STRAIGHT CIRCLE**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025

British film-maker Oscar Hudson's debut feature film is a darkly surreal black comedy about the futility of war and the pointlessness of divisive populist politics.  It's visually audacious and features stunning central performances from real-life twins Elliott and Luke Tittensor. Each plays a soldier stationed in a lone building guarding the border between their two countries. There's barren desert on either side and seemingly nothing of any value to guard.  But guard it they do!, releasing ceremonial pigeons each day to symbolise peace but each day loathing each other. Tensions ratchet up when one day, one of the guards lets off a pigeon without the other! So follows a journey of discovering that maybe they aren't that physically or emotionally different. Maybe they both just miss having a loving mum.  So what will happen when a General shows up telling them they actually are at war now, and to defend their territory?

The story is spare and violent and surreal.  I absolutely loved it! It reminded me of the best of Beckett and Ustinov.  I loved the use of vertical split screen to show each nation and brother mirroring the other, but was also relieved in those scenes that let the audience relax and just watch the characters mentally unravel.  I found the middle sections maybe a tad overlong but the final act is a bravura piece of storytelling that I absolutely adored. I cannot wait to see what Hudson does next.

STRAIGHT CIRCLE has a running time of 108 minutes. It played Venice where it won the Critics Week award.

MEDUSA DELUXE****

Thomas Hardiman's impressive directorial debut seems to have come to us by way of Peter Strickland and Alan Partridge. Set in the world of regional hairdressing competitions - the stakes thus darkly, comedically, low - his characters are trapped in a claustrophobic conference centre where hairdressers, models and a competition organiser slowly go mad trying to figure out who murdered and scalped the surefire competition winner, Mosca.  Accusations of skulduggery abound. Apparently the competition judge was being bought. And Mosca's grieving partner, arriving with their baby, has to deal both with grief AND accusations of infidelity.  

Claire Perkins' Cleve steals the show with her almost tragicomic obsession with winning and violence lurking just under the surface, triggered when she realises the fight was never fair. The other star is cinematographer Robbie Ryan, whose camera takes seems to be taking us ever-deeper into this strange obsessive world in what Fouad Gaber edits as seemingly one take. 

Is the murder-mystery conceit well-enough plotted and executed? Probably not. But I loved every minute spent in the company of these characters, with their strange obsessions but also their authentic and profound discussions about what it means to be a woman, in love, pregnant, or just plain wanting to do well at the only option of a career that society gave you. Plus, these have to be the most amazing end credits I've seen in quite some time. I cannot wait to see what Thomas Hardiman does next.

MEDUSA DELUXE is rated R and has a running time of 101 minutes. It played London 2022 and was released in the UK this week and in the USA last week.