Film Reviews by PD

Camus’ L’Etranger is not an easy book to adapt. Luchino Visconti tried in 1967, but failed to capture the novel’s sense of solitude and abandon. François Ozon’s new adaption is far better. Firstly, he successfully transforms Camus’ words into pictures - in this case, high-contrast black-and-white images that convey the author’s eye for immersive detail, plunging us into a Mediterranean world of sea, sex and sun that’s enchanting until it becomes unbearable. Secondly, Ozon diverges from the text in a few key places to offer a postcolonial reading of a novel that was published two decades before Algeria liberated itself from French rule. In Camus’ book, the viewpoint of the Arab characters is altogether absent, whereas here Ozon has chosen to give Algerians more of a voice, albeit in a subtle fashion, commenting on the indifference of Frenchmen toward a situation that would soon give way to violent revolution. Purists may take issue with this, but the director deserves credit for finding an intelligent way to update the book for a generation that has come to reject colonialism both past and present.

Ozon’s film is a pleasure to watch both aesthetically and dramatically, a feast of sights, sounds and existential turmoil. After an opening newsreel proves how disparagingly the French looked upon Algerians at the time, we find Meursault (Benjamin Voisin – superb throughout, effectively carrying the entire drama as a lost soul whose physical attractiveness does not conceal the emptiness inside him) alone in his apartment when he learns about the death of his mother. Withdrawn and taciturn (he hardly speaks, and when he does it’s often to say, “Je ne sais pas”) he heads to the countryside to hold vigil over his mother’s body. Ozon conveys the loneliness of Meursault, not to mention the desolation of the people he encounters, through striking shots that frame them against barren landscapes or interiors. When Meursault returns to Algiers after the funeral, the film shifts tones to showcase the sun-baked beauty of a colonial capital at the height of its splendour, while occasionally cutting away to reveal an Arab population treated like second-class citizens. During a visit to the seaside, Meursault bumps into an old friend, Marie (the excellent Rebecca Marder). Although he’s supposed to be mourning his mother’s demise, he quickly embarks on an affair that, at least from his point of view, is much more about carnal satisfaction than love. Meursault also starts hanging out with his shady French neighbour, Raymond, whose abusive relationship with an Algerian woman eventually leads to the murder.

Camus’ book is split evenly before and after the killing, whereas the film spends more time chronicling Meursault’s life up to the point he’s arrested. Some of the best scenes highlight the deep despair of that life, emphasising how Meursault is indeed a stranger (or more accurately outsider, as the title of the book was first translated to in English) in a land under occupation. Ozon implies that Meursault’s alienation also stems from the oppression he’s perpetuating, whether consciously or not, in a country soon to be embroiled in a bloody war of independence. The last act focuses on his imprisonment, trial and the weeks leading up to his execution, including a tense conversation with a priest hoping to read the inmate his last rites. Just as in the book, we understand that Meursault is condemned to death not only because of his act, but because of his failure to display ‘normal’ human emotions, whether about the crime he committed or his recently dead mother. 

Perhaps the film’s greatest invention is to also give a name to the nameless “Arab” whom Meursault kills. Camus’ formidable antihero may be lost to his own demons, as well as to the demons of colonialism, but Ozon boldly suggests that the memory of his victim may live on as a harbinger of what is to come. Powerful stuff.

Jafar Panahi’s latest is another reflection of his currently fractious relationship with his country; as with all of his work, it's astutely aware of the physical and psychological scars that result from living in a state of tyranny.

The film begins ominously with a family driving down a dark road, the headlights of their car providing the only illumination. Suddenly, the vehicle hits and kills a stray dog, which immediately distresses the young girl in the backseat. Her expectant mother, attempting to calm the child down, explains that this unfortunate occurrence must all be part of God’s plan. “God had nothing to do with it,” the girl responds, pointedly countering her mother’s naïve optimism, while her father remains stoic behind the wheel. Indeed, this accident will have devastating ripple effects, and to the point that the question of God’s involvement will be the least of anybody’s concerns.

The film reveals itself as a seriocomic morality play, with the characters’ contrasting points of view vividly illuminated by how their varying temperaments ricochet off of each other. In a notable scene, Panahi keeps his characters in a state of queasy tension after they catch the attention of security guards at a parking garage. The guards ask for a bribe to look the other way, and when they say they don’t have any cash, the guards quickly produce portable card readers. The film aims a satiric arrow at the corruption that’s rampant in Iran by making the characters’ overarching fear of being caught with a kidnapped person an ultimately baseless one in a world where nothing matters except for personal gain. Ultimately, Panahi is interested in exploring how life under tyranny turns everyone into the worst versions of themselves. This isn’t to say that Panahi’s anti-authoritarian spirit doesn’t flow through the film, as evidenced by his deliberate decision to not have his female characters wear hijabs, in defiance of Iran’s strict religious rules. And the film's final moments bring Panahi’s critique of contemporary Iran into especially grim focus, as an ostensibly happy conclusion morphs into existential dread with the realisation that no matter what the oppressed do to move past the trauma of what they’ve experienced, it will always be one triggering thought, or sound, away. By now, the Iranian regime’s victims far outnumber its oppressors, whose draconian measures are inadvertently creating the very resistance they’re trying to suppress. When things eventually reach a tipping point, Panahi wonders whether the citizens’ revenge should be correspondingly cruel, or if they should show mercy? It’s telling that Panahi is no longer obliquely challenging specific policies but openly threatening his overlords with payback. Impressive stuff as always from a great director.

This latest from accomplished director Paul Thomas Anderson packs an awful lot in its long running-time (nearly three hours), with the result that there's much more breadth than depth. Perhaps if it was more focused, or just shorter, Anderson’s message could have been more hard-hitting, but as it is I'm coming away thinking it's ultimately rather superficial despite its best intentions.

It stars of course Leonardo DiCaprio (many names, but usually 'Bob') who's the explosives expert for a revolutionary group called The French 75. After we jump forward 16 years, DiCaprio then spends the rest of the film staggering through the chaos wearing a bathrobe and not making much sense, as though Jeff Lebowski accidentally wandered into “The Battle of Algiers.” It’s not that Anderson lets the film’s politics fade into the background - the film is filled with right wing corruption and farcical portrayals of a secret racist illuminati. But he’s more interested in taking rather-too obvious potshots at the film’s real-world analogues than actually exploring them, and when he does add complexity, that complexity has nothing more than a 'both sides are bad' quality (and sadly he can't portray the film’s one queer character without making them the one person willing to violate the sanctity of 'zip it when questioned by police'). Anderson does commit to portraying White Nationalists as insipid hypocrites who abuse their power, but he also insists tacking on scenes at the end that both strain credulity and add little to the film’s finale. In all, it’s all rather muddled, although to be fair it's perhaps suggesting that America’s political struggles stem from a lack of consistent identity or ideals, or that weekend political warriors are an annoying distraction from real heroes doing real work, like Benicio Del Toro’s karate instructor-slash-underground leader (this sequence is really good, with some very effective dark humour). But the fact that Del Toro’s character genuinely views Bob as the most important person in the room, when clearly he’s not, is a bit awkward.

As with all things Anderson, the film is an ambitious production, both Anderson and cinematographer Michael Bauman do an astounding job of finding epic shots hidden within comedic landscapes, and vice-versa, and the cast is uniformly equipped to tackle this material, although the villain of the piece, Sean Penn's Col. Lockjaw, is more Dick Dastardly than Heinrich Himmler. All in all, watchable enough with some effective sequences but for me ultimately far from Anderson's best work.

This highly original, darkly satirical piece from Radu Jude uses the traffic-jammed streets of Bucharest as a nightmare vision of modern life. Our guide through this hellscape is Angela (Ilinca Manolache - fabulous), an overworked and distinctly under-slept production assistant. Angela is conducting at-home auditions with several working-class employees of an Austrian furniture company who were injured on the job, one of whom will then be selected to appear in a safety advisory video and share their story as a cautionary tale-meets-ass-covering gambit. The film’s plot, inasmuch as it has one, ultimately hinges on a man left partially paralysed in a car-related accident, and it’s clear that Jude has cars on his mind - his camera observes them as economic necessities, environmental hazards, physical dangers, and unsightly detritus cluttering modern cities, embodiments of our dependence on the very things that are killing us.

Jude interposes Angela’s urban travelogue with scenes from Lucian Bratu’s 1981 film 'Angela Moves On', which, being made during the last decade of Ceau?escu’s rule, presents a sanitised version of a taxi driver’s life. Here, Dorina Lazar, who played Angela in 'Angela Moves On', shows up to reprise her role, whilst in the present day she’s a relative of the wheelchair-bound worker, Ovidius, who’s ultimately selected for the safety video. Also, using a video filter that makes her look like Andrew Tate’s face painted on a balloon head, Angelica records short TikTok videos in character as Bobita, a foul-mouthed misogynist and Putin fanboy who rails against the 'sluts and whores' of Bucharest, a practice she describes as a 'critique through exaggeration', comparing herself to the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Treated as a peon at work, she finds perverse pleasure in lashing out through her outrageous social media avatar, and even manages to score a cameo from notorious director and boxer Uwe Boll. This theme, of the pliability and manipulative power of images, comes to its climax in the final shot: a 40-minute continuous take comprising the raw footage of the company’s safety video, during which, as marketing reps step into the shot to coach him into tweaking his account, we see the construction of a false narrative.

If the film sounds like it’s all over the place, it’s because, in marked contrast to Jude’s earlier works, which typically focused on the minutiae of specific historical events or fictional incidents, this one feels like it’s about just about everything. He still taps into a wide variety of literary sources, from Don DeLillo to Slavoj Žižek (all cited in the end credits), but more than that, this is a film that listens avidly to what a cross section of ordinary citizens, played by both actors and non-actors, have to say about such things as the war in Ukraine, Putin, Viktor Orbán, Jewish and Romani people, poverty, exploitation, and many more. In Manolache’s extraordinary performance, she’s a highly relatable avatar for a generation swindled out of the very idea of leisure time or job satisfaction by the con that is the gig economy, but, despite everything, she's also wholly herself, an independent spirit with a brilliant magpie mind.

Many will inevitably moan about the film's sheer length (just short of three hours), but this not only reflects the sheer amount of time spent on the road but also allows for many effective tangents, the most remarkable of which occurs when Angela picks up the Austrian head of marketing from the airport and describes a stretch of particularly dangerous road with hundreds of crosses honouring traffic casualties, at which point the film cuts away to a several-minute silent montage of the roadside crosses. No, we shouldn’t expect too much from the end of the world: it comes not with a bang nor even a whimper, but with the realisation that it’s been ending all along. Very impressive work indeed.

Early on in Urška Djukic’s distinctly original coming-of-age film, a brief montage strings together images of shrines to the Virgin Mary scattered through the mountains, forests, and villages of Slovenia. For a film set in the Catholic milieu of a girls’ choir, a preponderance of Marys isn’t in itself surprising, but with the lack of corresponding images of Jesus (with one arguable exception), it takes on a distinct tinge, perhaps gesturing at the absorption by Catholicism of pagan fertility cults. For the teenage protagonist, Lucija (Jara Sofija Ostan - superb throughout), Mary becomes not only an object not of veneration, but of desire.

Much of the (admirably restrained) film is centred on Lucija's friendship with Ana-Marija, a girl her age but much less sheltered. An ambiguous attraction simmers between them, as the knowing Ana-Marija coaxes Lucija into the mysteries of desire and transgression. When, in a game of truth or dare, Lucija chooses dare to avoid outing her inexperience, Ana-Marija tasks her with kissing 'the most beautiful girl in the school', as a result of which, in an innocently sacrilegious manner, Lucija kisses a statue of the Virgin Mary—a prelude to more flouting of Catholic taboos on the part of both girls. But their relationship comes under threat when Lucija mistakenly confides in the choir conductor, whose reaction, in a psychologically brutal scene, is truly disturbing.

The film’s dreamy cinematography often places the viewer in the perspective of Lucija, prone to trance-like reveries at the sight of beauty, but its the sound design which is particularly effective and wonderfully intimate, simulating the sound of blood ringing in her ears, for instance, when she comes face to face with a naked male labourer who bears a striking resemblance to certain depictions of Jesus. Throughout, Ostan performs her character’s 'virginity' as an ignorance of prejudice, a pre-indoctrinated state of grace if you like, for she is moved by beauty in all its forms, without quite knowing which are considered appropriate for 'good' Catholics. Lucija doesn’t yet recognize a distinction between religious and physical ecstasy, or between friendship and romantic love. She knows no shame or grief, only curiosity. Her desire is unformed, not yet tamed, and this makes her coming of age a bitter one, if not entirely tragic.

A hallucinatory final scene leaves perhaps too many dangling plot threads, but Djukic’s film fascinatingly shows how Catholic moral strictures and an underlying paganism where desire is holy are two sides of the same coin. Disconcertingly, Djukic seems to hint that it’s precisely the intensity of such prohibitions that inspires and gives meaning to the transgression of them. Intriguing stuff.

Sean Baker’s latest continues the process of staking out his niche as a chronicler of the messy lives of an often invisible American underclass. It’s one of those worth watching solely for a stunning, skull-splitting performance from Mikey Madison as Anora, or ‘Ani’, who works in a Manhattan lap-dancing bar called HQ, an environment of throbbing sexuality and glittering sleaze that Baker treats like any regular workplace. There’s both camaraderie and friction among the young women who dance there, and while over-inebriated customers might sometimes need to be cut off at the bar, the bouncer and boss ensure that it’s a relatively safe space. Approaching each potential client with a winsome smile, Ani knows how to maximise her take-home. The film lurches into full photon torpedo mode after the arrival of the son of a Russian oligarch, Ivan Zakharov ('Vanya'), who, unlike many of her customers, is close in age to Ani and who she likes well enough to give him her number, initially simply looking to make some cash on the side. At 23, Ivan is an immature playboy, a giggly stoner who likes to play videogames and have sex like a Duracell bunny, and on reflection it’s difficult to see how street-wise Ani would take seriously someone as clearly shallow as Ivan, but we’re taken along for the ride also, and thus is set in train a series of increasingly zany events until the ‘real world’ inevitably comes crashing in. As things veer into seemingly dangerous territory, Baker spices up the scenes with a relentless amount of (mostly) very effective Woody Allenesque dark humour that keeps the film buoyant, even as Ani gets a rude awakening about the reality of spineless Ivan’s feelings for her. But, as is customary in Baker’s work, women treated as sexual playthings in the narrative are treated with dignity by the film.

While Anora could stand to lose 15-20 minutes, it’s a very satisfying watch on the whole, defying mainstream genres while deftly commenting on questions of class, privilege and the wealth divide. As Ani is forever yanked this way and that, degraded and disregarded, she is indeed vocally indignant but otherwise rolls with it, baited with money and cowed by the tacit authority of those with it; there’s a sophisticated intertwining of personal tragedy and social comment, especially in the film’s final, disquieting scene. Overall, perhaps not a masterpiece, but very impressive, intelligent work none the less.

Paolo Sorrentino’s latest is a captivating portrait of an esteemed political leader in the waning days of his term. For the most part it’s a sober film, but it’s not without the customary creative arias, the playful humour and visual delights that have distinguished Sorrentino’s best work, and features a quite wonderful turn by Toni Servillo as Mariano De Santis, a fictional president of the Italian Republic. He describes himself as “a grey, boring man, a man of the law,” but instead is revealed to possess a wellspring of deep feeling, humanity and — to his own surprise — doubt.

With La Grazia, Sorrentino makes the radical and (these days) original choice of imagining a senior politician being an honest man of integrity; he's intelligent and principled but needled by ethical uncertainties over choices he faces during his final days in office, together with a complex personal history. The absence of corruption, scandal, self-dealing and cronyism makes this a somewhat unreal break from present-day concerns, but the reflections on power, influence and the weight of the past are unquestionably relevant.

De Santis’ face is generally as unyielding as the Palazzo del Quirinale, the official residence of Italian presidents. Eccentrically, his only pleasure is listening to rap music on his earphones (Sorrentino, as often before, supplies plenty of distinctive electro-pop on the soundtrack), but Servillo’s characterisation allows for subtle hints of the man’s vanity; he also seems unsure whether to be amused or offended when he discovers his nickname is “Reinforced Concrete.” With just six months left in his term, the former judge’s duties have decelerated to the point where one of the proposed items on his agenda is an interview with the editor of ‘Vogue’ about his sartorial choices, but three matters occupy thick folders on his desk. One is a law to legalise euthanasia, which has wide support, including from his daughter Dorotea. “If I don’t sign, I’m a torturer. If I sign, I’m a murderer,” says De Santis. The others are requests for pardons: one for a popular history teacher who killed his wife when she reached the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, the other for a young woman convicted of murdering her husband in his sleep. Sorrentino’s script neatly intertwines these concerns, cleverly pondering the difference between the truth absorbed up close and the law, which is viewed from a distance.

The film is punctuated by poignant moments of reflection in which Mariano sneaks cigarettes on the Quirinale roof while sharing confidences with Colonel Labaro, his cuirassier, the elite cavalry regiment that serves as the president’s guards. Other introspective angles are explored during Mariano’s audiences with his friend the Pope, a serene Black man with a head crowned by a bundle of silver dreads, to whom Mariano confesses his loneliness since his adored wife Aurora’s passing (the film increasingly becomes a story about love as Mariano ruminates on his past relationship with Aurora). The Pope doesn’t offer empty words of pious comfort, instead telling the politician that his life has become weighted down when what he wants is “leggerezza,” or lightness. There are also beautifully observed moments such as the illness of Mariano’s favourite horse, whilst two set pieces are fabulous: one involving Mariano as guest of honour at a veterans’ dinner for Italy’s mountain infantry, the Alpini, and another where he hosts an official reception for the Portuguese president and simply looks on motionless as the visitor attempts to process toward him across a courtyard in the driving rain: a dream image of the vulnerability and absurdity of official pomp.

La Grazia is visually arresting, but it’s the film’s warmth, its spirit of forgiveness, understanding and hard-won wisdom that grips us; or to borrow from the title, its 'grace', an Italian word also for official pardons. A tender and powerful piece.

Walter Salles' latest film concerns the period between 1964 and the mid-70s when hundreds of Brazilian individuals were “disappeared” by the military dictatorship as part of a counter-revolutionary campaign. Among the missing were students and former politicians, rich and poor alike, swept up in the tides of brutality that beset the country with ramifications that continue to resonate to this very day. Along with those who never came home were the many family members that were also picked up and interrogated, undergoing hardships that would for years mark them with suspicion by the state and leave lasting psychological effects.

The film allows international audiences into this world of quiet resilience and powerful response to the whims of a dictatorial regime. Following the true-life story of Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) and her family, this is a powerful indictment of those that caused such harm, and a blistering celebration of one woman’s tenacious drive to seek justice and to preserve the truth for generations to come.

The early portion of the film is presented with an impeccable sense of place, and everything from the clothing to the set design and dressing is handled with extreme dexterity. Even at the most heightened moments of suffering or anxiety the storyline never becomes overwrought, Salles’ skillful navigation of this years-long story doled out in a precise yet never ponderous pace. The raw emotions that Eunice and others experience is also expressed in beautifully attenuated fashion, and it’s the quiet power of the character as exceptionally embodied by Torres, free from histrionics, that makes it that much more effective. From the child actors right through to the taciturn menace of the abductors and interrogators, there’s a sense of documentary-like truthfulness throughout that transcends any usual cinematic excesses. Salles’ camera wanders from beach to home with a freedom that’s often stunning, and everything from gritty street scenes to more subtle glimpses of Rio-area landmarks are dropped in with a keen and careful eye.

The film’s first two thirds we’re situated within the time period of the coup, and this feels by far the most urgent and impactful parts of the narrative. But to end with a generic title card to say what occurred over the next quarter century would do injustice to Eunice’s story, and the film wisely grants more than enough space to see her myriad actions that helped reshape her country be appropriately commemorated. Although tonally this concluding act perhaps feels a tad more heavy handed, it’s still a fitting coda to what builds up from the initial scenes. While an entirely refreshed cast is called upon to take up the mantle with events some quarter century later, the sense of familial connection remains strong. Seen through these various lenses, Eunice’s story is given a more fulsome presentation. Very impressive work.

When this film was announced and selected for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the director was sentenced by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court to eight years in jail, flogging and a fine. Rasoulof skipped the country after sentencing and fled to a safe house in Germany. And all some filmmakers have to worry about is getting the final cut.

All the travails are worth it, though. Excellently played across the board, with powerful performances all the better for being understated, the film is a microcosm of contemporary Iranian life as filtered through a middle-class Tehran family, with a sprinkling of earned genre elements to boot. Rasoulof centres on Iman (Misagh Zare - thoroughly convincing), a civil servant who is promoted to an investigating judge tasked with interrogating those who protest against the regime. He is married to ultra-devoted wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani, also superb, who has been arrested in Iran over her activism) with two teenage daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami - really good) and Sana — neither of whom has yet been aware of what their dad does. This new position means changes: a better standard of living on the one hand, but restrictions on the daughters’ lifestyle on the other, together with a gun kept in a drawer for 'protection' which will significantly affect the plot.

For the first 80 minutes or so, it’s a slow-moving (at 2hrs and 45 minutes it might be overlong for some, but for me it didn't feel that way) but compelling domestic drama as Iman grapples with the new job — the speed with which he has to process the demonstrators denies due diligence, whilst the arrival of Rezvan’s free-spirited, militant friend Sadaf opens up fissures in the family which soon escalate. From this point, the film gets more melodramatic and thus loses its impact somewhat (even culminating in a rather implausible Hollywood-style shoot-out) but, for the most part, Rasoulof keeps it realistic, parlaying the political in human terms and never forgetting the true-life consequences: throughout the film, the fiction is punctuated with TikTok footage of horrifying police brutality (often meted out to women) and literal blood on the streets. There's little subtlety, and perhaps Rasoulof can be accused of being more interested in his own ideas than in what real young adult women might do in this situation, but the overall result is a bold and timely state-of-the-nation address.

Set to the rhythm of the changing seasons in the high Italian Alps, Maura Delpero’s film is a graceful and tender, slowly unfolding piece involving us in the lives of many different characters, with wider observations on the aspects of social change affecting women at the end of the Second World War.

The time is 1944 (although it could easily be 1914), when young men were away in uniform fighting and only womenfolk, children and a few elderly men were left to carry on the farmwork and homesteads. The house of the Grazidei family is in many ways a safe haven for its incumbents, but also one under the tutelage of a commanding father (Tommaso Ragno). This anomaly is immediately striking: even taking into account the period’s high infant mortality rate, the family seems over-populated and the expression “one more mouth to feed” an understatement. It is clear that this sensitive, cultivated man who loves teaching is also a traditional patriarch who makes all the decisions in the house, including some bad ones regarding his children’s future. Another oddity is the presence of Pietro, a young Sicilian deserter who is in hiding from the army with the complicity of the villagers. In spite of – or because of – the language and culture gap, he and the teacher’s eldest daughter Lucia are drawn to each other. What leads to the fatal denouement here – a shocker by any standard – is a moral failing that village tradition cannot forgive. It leaves the family turned upside down, and even their strong family bonds seem to unable to heal the psychological wounds.

Vermiglio is a film that proceeds carefully with few narrative missteps, until the ending sends Lucia on a highly improbable journey across Italy that upsets the tale’s strong sense of geographical unity, leaving us wishing perhaps for a more convincing ending. Still, the portrait of a nearly vanished rural way of life remains compelling, the film’s initial lightness and peace gradually giving way to a bleakness, a sense of entrapment, giving us a clear-eyed look at the social structures traditional Catholicism serves to camouflage.

Social-realist films about migrant alienation, especially those set on the cold automated factory floor, can be grimly authentic to the point where the audience itself is also cut adrift. But Laura Carreira's debut feature, with its touches of sci-fi dystopia, is an enveloping portrait of dehumanisation and infantilisation which doesn’t ask for pity or outrage. Aurora (Joana Santos, excellent throughout), a young ‘picker’ in a giant fulfilment warehouse in Scotland, comes from Portugal, but she could be any lonely soul who has tried to break past the prison of small talk into a deeper human connection. Her hesitant, faltering attempts are heightened by the lack of money or prospects that leads to a life on the precipice. Everything about the management structure is designed to put distance between Aurora and humanity; the managers seem just as disconnected from fleshy hierarchies as is she. Rules and work practices just materialise from distant, unnamed planets.

Carreira, an Edinburgh resident and Portuguese native whose accomplished shorts including 'The Shift' give a clear sign as to the warming flame of her social conscience. Although it’s formally of some interest (tight close-ups in a boxy frame, ambient sound only, some street casting) the film is more daring in its juggling of emotions over a restrained run-time, always clinging to a quiet determination to put the viewer inside one lonely life, with all the risks and hopes that brings. Providing a credible social realist context while still producing cinematic highs and lows is a tough challenge - Carrera initially answers it inside the giant fulfilment centre, where goods are packed randomly to keep pickers alert. We begin with Aurora and her little automatic reader machine which impatiently beeps if she takes too long to find an item, yet could be the most responsive thing in her life. She carpools with another Portuguese colleague, and shares a building with strangers who come and go in a kitchen and life devoid of natural light. Any small talk Aurora encounters is both excruciating and impossible to break through: she is starving for a connection, which might come when a friendly Polish ‘man with a van’ moves into the house, although Aurora has almost lost the ability to speak through her loneliness. A colleague at the centre who makes a friendly overture disappears and is said to have committed suicide, all but immobilising her in terror. Any time she dares to make a tentative move outside the radius of her mobile phone the moment is brushed away – Carreira makes you understand how huge those fleeting opportunities are for a woman in her position, whereas a slight stumble such as a broken phone could crush her completely. The chance of an interview to become a care worker, deemed low-paid and low-status in the UK, is everything to her, and it’s here where Carreira ratchets up the stakes.

Thanks to the tight team-work between Carreira and her intuitive lead actor, the film becomes an intense but engaging experience, and the last scene is truly inspired. Impressive stuff.

Joshua Oppenheimer’s distinctly original musical drama is set in a fossil-fuel oligarch’s luxury survival bunker in a desolate salt mine. “The houses are all gone under the sea,” begins the T.S. Eliot quote that opens the film. “The dancers are all gone under the hill.”

Mother (Tilda Swinton – inevitably superb throughout) was once a ballerina, whom Father (Michael Shannon) and Son (George MacKay – also very impressive) routinely praise for having performed at the Bolshoi many years ago. It seems to have been 25 years since they retreated underground; in fact, 20-year-old Son has only ever known the painstakingly-decorated bunker, filled with artistic masterpieces.

Mackay’s character is one of naive brilliance, someone who commemorates major historical moments through their inclusion in a remarkable diorama which includes Chinese workers with smiling faces, and who assists his father with his self-serving autobiography that no one will read – a work in which of course he absolves himself of any blame for the climate crisis. Mackay is in many ways the most interesting person on show with many of the best lines, whilst Swinton’s character speaks volumes mainly by expressions and countless evasions. The rest of the household consists of Doctor, whose main medical task seems to be prescribing sleeping aids for everyone’s incessant nightmares; agreeable Butler, who tends to Father’s demands, and Friend, who’s specified to be Mother’s closest companion and the only loved one who was allowed in the bunker when the end times first unfolded. Interestingly, the only names ever uttered are those of relatives who were abandoned. Son gently speaks the name of his mother’s sister—which he only discovered by snooping through an old tablet—and Friend continues to profess love for her child who supposedly died before the apocalypse.

There’s very little ‘action’ as such, and the 148-minute runtime feels distinctly overlong by at least half an hour. The only major plot development occurs when a ‘stranger’ (Moses Ingram) somehow manages to make her way in the mine with the inevitable conflicting consequences - the rest of the tribe debating fiercely over whether she should be allowed to stay. While the outsider’s presence begins to poke holes in the group’s collective fallacy, it’s also clear that ugly grudges and harsh truths were always at risk of breaking through, much like the cracks that consistently appear on the bunker’s walls, and much of the film is spent giving us glimpses into the various individuals' respective pasts and thus different forms of guilt.

However, for all the intriguing premise and impressive performances, ultimately the film fails for me. Apart from the length, the film rather shies away from direct confrontation of the actions and individuals responsible for our climate crisis: the terrible but all-too plausible scenario of elite survivors of apocalypse prioritising the preservation of mostly Western “masterpieces” and their own reputations never blooms into fuller consequences. But the film’s major downfall, is that its musical numbers are dull, discordant and downright intrusive. Despite its stage-influenced production design and a single fleeting tap-dance sequence, the lyrics penned by Oppenheimer and music by Joshua Schmidt simply don’t capture the songwriting finesse of the Golden Age they are presumably so desperate to emulate. You can see what Oppenheimer is trying to do - individual traumas exorcised in order to maintain a utopian illusion—but their harmonised phrases only serve to convey far more about the fantasy they’re forced to project. As another reviewer said, there's a good film in here somewhere, but all in all, rather disappointing.

Yeah, I'm in. This is an austere, novelistic, self-consciously important film that unfurls in a measured sprawl over 3 hours, but nonetheless exerts an iron grip throughout. It mulls on some weighty themes of Jewish identity, the immigrant experience, privilege, culture-versus-commerce, the thin lines between inspiration and insanity, ambition and crushing egotism, creativity and compromise, architectural integrity, the arrogant insularity of privilege and the long reach of the past. The result is a very impressive, serious piece about a man of genius who gets to taste the American Dream but also feel the stinging humiliation of a conditional welcome that turns ice-cold.

It begins in 1947, as Hungarian-born Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody, fabulous throughout, brimming with pain and passion in equal measure) spills from the bowels of a teeming ship to eye Ellis Island’s famous statue. From Tóth’s angle, Lady Liberty appears upside down, and America, land of dreams, will prove a frequently topsy-turvy, nauseating experience for Tóth over the next 30 years. Like Corbet’s provocative first two films, (The Childhood Of A Leader and Vox Lux) 'The Brutalist' charts the rise of an enigmatic figure., about which we first we know little other that he awaits the arrival of his wife, Erzsébet (an excellent Felicity Jones when she appears - her role seems almost marginal at first, but her character steadily grows in stature), and his niece, Zsófia, who remain in Europe after the war. But slowly, brick by brick, the pieces are dropped into place, and we learn that Tóth is a celebrated architect of the Bauhaus school. At once ugly and beautiful, the jutting, concrete blocks of his 'Brutalist' structures seek to shape an aesthetic future.

In silence Tóth speaks volumes; a halting, traumatised figure in the first half, whilst by contrast, post-intermission, Tóth’s words escalate and his emotions amplify, uncorked by the arrival of Erzsébet and Zsófia. There’s also the construction of a prodigious building that will serve as auditorium, chapel, library and gymnasium, and the clashes with domineering patron Harrison Van Buren that come with it. Unnerving even when he’s being charming, Van Buren creates a strange push-pull to his relationship with Tóth, currents of admiration and envy, power and disgust swirling beneath the surface. Corbet, perhaps, sees echoes of his own experience — the visionary artist beholden to the whims of myopic moneymen — and then pours cultural prejudice into the mix. For the Van Burens are revealed to be the quintessence of moral corruption bred by wealth and power; (only Harry’s twin sister Maggie seems to value genuine kindness) the film becoming a scathing critique of the ways in which America’s moneyed and privileged class gains cachet through the labour and creativity of immigrants while never considering them equals; despite Harrison’s big pronouncements on the responsibility of the rich to nurture the great artists of their time, he’s a cultural gatekeeper in an exclusionary club. Despising weakness, he ultimately cuts László down to size with a pitilessness that in hindsight seems preordained from their first encounter.

Editor David Jancso threads the sprawling story with a flow that pulls us along nicely, incorporating archival material for historical context. And Lol Crawley’s cinematography is magnificent, never more so than when prowling the mausoleum-like halls of the unfinished project or the tunnels of Carrera. Together with production designer Judy Becker and costumer Kate Forbes, the DP shows a remarkably attentive eye for detail, conjuring the look of mid-century America with a period verisimilitude that feels truly alive - seldom have we been transported to the past so effectively.

A truly awesome film in every respect.

Pablo Larraín’s drama about the legendary American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas, begins on the day of her death in 1977 and then flashes back to one week before; most of it taking place during that week and dotted with key episodes from Callas’s life. The story it tells is that of a neurotic death spiral.

Callas' apartment, with its chandeliers hanging from high ceilings, its wooden walls and large old canvases, as well as one of the most luxurious beds I’ve ever seen in a film, is splendid enough to suggest the court of an 18th-century French royal. This is Larraín’s third inside portrait of an iconic female figure of the 20th century after “Jackie” and “Spencer”. In all three, the residences loom with significance, like elaborate stage sets that act as gilded cages, though here Callas' apartment, more than the houses in the other films, feels like a prison of her own making, and maybe that’s because her whole life has become a prison. Maria gets through the days by taking her 'medicine,' a cocktail of uppers and downers, notably Mandrax, a hypnotic sedative that she obtains illegally; meanwhile, she treats the two people who’ve taken care of her for years — housekeeper, Bruna and her butler / chauffeur, Feruccio — like vassals whose purpose in life it to cater to her various whims. She avoids meeting her doctor as if he were the devil, whilst she fantasises, night after night, that she’s being visited by the ghost of her former lover, Aristotle Onassis.

And then there’s the matter of her voice. Maria is 53, and she hasn’t sung in public for four-and-a-half years. Yet the way the film presents her, she’s a total artist, a woman fuelled and consumed by her gift, which is to sing opera with a voice so sublime, so pure in its piercing majesty, that it reaches to the heavens. The film is filled with opera, notably by the great 19th-century Italian composers, who Callas elevated in the repertoire, and every time an aria comes on the soundtrack we’re indeed swept up by the power of her gift, Jolie doing an extraordinary job of lip-syncing to the nuances of Callas’s vocal splendour.

Jolie gives in many ways a very fine performance - from the moment she appears, she seizes our attention, playing Maria as woman of wiles who is imperious and mysterious. However, the essential vulnerability in the end-of-her-tether Maria is somewhat lacking, whilst the black-and-white flashbacks tend to serve us with as many questions as answers, leaving us with the distinct sense that we haven't delved very far into what in real life was certainly a terribly complex individual. Nevertheless, Larraín’s film is unusually nuanced in its double-edged depiction of the relationship between icons and their public, and Callas — even while losing her grip on reality — is all too clear-eyed about what people want from her. As she says of her dogs: their dedication is 99 percent motivated by food, and one percent by love; this dynamic puts her at a distance from the rest of the world: the same distance that separates a theatre audience from the stage. Well worth a look/listen.

Adapting Sigrid Nunez’s 2020 novel 'What Are You Going Through', in which a terminally ill woman asks an old friend for her companionship as she prepares to end her life, Pedro Almodovar takes time to shake off a certain stilted, page-bound quality in the film's first section, but a change of scene and the luminous screen presences of Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore breathe life into a film which ultimately is a very tender drama about life, death and the responsibilities of friendship.

What does work right from the start is the director’s customary attention to visual detail, to the ways that spatial lines, symmetry and especially colour can give shape to his characters’ inner lives, but it’s when the story leaves Manhattan and heads to a modernist rental near Woodstock that it starts acquiring emotional vitality. Tucked away in a woodsy setting, the house is an architectural delight, a cluster of what look like cubic boxes in wood and glass almost inviting us to arrange and unpack them, while freeing up the film to do the same with its characters - a shot in which the two women lounge side by side on upholstered deckchairs, mirroring a copy of Edward Hopper’s 'People in the Sun' hanging inside, is especially effective.

Given Martha’s decisiveness, there’s no will-she-or-won’t-she commit suicide tension, nor is there, apart from a brief exchange with a hostile police officer, any morality debate around the right-to-die issue — although it's clear that the director is in favour of legal euthanasia access. But there’s a cumulative satisfaction in watching two infinitely compelling actresses play women negotiating questions large and small, and there’s a sad beauty in the finality of Martha’s decision. Swinton and Moore imbue the film with heart that at first seems elusive, along with the dignity, humanity and empathy that are as much Almodóvar’s subjects here as mortality. What ultimately makes the film affecting is its appreciation for the consolation of companionship during the most isolating time of life, whilst among the secondary roles John Turturro does gentle, contemplative work as a former boyfriend Ingrid inherited from Martha, who now gives talks on climate change and other global crises of a world in its death throes; his irreversible loss of hope plays as a counterpoint to Martha’s.

The film feels sometimes subdued to a fault and could have perhaps used a few more notes of gallows humour to vary the tone, and at times a distracting score doesn't help, but the camerawork has a contrasting calming effect, suggesting peace for Martha and sorrowful acceptance for Ingrid. One of the most satisfying touches, injecting resonant feeling into the final moments, is a passage lifted from James Joyce’s novel and John Huston’s film of 'The Dead', providing a poetic coda. Impressive and moving stuff.