sofia, captive.  Sofia is in her mid-20s and while mother and daughter do seem to have genuine affection for each other, the narrative arc of the film is seeing Sofia slowly embracing her suppressed anger at her mother's constant passive-aggressive criticism and unwillingness to embrace the very expensive medical treatment they have come to Spain for.  We are meant to read this journey to action as being mediated through Sofia's sexual awakening by Vicky Krieps' vulnerable but charismatic boutique owner. Sadly there isn't enough meat on the bones of the character development or plot in this 90 minute film that feels 120 minutes long.  In particular, the side-quest to Athens and a final dramatic showdown seem insufficiently explored or signalled.  I feel really sorry for the talented young actress Emma Mackay (Sex Education) who is let down by a film too thin for her talents, and within which the only real star turn goes to Fiona Shaw.  

HOT MILK is rated R and has a running time of 92 minutes. It had its world premiere at Berlin 2025.

AMMONITE - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Closing Night Gala

AMMONITE suffers in my head from comparisons with the devastatingly brilliant PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, which played at last year's festival and has a very similar story at its heart. In both cases a young girl trapped in either the reality or prospect of a loveless and controlling marriage meets a talented older working class woman with a professional skill.  In both cases, the meeting takes place in a geographically isolated and brutally beautiful place and the relationship that builds is a slow-burn to a physically passionate end.  But in the latter, I truly believed in the connection between the two women, and in the former I'm not sure I did.

Part of the reason for this is that it was 50 mins for the protagonists in AMMONITE to have an actual (if insubstantial) conversation and 1hr10m for them to have a kiss.  And the interest in the characters is deeply asymmetrical.  Kate Winslet's Mary Anning IS fascinating. She's so repressed and locked in - maybe as much by her consciousness of her poverty and working class status as by her homosexuality - and has a fierce pride that refuses to accept help.  By contrast, Saiorse Ronan's Charlotte is the typical silly Victorian woman, fit for nothing but to be admired for her beauty. This is not to victim-shame, but she is exactly the product of societal strictures and doesn't really display an inner life in the way that PORTRAIT's young woman does. There doesn't seem to be much under the surface.  I had the feeling in AMMONITE that I always get watching Brideshead Revisited. I can understand why Charles is fascinated by Sebastian but not why Sebastian wants to hang out with Charles!

So the relationship develops and is crystallised at a beautifully staged elegant supper party where Charlotte is immediately embraced by the ladies, and Mary is left sitting excluded at the back, full of jealousy and surprise at just how much she resents them taking *her* girl away from her. We then move to a hyper explicit sex scene.  Now, it's really great to see a no-nonsense depiction of lesbian sex on screen, but it did feel strange in a movie where so much is repressed and withheld. It just felt tonally jarring rather than a cathartic release and a meeting of bodies and souls.

On the positive side, this movie looks and sounds ravishing. The costumes and way in which Lyme Regis is depicted is as austere and fierce and unique as Mary, and the sound design batters our ears with gales and tides that hint at what Mary feels under her still surface.  The acting was also top notch as one might expect,  with Winslet giving a masterclass in facial acting where there is no dialogue.  I also loved the Fiona Shaw character Elizabeth and wanted to see more of her, because I feel so much of Mary's characters reticence is due to class rather than queer concerns and that plays into their former relationship. I also love that because Charlotte is so worldly she has only experienced love as a kind of material possession and so when she falls for Mary she also expresses that with a kind of material possession. Just as she, as a wife, was expected to be subsumed without objection into her husband's world, she now expects that of Mary.

I also love how male a space the British Museum is, and the power of these two women at the centre of it at the end - as though the director Francis Lee (GOD'S OWN COUNTRY) is finally re-centring women in British history. Here is a woman who's name is not mentioned on the fossil that's on display at the Museum, but she can reclaim it visually in this film. Truly, it has been a long time coming.

AMMONITE has a running time of 120 minutes and played Toronto and London 2020.  It opens in the USA on November 13th.

LIZZIE - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Eleven

LIZZIE is the latest retelling of the Lizzie Borden story, from a feminist queer perspective.  Although Craig William Macneill's direction is pretty workmanlike, a  tightly written script from Bryce Kass and a very strong central performance from Chloë Sevigny make this film memorable, sensitive and provocative.

As all of us know from our playground nursery rhymes, Lizzie Borden hacked her her father and stepmother to death. But the reality is far more interesting.  She was put on trial but acquitted, although she was later estranged from her sister and died a spinster. This film assumes Lizzie's guilt, as most people do, but seeks to tell us why and how she committed the murders.

As the film opens in 1892 New England we learn that Lizzie's father is wealthy but is channelling the family's wealth to her hated stepmother's family.  This was true, and indeed a motive for murder.  The rest is assertion. The film asserts that the father was serially raping the family's maids - and that the latest maid, Bridget (Kristen Stewart) was having an affair with Lizzie (further motive).  The film further asserts that Lizzie was subject to seizures and lived under the threat that her father would have her institutionalised (yet further motive).  But beyond all of this, surely as an intelligent curious woman there would be great appeal in simply living free from the constraints of society.  On this point, Bridget seems more realistic than Lizzie about how far they can escape.

COLETTE - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Two

Wash Westmoreland switches gears from his wonderful STILL ALICE to a period drama about the French Belle Epoque novelist Colette, and her marriage to the literary impresario "Willy".  As the movie opens we see the charming, avuncular Willy come to rural Burgundy to woo the girl over a decade younger than him, but our expectations over-turned as this apparent innocent meets him later in a hay barn for a quickie.  They then move to Paris and begin their married life. She is frustrated by his affairs and flirtations - he says it's just what men do.  But the real conflict will come when Willy enlists Colette to be on his "factory" of writers. They provide the words - he the brand name and marketing.  Colette pours her childhood memories into books that effectively create a new genre - coming of age stories with a hint of subversive sexuality for young women.  Combined with Willy's carefully orchestrated PR machine, the books are a success. But all under Willy's name....

What's wonderful about this film is its recreation of a fascinating period of history - one of bold ideas, beautiful art, freedom and flirtation.  The costumes and sets are beautifully done, and even Thomas Ades' score introduces what would then have been cutting edge compositions. After all, it's this artsy salon crowd that would first have embraced Satie's Gymonpedes. I also love the completely unflamboyant way in which the film embraces colour-blind casting, and its straightforward depiction of gay relationships and gender fluid living.

As for the main strokes of the story, the script (Wash Westmoreland, the late Richard Glatzer, Rebecca Lenkiewicz) commits sins of omission rather than commission.  It is very true to the life of Colette and Willy, and especially to their facility with words. What might have been quite a dirge-like film about a woman exploited by a man is thus transformed into something very smart and witty, and often laugh out loud funny. To that end, Dominic West - who has been getting away with rogueish behaviour since THE WIRE - is perfectly cast as the "fat arsehole".  Indeed, after a rather triumphant speech by a career-best Keira Knightley, one feels rather uplifted and hopeful at the end of the film - something confirmed by end title cards that tell us how happy and successful Colette was, and of her position as the premiere women of French letters.  

My only slight complaint is that the film wants to subtly shoe-horn the Colette story into having an ending that's more streamlined and progressive than the reality would prove.  If you knew nothing else about her than what you saw in the film, you might suppose that she fought for and won all the rights to be seen as the sole author of her work and that she had a long and happy relationship with Missy.  By contrast, the relationship with Missy ended (Missy ended up committing suicide after the war) and Colette married a man and had a child.  And while she did win the rights to be sole author after Willy's death, after HER death, Willy's son contested the authorship again. 

COLETTE has a running time of 110 minutes and is rated R.  The film played Sundance, Toronto and London 2018. It went on limited release in the USA on September 21st and will be released in the UK on January 25th 2019.

THE TREE OF LIFE

This review contains spoilers.

THE TREE OF LIFE opens with a mother in an idealised 1950s American Suburbia reacting to a telegram telling her that her that her son has died. This is inter-cut with a middle-aged man in a contemporary American city - a prisoner of the sterile modern architecture that he has helped create.  We intuit that this man is her son, the elder brother of the child who died. And he too is trying to make sense of his grief - to unravel the meaning of his life and his brother's death - and to understand - on the most profound existential level - "how did I get here?"  

This opening prologue sets up both the style and themes of the movie that is to follow.  Stunning photography of the natural world set against the world that ambitious men have created. Whispered voice-overs questioning the meaning of existence - the choice between Grace and Ambition.  The audience left to intuit what is really happening - and to glory in the sensory experience.  I suspect that most viewers will know at this point whether they are going to find the film a pretentious, wilfully obscure film over-loaded with hokey spiritual themes, or a cinematic masterpiece that pushes the boundaries of narrative cinema and has an earnest engagement with spiritual matters that leaves most contemporary cinema looking superficial and banal.  I fell into the latter camp. 

And so, after its opening prologue, the film moves into its first act - the most challenging in the film and presumably the point at which many audience members walk out. Because the questioning brother, now grown-up, tries to answer his questions by taking us right back to the beginning. Not to the beginning of his brother's life, but to the beginning of life itself.  We are immersed into a twenty minute display of creation - Kubrickian visuals that are quite simply wonderful in the literal sense of that world. Writer-director Terrence Malick wants us to wonder at the glory of nature - the power and beauty of it - but also to see that the tendency toward brutality was always there - even from the time of the pre-history.  My reaction to a scene where a dinosaur holds down the head of another injured dinosaur, and then tentatively lifts up his foot, was to see this is the same questioning of grace versus brutality.  I wouldn't blame others if they thought, WTF?  

In the second act we return to 1950s suburbia, and see the birth of three sons of the family.  Brad Pitt plays the father, truly loving but also a strict disciplinarian. It is a nuanced performance and arguably the best of his career. He has a harsh self-improvement philosophy, and is feared rather than loved by his children. The mother, played by Jessica Chastain, is cast as a kind of Virgin Mary figure - loving, forgiving, gentle, a source of succour.  She looks on mournfully as she sees the father castigate the children.  And so we have embodied the battle between the Ambition and Grace. It is a battle that the father ultimately loses - his musical career and his patents come to nothing  - and they have to leave their family home in a scene that ends the second act. He admits in a voice-over that his striving has brought him nothing but estrangement from his family and disappointment. He demands kisses from his children, he knows that they hate him.  The one son he is truly proud of - who he accompanies on the piano in a marvellous scene - is killed. And the elder son, who watches this scene of intimacy from outside the window, is left resentful.  

That isn't to say that this section of the movie is depressing - there are scenes of children goofing around that made me utterly nostalgic for my own childhood - and all portrayed with an intimacy that is captivating.  The camera is typically placed at the height of a child, looking around table-legs or looking up at adults. And the mother is portrayed in one particular scene as floating in the air - just as a little kid might ideate his mother as a kind of angelic figure. It is truly beautiful. 

In the final act of the film, we move into a kind of dream world, where the questioning middle-aged son is reunited with his family from the 1950s - including his kid brother. The mother and father are overjoyed to see the little boy, it feels to anyone familiar with the Bible like a reunion in paradise. And then we have, after two hours of questioning, a scene that I found utterly cathartic - a scene in which the mother seems to accept that God has taken her son, "I give him back to you", surrounded by the supporting embrace of the people on the beach.  A lot of reviewers have criticised this scene in particular as being an unnecessary epilogue - detracting from the scenes in suburbia. But to me, this is the most crucial part of the film. Without it, we have no resolution, no closure, and the film really has been for nothing.

I am fully aware at how earnest and pretentious this review might seem. What can I say? Malick approaches his material with such a sense of wonder and goodness and earnest questioning - his films are quite without cynicism and it seems mean-spirited to approach them with anything but that same degree of earnestness.  I suspect that this unabashed, heart on your sleeve approach - this wide-eyed wonder at the beauty of nature and the goodness in the world - is what irks so many modern viewers, so used to post-modern irony and nihilism.  This is a film that comes from a time before ironic detachment. In fact, it wants us to jump into our sensory experiences, without barriers, and to really feel everything.  It is, in that sense, a truly radical, truly stunning, beautiful, graceful film. It is, to my mind, Malick's best work since Badlands, a worthy winner of the Palme D'Or, and a true pantheon film.

THE TREE OF LIFE played Cannes 2011 where it won the Palme D'Or. It was released earlier this year in France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Greece, Israel, Portugal, Sweden, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Poland, Germany, Austria, Taiwan, the Philippines and Australia. It was released this weekend in Hong Kong, Thailand, Ireland, the UK and the USA. It opens on August 12th in Japan; on August 25th in New Zealand and Finland; on September 2nd in Norway; on September 16th in Spain; on December 9th in Estonia and on December 15th in Argentina.

DORIAN GRAY - a mess

In recent years, filmgoers have been treated to some rather lovely adaptations of Oscar Wilde's work, not least director Oliver Parker's AN IDEAL HUSBAND. Therefore, I was rather hopeful about Parker's adaptation of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. However, Dorian Gray is a very different beast to Wilde's society plays. They dealt with issues of contemporary morality, certainly, but in light atmosphere. By contrast, Dorian Gray is a pyschological novel, dealing with debauchery and corruption, using the genre tropes of gothic horror. The key question was whether Oliver Parker's directing style - high-gloss Merchant Ivory with whimsical modern touches - would be flexible enough to grapple with a meatier book.

The novel opens in late nineteenth century London. Talented artist Basil Hallward falls in love with handsome young Dorian Gray while painting his picture. Of course, there is no crude declaration of love given that homosexuality is taboo, but sublimated "ownership" of Gray's social life. This is put under threat when Dorian becomes fascinated with Basil's friend Lord Henry Wootton - a man who, while a member of the British establishment at the height of Victorian prudery, preaches a life of unrestrained sensuality. Encouraged by the man he admires, falling prey to narcissism seeing the finished portrait, Dorian starts to value beauty and art above all else, casually wishing that he could remain as young and beautiful as his portrait. He callously rejects his young lover Sibyl Vane when her talent fades and learns that his casual wish has been fulfilled: the wages of sin show on the portrait but he remains outwardly youthful and innocent.

With this apparent freedom, Dorian degenerates into a life of excess and cruelty - sexual encounters straight and gay, and eventually to blackmail and murder. It is here that Wilde most brilliantly takes aestheticism to its logical conclusion - positing that crime is merely, as art, "a means of procuring sensation". Eighteen years later, returned from his travels, Dorian tries to turn his life around, looking to his portrait as the ultimate barometer of authentic repentance. In this latter portion of the book, we are privy to some of the most high-stakes soul-searching in modern literature. Wilde, an artist who turned his life into art, simultaneously warns us of the dangers of so doing - themes he later explored in De Profundis. A the end of novel, order is restored: art is restored, in its frame, beautiful - life is separated from it, real, variegated.

The new movie of Dorian Gray is, essentially, a failure. Director Oliver Parker and debutant screenwriter Toby Finlay, fail to translate the feeling of menace and corruption to screen, condensing crucial episodes (Sibyl Vane) and introducing new material that amps up the Hollywood action and romance for crass commercial reasons. Ben Barnes is mis-cast as Dorian. He just doesn't have the acting chops to depict inward moral disintegration in the way that, say, Al Pacino did in the GODFATHER movies. Colin Firth is also mis-cast as the corrupting Sir Henry Wootton. He just can't play sinister. Imagine how much better this movie would have been with Eddie Redmayne and Jeremy Irons in the lead roles. In terms of execution, the movie features some of the most unsexy orgy scenes since EYES WIDE OPEN and some of the cheapest CGI. The only plus points are the lovely costunes, settings and the breath of fresh air that is Rebecca Hall's performance as the newly invented daughter of Sir Henry.

DORIAN GRAY is on release in the UK and played Toronto 2009. It will be released in Italy on October 23rd, in Australia on November 12th and in Finland on Christmas Day.

Pantheon movie of the month - PERSUASION (1995)

In some ways, I think PERSUASION is Roger Michell's best work. Certainly it is superior to the more superficial, conventionally staged British rom-coms, NOTTING HILL and CHANGING LANES. And if VENUS was more surprising, PERSUASION is more visually impressive and has no less of an emotional punch.

Instead of resorting to gimmicks such as breaking the fourth wall or hand-held camera-work, Michell makes his adaptation of my favourite Jane Austen novel feel contemporary by allowing his characters to look "normal". So if young girls go on a long walk on a blustery day they look red-cheeked, their hair is a mess and they sound exhausted. Costumes are worn rather than posed in. Everything feels real, but set two centuries ago. Moreover, the entire film uses natural light, giving evening dinner parties an intimate, relaxed feel, and nicely hinting at the passage of time as the seasons change from a wintry Lime to a spring-time Bath. John Daly perfectly captures the slightly wild beauty of the British sea-side amd Jeremy Sams' score is vivid and fresh, usin the piano to evoke military airs. It's a refreshing change from the typical orchestral score featuring gushing "romantic" strings.

Nick Dear's adaptation is faithful to the original - distilling all the major events and the character development without ever seeming rushed. What raises it to the level of greatness are the subtle performances from the entire cast. No line is uttered casually without due care for its satiric bite, emotional profundity or intelligence. Take Sophie Thompson as the vain, hypochondriac Mary Musgrove. In her fluttering high-pitched voice she torments her well-meaning relations with her acerbic comments on their poor relations. Or take Fiona Shaw - majestic as Mrs Croft, the Admiral's wife. She conveys a genuine warmth and empathy for Anne, but also a slight air of mischief as she speaks of her brother's impending marriage. Her voice is loud and strong - but see how she modulates it when she speaks of the one winter she spent apart from her husband. I could go on. The cast also includes outstanding performances from Corin Redgrave (Sir Walter), Simon Russell Beale (Charles Musgrove), Susan Fleetwood (Lady Russell), Phoebe Nicholls (Elizebeth Elliot) and Samuel West (William Elliot).

In the lead roles we have the consistently brilliant Amanda Root who manages to convey Anne's sincerity and integrity. Ciaran Hinds is also well-cast as the gruff, earnest, vulnerable Frederick Wentworth. By the end of the film we feel that they will be a well-matched married couple, well able to confront the hardships in life, in contrast to the typical costume drama couple that fades into the sunset and unreality.

PERSUASION was originally shown on TV but also played Toronto 1995 and went on limited theatrical release.

Grisham plus Harris equals FRACTURE

FRACTURE is a sub-John Grisham court-room drama. Ryan Gosling gives a decent enough performance as the arrogant, Southern smart-ass lawyer charged with prosecuting a supposedly slam-dunk murder case. (In olden days, this role would've gone to Tom Cruise.) Trick is that while the murderer has confessed and was caught with the gun, the evidence trail has evaporated. (Turns out the unfaithful wife/victim was bedding the arresting cop.) Anthony Hopkins is on the verge of Lektor as he challenges the young lawyer to convict him. So unfolds a tricksy little "how-dunnit".

Benchmarked against director, Gregory Hoblit's, earlier work, PRIMAL FEAR, FRACTURE doesn't look that great. The whole corporate lawyer love-interest sub-plot is a waste of time, though providing the obligatory Hollywood eye-candy in the form of Rosamund Pike. And Fiona Shaw is wasted as the presiding judge, although perhaps after her disastrous performance in THE BLACK DAHLIA, this is no bad thing. And, it's a bit of a shame to cast Embeth Davidtz and then give her so little screen time. Still, compared to, say, PERFECT STRANGER, FRACTURE is one of the better thrillers on offer right now.

FRACTURE is on release in the US, Singapore and the UK. It opens in Israel, Iceland and Italy next week. It opens in Belgium, France, Denmark, Hong Kong, Norway, Argentina, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Turkey. It opens in Australia, Estonia and Egypt in August.

BLACK DAHLIA - in which we are asked to believe that Hilary Swank is a femme fatale

Let us be very clear. THE BLACK DAHLIA is a sumptuous film. Dante Ferretti's production design and Vilmos Zsigmond's photography perfectly capture post-war Los Angeles. The costume design is also brilliant. Scarlett Johanson is superbly scaffolded with setting lotion, red lipstick and pleated pants.

But this movie is a tedious experience. It is also a sad experience for anyone, who like me, loves film-noir, loves Brian de Palma, has a fondness for Aaron Eckhart and a passion for grand-scale film-making.

What makes film-noir great? Powerful men with a neat line in biting jargon playing and being played by beautiful but messed up women....Byzantine plots where everything happens and nothing is solved....the seductive glamour of the seedy LA underworld contrasting with the bland apparent glamour of the surface....transgressive sex, heavy drug use, crime and politics, always politics, but always done with style and grace. These are the factors that are, to a greater or lesser extent, present in all noir classics - from THE BIG SLEEP to L.A. CONFIDENTIAL to CHINATOWN. For me, noir is about subversion. Subversion of The American Dream, of studio mores, of the MPAA, of bland, mediocre, mass-market "entertainment"......

These are the factors that are conspicuous by their absence in this new tedious, wasteful, frustrating movie. Let's start with the characters. Now, de Palma lucks out with Aaron Eckhart. He plays a typically noir character. He's hopped up on Benzedrine and neglecting minor cases to hunt down the vicious killer of The Black Dahlia - a young wannabe actress who got sucked into lesbian porn flicks and ended up disembowled in a ditch. Mia Kershner is also touching - playing the Dahlia in flashes of old audition tapes as well as the infamous porn flick. Her portrayal of bravado and vulnerability is really quite moving. If only we had seen more of it.

But everyone else in the movie is either mis-cast or under-cast. For instance, Eckhart's partner is played by Josh Hartnett who is decorative but hardly de Niro. Compare his low-wattage, deadpan to the point of deadwood performance in THE BLACK DAHLIA with Russell Crowe in LA CONFIDENTIAL. Both play naive cops who have to lead us through a maze of corruption. Crowe is a fire-cracker - emotionally involving us in the story. Hartnett lets all these crazy events and characters slide over his waxed chest like so much baby oil. The chicks are similarly hopeless. Scarlett J is - once again - decorative but uninteresting - an amazing feat considering she plays an ex-hooker turned home-maker. Who knew she could deliver a flat sex scene. But her performance is Oscar-worthy compared to Hilary Swank's turn as a moneyed bisexual Dahlia look-a-like. I admire Swank tremendously as an actress, but her choice of accent is forced and uneven and, sadly, it is just a fact of life that she simply does not look like a femme fatale. Scarlett J would have been infinitely better in this role. And let's not get on to Fiona Shaw. Her performance as Swank's dotty mother is so completely absurd that it undermines the entire movie - especially in the denouement.

Casting aside, this is also an exceptionally badly written movie. For the first hour, it rambles along having little apparent purpose and certainly very little to with The Black Dahlia Case. I kept waiting for the big "wow" moment, when it would just kick in a gear, but that never happened. However, there was a rather incredible and quick exposition at the end of the film - entirely unsatisfying in its neatness and absurdity. If in traditional noir everything happens but nothing is solved, in THE BLACK DAHLIA nothing happens but everything is solved.

Is there any reason at all to see this movie? YES YES YES. To see k d lang's superlative performance as a nightclub singer. Just don't expect anything else.

THE BLACK DAHLIA played Tokyo and Venice 2006 and is now playing in the UK and US. It opens in Portugal and Taiwan next week and in Slovenia and Italy the week after. October sees THE BLACK DAHLIA open in Gerany, Greece, Brazil, Japan, Hong Kong, Iceland and Spain. The movie opens in France and the Netherlands in November and in Sweden in December.