Category: Female led film

Firebrand (2024)

Atmospheric film attempts to redefine Katherine Parr, but fails to make a successful dramatic case

Director: Karim Aïnouz

Cast: Alicia Vikander (Katherine Parr), Jude Law (Henry VIII), Eddie Marsan (Edward Seymour), Sam Riley (Thomas Seymour), Simon Russell Beale (Bishop Stephen Gardiner), Erin Doherty (Anne Askew), Ruby Bentall (Cat), Bryony Hannah (Ellen), Junie Rees (Princess Elizabeth), Patsy Ferran (Princess Mary)

For years people had this muddle-headed idea that Henry VIII was a jolly fat-man with a charmingly eccentric habit of constantly marrying the wrong woman. In fact, this homicidal tyrant was one of history’s definitive arseholes, his hands scarlet red with the blood of anyone who annoyed him (including at least two of his wives). His last wife, Katherine Parr, is similarly often remembered as a dutiful matron than a dynamic and intelligent woman (who wrote a book on theology and ruled as regent for several months).

Firebrand is a noble attempt to challenge that narrative, drawing focus towards Katherine Parr’s (Alicia Vikander) zeal for religious reform and the near-fatal attention it brought her from the hard-core traditionalists around Henry VIII (Jude Law) not least Bishop Stephen Gardiner (Simon Russell Beale). This reimagining of the final months of Katherine Parr’s marriage to the bloated tyrant tries its very best to reclaim her as a major figure in the founding of the Church of England and if, in the end, it doesn’t quite manage this, it’s still good to have Katherine reclaimed from history’s trivia corner – and links her closely to the eternally popular Elizabeth I (poor Mary remains a dowdy fanatic, played by a gloomy looking Patsy Ferran – feminist sympathy can only go so far.)

Aïnouz does give Firebrand a freshly claustrophobic and sinister feel behind the costume details (bringing the sort of outsider eye that Kapur bought to Elizabeth). It has an imposing, doom-laden score of moody strings and sudden, discordant noise, frequently presenting the English countryside not as lush environment, but misty place pregnant with unknown menace. It’s a fine mood setter for a land where reformist religious practices are ruthlessly suppressed by a religiously conservative king (Henry’s only interest in reform being what he personally could get out of it – in his case a divorce and a mountain of monastery cash).

In the candlelit gloom of the court, the capricious king makes life as unpredictable and dangerous as he is. Henry is accompanied everywhere by a group of fawning hangers-on, whose job is to whooping up the court to collapse into hysterics whenever the king says anything approaching a joke. The most effective thing about Firebrand is it’s presenting of a Henry VIII who is one part Harvey Weinstein to two parts Josef Stalin. Jude Law gives a masterclass in preening cruelty and psychopathic bullying, as man so used to getting what he wants even the slightest suggestion he can’t sends him into a spiral of spittle-flecked rage. Firebrand plays up his corpulence, the suppurating stench of his ulcers (Law, in method style, wore a cologne that stank of piss during filming) making this king a million miles from the broad-shouldered Holbein image.

Henry paws openly at attractive court ladies and delights in humiliating those around him. He uses physicality as a weapon of control, constantly grasping people by the fae or neck to draw them towards him. Law is superbly cruel and domineering, while being pathetically needy, demanding complete and total affection from his wife and yo-yoing between randy affection and assault if he doubts for a second anything other than her complete devotion.

If only the film was able to make as compelling a case for Katherine Parr’s undoubted qualities, as it does for the King’s negatives. Alicia Vikander has a hard job – Katherine is rarely, if ever, not under observation so must constantly hide her thoughts and emotions behind a stoic shield. But it’s a shield that partly deadens her performance. Firebrand only finds a few moments, at its start, for Katherine to truly be herself, in the presence of Erin Doherty’s passionate firebrand Anne Askew (whose Protestantism overlaps with a socialistic political view which doesn’t quite ring true for Tudor England).

Vikander and Doherty’s relationship is one of the film’s most interesting, with more than a hint of romance between these two reformers, one who has never compromised and another who compromised so much she literally married her persecutor. Aside from that, Vikander has to work hard to try and communicate her fierce commitment to reform behind her eyes – something that’s a lot harder than using her skill at telegraphic her hatred and fear of Henry. Her management of the king does provide moments of interest, notably a fascinating sequence when Katherine publicly humiliates a potential mistress in order to re-spark the king’s interest in her (Henry, like other egotists, liking nothing more than young women fighting over him).

But Firebrand struggles to translate Katherine’s religious views into either something politically compelling or dramatic. Instead, it largely resorts to working hard to tell usthat Katherine was a feminist icon, the inspiration for Elizabeth I and the true mother of the Church of England – rather than showing it. It also has to awkwardly rework the actual historical events to facilitate this.

As such, we have her roundly rejecting the advances of Sam Riley’s lecherously ambitious Thomas Seymour (in real life she immediately married him on Henry’s death – showing even intelligent people can fall for terminally selfish idiots), arrested, imprisoned and threatened with burning (in real life Katherine avoided this by publicly submitting utterly to Henry’s ‘superior’ judgement in all things religious) and an optimistic ending of her and Elizabeth planning a feminist protestant utopia (as opposed to Elizabeth’s affair with Seymour that permanently fractured their relationship). Firebrand ends with a paean to how Parr’s writing laid the foundations of Anglicanism, which feels quite a reach to make from one book.

Strangely however, the film’s biggest historical deviation of fact – her final solving of her Henry problem – despite being a clearly fictional flourish is surprisingly satisfying (not least because of the vileness of Law’s Henry) and manages to ring spiritually true for what a parade of people (and Katherine as well probably) would have liked to do to the murderous maniac if given the chance. But it’s also too little, too late in a film that otherwise is a little too dry, a little too lacking in narrative drive. For all it wants to build up the reputation of Katherine Parr, it gives Vikander far too little meaty content to really play with while ceding much of the interest to its wallowing in the cruelty of the king.

Kitty Foyle (1940)

Odd romantic fable, with a star-turn, that doesn’t seem to fully realise how judgemental and puritanical it is

Director: Sam Wood

Cast: Ginger Rogers (Kitty Foyle), Dennis Morgan (Wynnewood Strafford), James Craig (Dr Mark Eisen), Eduardo Ciannelli (Giono), Ernest Cossart (Pop), Gladys Cooper (Mrs Strafford), Odette Myrtil (Delphine Detaille), Mary Treen (Pat), KT Stevens (Molly)

“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did…[but] backwards and in high heels”. So goes the famous quote about the famed dance pairing. But Ginger Rogers also did something Fred Astaire never did: she won an Oscar. That was Best Actress for Kitty Foyle, a reminder that Rogers was the girl-next-door who was a fine actor, accomplished dancer and natural comedienne. Rogers is great in Kitty Foyle, an otherwise fairly average, at times painfully dated ‘women’s picture’ where flashes of wit conceal character flaws the film is unaware of and a series of frequently depressing messages about love and women’s choices.

In the early 1930s, Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers) is a young Philadelphia woman enjoying the opportunities the new world of emancipation gives her. Working as a secretary for a small magazine, she and its editor Wynnewood Strafford IV (Dennis Morgan) fall in love – but he lacks the courage to propose to a woman far below his family’s social standing. Moving to New York, Kitty works in a fashionable department store and meets with Dr Mark Eisen (James Craig). The two begin a tentative relationship – until Wyn returns and proposes, which Kitty eagerly accepts.

However, since the film plays out in flashback from 1939, we already know the Wyn-Kitty marriage is doomed to divorce since Wyn is re-married (with a kid!). Indeed, we’ll learn Kitty left her marriage because she felt the social differences between her and Wyn were insurmountable, in her (secretly) divorced state becoming engaged to Dr Mark. Kitty Foyle plays out a cliffhanger question: which of these two men will Kitty choose? Of course, there is zero tension in this decision – is there any chance at all that in a Production Code film, Kitty will choose a rich married family man over a hard-working doctor who we are introduced to tending to the poor of New York gratis?

Nevertheless, Kitty Foyle is structed through a series of snow globe-inspired flashbacks, narrated by Kitty’s reflection (who objects to herself being tempted by Wyn’s offer – hammering home the implicit moral judgement the film soaks in, even Kitty’s reflection thinks she’s a hussy). These snow-globe framed flashbacks are one of the most interesting things about Kitty Foyle today – largely because, if you think of 40’s snow globe flashback films your mind immediately turns to Citizen Kane (both from RKO!). It’s hard not to wonder if Orson Welles and/or Herman J. Mankiewicz remembered the device when they put their script together?

The other most interesting thing about Kitty Foyle is that neither Kitty nor the film can even pretend to raise much interest in its Code-approved romantic figure, Dr Mark. Fair enough, since Dr Mark is a crushing prig and self-important bore. Played with a humour-free smugness by James Craig, he’s the sort of guy who enjoys sitting on buses passing superior medical opinions about those around him. On his first date with Kitty, he unilaterally cancels a dinner to sit at home and play cards – which he later reveals was a moral test for all his first dates to see whether a potential partner is a gold-digger (it’s amazing he’s single). We get very little sense he is remotely interested in the real Kitty, instead preferring an idealised version of her as a potential assistant-in-all-but-name. In nearly every sense, he’s is the sort of stuffy, self-important, worthy man most comedies of the era saw the heroine’s apologetically jilt to enjoy true love with Cary-Grant.

Of course, Wyn is no Cary Grant. Played by Dennis Morgan with a wonderful sense of shallowness, he’s far too easily-led behind his charm for that. Wyn is a weak man, who struggles to take responsibility for (or make) his own choices. That doesn’t change the fact that Kitty has a passion for him she never once raises for Dr Mark. Kitty Foyle essentially agues his weakness and social status as the scion of a banking family (he is, we are not allowed to forget, the third man to bear the name Wynnewood Stafford), could never make him an appropriate match for the reassuringly middle-class Kitty.

There is a real inverted snobbery around Kitty Foyle, where the upper-classes of Philadelphia (represented, among others, by Gladys Cooper as Wyn’s imperious mother) can only-just-about suppress their discomfort about Kitty’s lower standing. (Their suggestion, when presented with the fait accompli of Kitty-Wyn’s marriage is to suggest Kitty attends a finishing school). Saying that, the family don’t object to the marriage and (in their own way) their suggestions are based around helping Kitty. The two-way snobbery is neither they nor Kitty can imagine a middle-ground: she is just as adamant she will not change anything about herself, as they can’t imagine accommodating her middle-class interests. The film wants us to blame Wyn for his upper-class background and spreads a depressing message that the classes should never mix.

Brutal assumptions people make about each other are at the heart of Kitty Foyle – and the film has absolutely no idea about this. The film never once questions the character flaws of certainty that lead Kitty, Wyn and Mark to all reach (false) conclusions about others. Kitty brutally decides, no matter what Wyn says, that she will divorce him because she doesn’t believe he will give him his wealth. And maybe she’s right – but she never asks him and makes a series of selfish decisions about their life that he has every right to be at least involved in. Kitty Foyle sees absolutely no issue with this, which you can bet its bottom dollar it would if the shoe was on the other foot. The is probably the only romance from Hollywood’s golden age that condemns true love in favour of cold-headed pragmatism and sensible (not passionate) choices.

All of this doesn’t mean that Ginger Rogers isn’t very good, as she carries virtually single-handedly the whole film. Kitty is feisty, determined, smart, shrewd, funny and brave. It gives her opportunities for light comedy and serious emotions. She’s very funny in comedy sequences, such as Kitty’s accidental pressing of the burglar alarm rather than stock room button on her first day on the job in a New York department store (I blame the woeful design flaw in putting these poorly-labelled buttons right next to each other!). But she’s also quietly heart-breaking in the film’s final segment where she faces a series of painful events. Rogers invests these with a quietly melancholic sadness laced with real dignity. It’s a fine performance that lifts an otherwise mediocre film.

It’s also a mediocre film that opens with a jaw-droppingly anti-feminist sequence to explain why girls are working. A series of silent flashbacks play out in silent-film-style dumb-show openly mocking suffragettes and the misguided passions of women for freedom that took them away from a live of ease being looked after by doting husbands. The whole point seems to be how unwise they were to fight to be foisted into a world of hard work and not being given a seat automatically on public transportation. It left me wondering how far into this script Katherine Hepburn got before she turned it down?

Viridiana (1961)

Luis Buñuel’s brilliant, multi-layered satire is a superb, darkly hilarious, masterful film

Director: Luis Buñuel

Cast: Silvia Pinal (Viridiana), Francisco Rabal (Jorge), Fernando Rey (Don Jaime), Margarita Lozano (Ramona), Victoria Zinny (Lucia), Teresita Rabal (Rita), José Calvo (Don Amalio), José Manuel Martín (“El Cojo”), Luis Heredia (“El Poca”), Joaquín Roa (Don Zequiel), Lola Gaos (Enedina), Juan García Tiendra (“El Leproso”)

In the 1960s, Luis Buñuel was invited back Spain after years of creative exile to spearhead a new wave of Spanish filmmaking. He produced a film that not only bit the right-wing hand that fed it, it snapped it clean off and chewed it up. Viridiana must have been the last thing the authorities had in mind. Gloriously exposing the guilt and vanity of the upper classes and charity, it was lambasted by the Catholic church for blasphemy and showed an organised world teetering on the brink of chaos, with the powerful either perverts or playboys, the poor singularly ungrateful for the paternalistic patronage they receive and our lead character a hopelessly naïve former nun. Not surprisingly it was instantly banned and Buñuel never made a film in Spain again.

Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) is our naïve nun, called to her uncle Don Jaime’s (Fernando Rey) home for one last visit before her confirmation. Don Jaime though has plans: Viridiana has an extraordinary resemblance to his late wife and Don Jaime intends to first get her to cos-play his wife and then marry him. Or failing that, to drug her and rape her. Guilt stops him from the rape – but doesn’t stop him from claiming he did it, a lie he instantly (fatally) regrets but which leads her to abandon her dreams of becoming a nun. In the aftermath, Viridiana and her cousin (Jaime’s bastard son) Jorge (Francisco Rabal) divide the estate, with Viridiana aiming to continue her religious ideals through excessively generous charity with quietly resentful local paupers, who she has a vision of turning into a religious commune. It does not turn out well.

Viridiana benches much of the surrealism of Buñuel’s most famous work, but it loses none of his acute social satire and ability to inject the absurd with sharp dark humour. It makes Viridiana a startingly complex work, brilliantly assembled by an artist where every frame has a different idea, all of which comes together into a darkly entertaining whole. Its not hard to see why the strictly Catholic Fascist Spain found the film so outrageous, with its mocking of religious imagery (from the crucifix that becomes a flick knife to the famous scene of the paupers forming a drunken, pose-perfect, tableau of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper), it’s acknowledgement of a host of fetishes and perversions among the upper-classes (orgies, feet, hinted necrophilia, incest) and the utter ineffectiveness of any system, no matter how charitable, to control the human spirit, with the poor frequently resentful under their veneer of deferential gratitude.

Viridiana splits neatly into two acts, both revolving around a complex relationship with guilt and how it guides our actions. Don Jaime (a superb performance of corrupted grandeur from Fernando Rey) is a lonely man, plagued with guilt and regret over his wife’s death, locking himself away in a time-locked country pile like a perverted Miss Havisham. In private he fetishistically admires her clothes (which he blasphemously keeps like holy relics) and admires his feet in her shoes. He’s fascinated by Viridiana’s resemblance to his late wife and fantasises that she might be persuaded to renounce the cloth to live as his wife.

With the convenience of his servant Ramana – an equally lonely, repressed soul tenderly played with a burgeoning sexual desire by Margarita Lozano – he guilt-trips Viridiana into dressing for one night in his wife’s bridal clothes, drugs her drink and takes her to bed. He even arranges the sleeping Viridiana into the exact pose his wife had when she was before him, adding hints of necrophilia to an already disgusting assault. Shame stops him from committing the deed and guilt then corrupts both of them. Don Jaime at his selfish lie, Viridiana at her indirect role in her uncle’s death and the forced abandonment of her vocation.

Inheriting her uncle’s home, alongside playboy cousin Jorge (Jaime’s bastard son, who he has barely met), Viridiana redirects this guilt into a commune for the poor and needy, where charity, work and faith sit side-by-side. Her efforts to essentially introduce a benign feudal church-system contrasts with Jorge’s modernising efforts, introducing electricity and other mod-cons. Buñuel demonstrates the discomfort of these two worlds with a beautifully assembled scene where Viridiana’s leads a group pray intercut with a series of shots of acts of manual labour (hammers smashing walls, cement splatted on bricks etc.), making he prayer meeting (which we know the attendees think is a pile of bunkum) seem even more outdated and ineffective.

Viridiana isn’t cruel about these characters though – it looks at them as real people, with faults and virtues, some good some bad. It’s also remarkably clear-eyed about charity. There is something performative about Viridiana’s efforts, as well as a clear sense it is as much for her (subconsciously – she’s too naïve for cynicism) as it is the welfare of the beneficiaries. Those beneficiaries are a brilliant series of pen portraits of people who take offered charity, but resent the paternalistic attitudes that come with it. The working classes are not passively grateful for religious charity – but they are smart enough to take a meal ticket. No wonder the church was furious: Viridiana ruthlessly exposes the lip-service the downtrodden give religious charity, while refusing to reshape their lives and views according to instruction.

The peasants remain earthy, irreverent and full of their own pleasures and prejudices. Despite Viridiana’s best efforts they abuse a (possibly leperous) beggar, tying a cowbell to him so they can hear him coming. When left alone in the grand house, they do what many of us might well do in their place: like teenagers resentful at their parents, they throw a drunken party and trash the place. Viridiana’s ‘dinner-party’ scene is Buñuel’s masterclass in riotous joy that slowly turns darker and more dangerous. Mockery leads to over-indulgence, anger and eventually violence. Viridiana will discover to her cost her attempts at kindness has done nothing to change their basic characters and it is as likely for someone to be downtrodden and deeply unpleasant as it is for them to be decent.

Charity in Viridiana doesn’t really change the world. It can improve lives, but not the system. And using it to shape people into what you want them to be is doomed to failure. The peasants are (mostly) not bad people, they just don’t feel want to reshape themselves into pious substitute nuns for Viridiana as a pay-off for room and board. Jorge is distressed to see a working dog tied to a cart and forced to run alongside it. He impulsively buys the dog – which to its original owner is not a pet but a working animal that must own its keep. Jorge clearly feels good about saving this dog: but seconds after he walks away with it, Buñuel pans across to another identical dog running behind a cart. Who was this charity for? The dog or for Jorge? The peasants of Viridiana? And did this one act change anything? And for some charity is entirely self serving: Viridiana visits Don Jaime solely out of thanks for his charity in paying for her time in the convent – surely an act only carried out for Jamie’s own perverted reasons.

None of this is what the Church or Spanish state wanted to hear. A downtrodden class that isn’t grateful to its leaders for lifting them up, but resents them for their patronising strictures. Lords of the manor, one of whom is a lonely pervert, the second a libidinous playboy who sleeps with multiple women. A deeply religious woman, who is completely naïve and fails utterly. And an ending – an ending Buñuel was ordered to change from the script and in doing so made even more suggestive and blasphemous – that implies the household will settle into a sexual menage.

It’s brilliantly, pointedly not what he was asked for – and stunning condemnation of the flaws in an entire system, caught in a brilliant parable. It’s superbly directed by Buñuel, by now a master of camerawork and editing with a beautifully judged performance by Silvia Pinal who makes Viridiana someone we deeply admire even as every decision she makes seems doomed for disaster. It’s a fiercely challenging, involving and complex work and infinitely rewarding for reviewing and patient consideration – no wonder Spanish critics later named it the greatest Spanish film ever made.

Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)

The first big travelogue hit, full of beautiful images and a nice song – and almost no plot

Director: Jean Negulesco

Cast: Clifton Webb (John Frederick Shadwell), Dorothy McGuire (Miss Frances), Jean Peters (Anita Hutchins), Louis Jourdan (Prince Dino di Cessi), Rossano Brazzi (Giorgio Bianchi), Maggie McNamara (Maria Williams), Howard St. John (Burgoyne), Kathryn Givney (Mrs. Burgoyne), Cathleen Nesbitt (Principessa)

Did you ever visit the Eternal City and wondered why the Trevi Fountain seems to be full of small change? Well, a large chunk of the responsibility probably lies with this film. Three Coins in the Fountain, the very first Cinemascope travelogue super smash, meanders from our heroes chucking a coin into the fountain in line with the local myth that it means they will, one day, return to Rome. I can’t blame them – pretty sure I did the same when I was there. Whether many people have ever tossed a coin wishing to return to Three Coins in the Fountain is another question.

But Three Coins in the Fountain, a picturesque romance as shallow as the fountain itselfmade the idea internationally famous (it doesn’t trouble itself, by the way, with the fact only two of them actually toss a lira in). The story from there is as thin as paper. Our three leads are American secretaries: Frances (Dorothy McGuire) works for famed expat author John Frederick Shadwell (Clifton Webb) whom she secretly loves, Anita (Jean Peters) is seeing out her final weeks in the American embassy before flying home to a fictional fiancée, training up her replacement Maria (Maggie McNamara). Anita can’t afford to marry her Italian translator beau Giorgio (Rossano Brazzi) with his family of thousands to support. Maria sets her cap at Prince Dino (Louis Jourdan), ruthlessly researching and copying his views and opinions on everything from art to playing the piccolo.

Will these three relationships end well? What do you think! Drama in any case largely takes a complete back seat to the film’s main focus: filling the screen with the gorgeous architecture of Rome (and Venice as a two-for-one, thanks to a brief stop-off in Dino’s private plane) and basically giving the American cinema-going public a mouth-watering chance to see in glorious technicolour sights they had only previously seen in black-and-white photos. If 20^th Century Fox and director Jean Negulesco didn’t have some shares in the Italian tourist industry squirreled away somewhere, I’ll eat my Panama hat.

Surely one of the most forgettable Best Picture nominees of all time, Three Coins in the Fountain did win two Oscars for its most memorable features. The first was Milton Krasner’s picture-postcard cinematography, making Rome look like the sort of place you’d jump on the first plane to get to. The other was Jule Styne and Sammy Cohn’s charming little ditty Three Coins in the Fountain (the velvet vocals of a surprisingly unbilled Frank Sinatra must have helped here). You can enjoy the finest moments of each in the film’s opening three minutes that plays the entire song (endlessly refrained again throughout the film) while the camera glides through the most beautiful sights of Rome. Truthfully, the rest of the running time is more of the same with added soap suds.

The plot lines are so slight and insubstantial it almost feels mean to poke critical holes in them. Few moments in this film ever ring true, but then this is the sort of luxurious fairy tale where American secretaries live in what seems to be a five-star hotel with panoramic views and work jobs that are really just time-fillers for their real quest of finding husbands. (The sexual politics of Three Coins in the Fountain, where women can’t imagine any other life horizon than typing up a gruff employer’s dull thoughts, and dream of swopping that for setting up house-and-home for a wealthy man, is as dated today as Anita and Maggie seemingly working for the 50s equivalent of USAID). Three Coins in the Fountain knows though the romantic plots are just there to keep us occupied between the postcards, and so long as they don’t offend or bore the viewer they’ve done their job.

Dorothy McGuire invests all the charm she can in playing a role written as a fussy busy-body interfering in her friend’s romantic lives and pining for Clifton Webb’s John Patrick Shadwell but seems oblivious to the fact that he is all too clearly coded to be what gossip columnists of the day called ‘a confirmed bachelor’. Their resolutely sexless ‘companionship’ contrasts with Jean Peter’s Anita giving a lusty fire to her flirtation with Giorgio (an underused Rossano Brazzi, who got a much better go round at this sort of thing in David Lean’s vastly superior Summertime). Various artificial obstacles are placed in their way (a modern film, unburdened by the Hays Code, would have leaned more into hints of a pregnancy scandal in Anita’s otherwise inexplicable decision to leave Rome).

Finally, Maggie McNamara gives a lightness of touch to a hilariously transparent campaign of romantic deception launched by Maria to win the heart of Prince Dino. Dino is, of course, deeply hurt that ‘the only woman I can trust’ has been lying to him – but I couldn’t help but feel most men at the time would jump like Casanova in heat on a woman who smilingly repeated back their own opinions to him with total conviction. Louis Jourdan, like Clifton Webb, charmingly offers up the sort of Euro-charm he was called to produce for most of the 50s.

There are amusing moments in Three Coins. Webb (clearly having a nice holiday in between dialling in his trademarked waspy socialite) is always pretty good value, and his arch glance through Maria’s charade is as grin-inducing as Frances being seen as so destined to become a frustrated spinster that Shadwell’s maid gives her a cat so she won’t be alone. Giorgio’s family eagerness to practically shove Anita into a wedding dress the second they meet her is almost as funny as watching the clueless Anita fail to control Giorgio’s truck as it rolls wildly downhill (inexplicably she tries to put it into gear rather than, oh I don’t know, hitting the brakes…)

But moments like this are few and far between in an otherwise gentle amble through the tourist hotspots of Rome. (The Venice shots, hilariously, see all the actors appear in brief scenes in front of projected images – clearly just the camera crew got that trip.) Negulesco keeps it all flowing forward like the pro he was, but by the time it ends you’ll be left with a vague longing to stroll around the streets of one of the world’s most beautiful cities – and only a vague idea about whether there was any other point to the film you just watched.

Hard Truths (2024)

Leigh encourages us to take a deeper, more considered look at the people around us

Director: Mike Leigh

Cast: Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Pansy), Michele Austin (Chantelle), David Webber (Curtley), Tuwaine Barrett (Moses), Ani Nelson (Kayla), Sophia Brown (Aleisha), Jonathan Livingstone (Virgil)

Sometimes the world all gets too much for all of us. But it’s pretty much always too much for Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). A stay-at-home wife to plumber Curtley (David Webber), mother to shy, unambitious Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), pretty much everything enrages Pansy, who responds to virtually everything around her with unbridled rage and accusatory rants. She’s completely different to her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), a motherly hairdresser with two ambitious daughters Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown) with whom she has a warm loving relationship. What made one sister easy-going and the other someone who could literally pick a fight in an empty room?

The sharpest part of Mike Leigh’s small-scale, but deeply engaging, family story is encouraging us to take a longer look at a person who, at first, is almost unbearable. To find in them vulnerabilities and fears that makes us understand and feel sorry for them. But, make no mistake, Pansy is a tough person to spend time with. Brought to life in an astonishing, visceral, deeply raw performance by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, most of the film’s opening half hour is spent establishing Pansy’s kneejerk aggression which she uses to deal with everything around her.

Jean-Baptiste launches into these furious rants with the sort of all-consuming energy that feels like you’ve been punched back in your seat, while her all-in commitment even raises a chuckle or two at the unadjusted fury of Pansy’s words. Every encounter ends in Pansy either letting rip or almost deliberately escalating everyday moments into confrontations. She tears a strip off a shop assistant in a furniture store, seemingly for no reason. She confronts a shopping till assistant and two other people in a supermarket queue. She begins a slanging match with another driver over a parking space. At dinner she barely gets a fork-full of food into her mouth, so intent is she on condemning the rest of the neighbourhood while her husband and son keep their heads down and silently eat the meal she prepared. Compared to Chantelle’s warm home life and bubbly, chatty interaction with her customers, our sympathies lie with those who have to deal with Pansy.

But the brilliant thing in here, and in Jean-Baptiste’s fragile desperation and terror just under the surface, is that Leigh’s film unpacks this to make clear it stems from an inability to deal with the world: a fear that has turned Pansy into someone who instinctively attacks first before when she feels threatened (which is all the time). Pansy clearly suffers from some sort of deep anxiety mixed with OCD. She’s terrified of germs, barely able to touch items she hasn’t personally cleaned. Her house is antiseptic, devoid of personal items. She seems totally at a loss with how to talk to people, interpreting every approach as an implicit threat and is deeply lonely under her aggression. This is the anger of someone who is scared literally all the time, who can’t deal with the pressures of the world and has retreated into a defensive cocoon to drive everyone away.

Jean-Baptiste’s performance grows, deepens and peels away layers of Pansy to become richer and richer as Leigh’s perfectly placed, deceptively slight film gently spreads itself out. Pansy is convinced the world is dangerous, certain that everyone hates her, only married her husband (who gives her no emotional support what-so-ever and silently expects meals when he gets home) because she was afraid of dying alone. She can’t sit in a room without cleaning it, can’t bring herself to put on dentist goggles someone else might have used and is nearly paralysed with fear at the thought of touching a bunch of shop wrapped flowers. To her the world is a continuing, never-ending, terrifying struggle and it has turned Pansy into a woman constantly desperate and scared. Worst of all, Pansy knows this isn’t ‘normal’, that things which incapacitate her with fear don’t even cause other people to bat an eye – and she doesn’t understand why she is like this. This emotion pours out of Jean-Baptiste in a riveting, hugely affecting second act, playing out like a deeply moving emotional breakdown.

The catalyst is the mother’s day commemoration she and Chantelle share for their mother, a woman Chantelle remembers with deep fondness and love: but whom Pansy remembers only as a woman who expected Pansy to sacrifice her own education and interests to look after Chantelle and bring money into the home. Pansy references a childhood love of mathematics that was never encouraged – the sort of natural skill you can imagine someone somewhere on a spectrum like Pansy is would have had a real passion for – which for her summarises how opportunities were never meant for.

Our sympathies slowly, but noticeably shift. Pansy can’t do what the rest of do, put aside or forget the things that upset us. Hard Truths suggests sometimes we do that too easily: Chantelle’s daughters experience tough, unpleasant days at work but come together for drinks to say how great their careers are. Others deal with painful encounters – like the bullying Moses endures – by retreating into silence. Pansy though is aware she cannot deal with situations, cannot understand herself or why she is the way that she is – and, it’s clear, doesn’t like herself either. More and more we agree with Chantelle, who can’t understand why she married the unsupportive, monosyllabic Curtley (who treats his eager apprentice with dismissive disinterest and barely acknowledges Chantelle’s family showing its not fear of Pansy that keeps him sullen and silent at home).

It’s a masterful part of this wonderful, small-scale but deeply heart felt film from Leigh. Jean-Baptiste’s performance is one of the ages, but Michele Austin gives a highly emotive performance with a charm that hides an inner steel. It’s a beautifully assembled, wonderfully acted, highly intelligent film from an accomplished director who encourages the viewers to look as closely at characters – their complexities and virtues as well as their flaws – with the same patience and regard as he has spent his career doing.

Emilia Perez (2024)

Controversial arthouse film which clumsily tries to do to many things, many of them not well

Director: Jacques Audiard

Cast: Zoe Saldaña (Rita Mora Castro), Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez/Juan “Manitas” Del Monte), Selena Gomez (Jessi Del Monte), Adriana Paz (Epifanía Flores), Édgar Ramírez (Gustavo Brun), Mark Ivanir (Dr. Wasserman)

Sometimes a film comes along that manages to annoy everyone. Emilia Pérez seems to have achieved that unwanted goal. Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Jury Prize winner is a wild, audacious piece of film-making that misses as much as it hits. It’s also been bashed as a musical full of people who can’t really sing, denounced as transphobic, and savaged by Mexicans. Perhaps Emilia Pérez shows us the downside when an auteur French director works with Netflix who accidentally promote what would have otherwise been a little-seen arthouse film into the heart of a culture war. I don’t think Emilia Pérez intends to be racist or transphobic (but yeah most of the cast can’t sing), but it does deal with these issues at times very clumsily. It’s also a curious mish-mash that places a transitioning character in a traditional “hard-to-escape-your-past” plot.

That transitioning character is Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón), formerly a notorious drug-lord. With the (initially coerced) aid of crusading lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña), Emilia succeeds in faking her death, moving her family to Switzerland to protect them, extricating a fortune from her criminal empire and flying to Israel for her operation. Four years later, Emilia finds she can’t live without her children and Rita is roped back into retrieve her wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and kids and move them in with their “aunt” Emilia. Simultaneously Emilia, wanted to be cleansed of her criminal past, starts a foundation to “discover” the graves of those killed in Mexico’s drug wars. But returning to a world she left behind only makes it harder for Emilia to escape her criminal past.

Emilia Pérez: an Audiard crime story with songs! Audiard described it as an opera fantasia, and I feel it was his intention for nothing in it to be treated as traditionally “real”. The characters frequently burst into song or throw themselves into dream-like dance sequences to express complex feelings. Aside from the film’s explosive, guns-blaring conclusion, filmed on isolated, dusty, abandoned houses and roads, key scenes are tightly shot on sparse sets with very little back lighting, giving them a dreamy black-box effect. Emotions are as heightened as the (sometimes clumsy) lyrics and the film throws itself into every dialled-up event with a comic-book energy.

All of which means Emilia Pérez is an acquired taste and, like many ambitious films that zig when they should zag, fails as often as it hits the jackpot. Its finest scenes are the key song-and-dance numbers, all left in the hands of Zoe Saldaña (excellently torn between idealism, fear, cynicism and regret with complex feelings about her dubious employer). Saldaña is a dynamic and fearless dance performer, throwing herself into synchronised movements through a Mexican market in the film’s opening “El Alegato” and dominating the film’s central show-piece, an athletic, sensual dance around and over tables at a charity ball in “El Mal”.

But even Saldaña falls foul of the film’s largest musical failing: with the exception of Selena Gomez (who struggles with a Mexican accent so terrible, even non-Spanish speakers can tell it’s awful) no one in the cast can really sing. Criticism like that somehow feels shallow when you apply it to an arthouse film, but it’s legitimate. The cast largely go for fast-paced, Henry-Higgins-ish, rhythmic speaking, big on husky intensity but not exactly something you would sit and listen to. Gascón is a particularly poor singer, especially noticeable with the operatic high notes she is frequently given. Even the controversial AI-upgrade her voice was given in post-production can’t help her.

Throw into that the clumsiness of some of the lyrics. For a film dealing with as sensitive an issue as this, are lyrics like “Man to woman or woman to man? Man to woman. From penis to vagina” really a good idea? Is a song about Emilia’s son singing about how her smell reminds him of his Dad (body smell being a hot topic for this community) tasteful? Since this issue (the perception of bodily odours) is a key issue for the trans community, writing a whimsical song about it rather suggests Audiard and team didn’t really do enough to wrap their heads around controversial issues.

Perhaps that’s because Emilia Pérez is, at heart, a classic “just when I thought I was out…” movie that tries to spice up the formula by having its gangster character be a trans woman (the partial implication of a sex change being a type of disguise is another hot-topic issue the filmmakers should have got themselves familiar with). It does, I think, make for a fresh take to see even incredibly macho, hardened killers can have longings like Emilia – and Gascón’s performance is actually at its best showing the fear that lies below the aggression before Emilia’s transition, and when embracing her tearful joy at the success of her operation. But the point remains this is a film not looking to make a real statement on transgender issues, or even demonstrating any real interest in the experience of being trans. It is instead just using a trans identity as a new context for a familiar “starting a new life” storyline. With minimal changes, Emilia could have undergone extensive plastic surgery or gone into witness protection and it would have made few changes to plot or themes.

It is interesting to get a trans character who is not always completely sympathetic (although I get that the community find it a blow upon a bruise to finally get a film with a trans lead, and she’s as a morally questionable and unlikeable as this). Emilia’s desire to restart her life away from crime is fatally undermined by refusing to make the sacrifices needed. Slowly she drags her family back in (passing herself off, Mrs Doubtfire-like, as her own sister), reconnects with the criminal underworld (albeit for humanitarian reasons) and reverts to the threats and violence she used in her old life (when, let’s not forget, she had a plastic bag slammed over Rita’s head to motivate her).

Emilia Perez also never explores the outrageous moral stance of a murderer in a new life, using their knowledge to “help” their victims by “discovering” the graves of people she ordered put in the ground. In fact, the only person affected by Emilia’s past crimes whom the film shows her encountering is the widow of an abusive husband (who is actually grateful to the gangsters for saving her the trouble). It scrupulously avoids any contact with, say, a grieving relative of one of her past victims. Similarly, the film avoids engaging with Emilia’s appalling emotional manipulation of her family. Karla Sofía Gascón gives a committed performance, but she is not able to coalesce all these complicated feelings into a character that feels real and the film constantly veers awkwardly between giving her implied criticism and absolution.

Audiard offering not exactly the most flattering image of Mexico was the final nail in the film’s coffin, even if to be honest it’s his nationality as the face of a film about Mexico (Paz is the only Mexican involved) that has probably raised most hackles. Emilia Pérez has moments where Audiard’s impressive film-making stands out, a dance number captures your imagination or there is a flash of compelling acting. But then it will segue into the sort of scenes we’ve seen in hundreds of crime movies, or songs so out-there they raise the wrong sort of gasps. Emilia Pérez might not be intentionally trying to be racist or transphobic, but it certainly handles both themes with real clumsiness. Fundamentally, it’s a traditional plot told in an outlandish style, over-exposed into a world of criticism that Audiard (who has basically apologised if people don’t like the movie) and his collaborators just weren’t ready for. The film itself? Good moments, bad moments, but not worth all the fuss.

The Teacher’s Lounge (2023)

A series of minor thefts leads to a school spiralling out of control in this intense, small-scale drama

Director: Ilker Çatak

Cast: Leonie Benesch (Carla Nowak), Eva Löbau (Friederike Kuhn), Anne-Kathrin Gummich (Dr. Bettina Böhm), Rafael Stachowiak (Milosz Dudek), Michael Klammer (Thomas Liebenwerda), Kathrin Wehlisch (Lore Semnik), Leonard Stettnisch (Oskar Kuhn)

Schools can be like whole societies in microcosm, with attention grabbing events having earth-shattering consequences in these tiny worlds. New teacher Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) finds this out the hard way when she takes matters into her own hands to solve a spate of petty thefts in the staff room, before the blame is pinned on students. Setting a trap, to her surprise she captures on film evidence that the thief is the school’s popular administrator Mrs Kuhn (Eva Löbau), mother of Carla’s star-pupil Oskar (Leonard Stettnisch). Events quickly spiral out of control, as Mrs Kuhn denies the charges and Carla’s attempts to be even-handed and fair leave her isolated at the centre of a storm pitting teachers, students and parents against each other.

The Teachers Lounge is a gripping ‘everyday’ thriller, where events on a small scale capture wider conflicts that rock whole societies. The events themselves seem small – petty theft and arguments over invasions of privacy – but Çatak’s film demonstrates they have shattering impacts on those involved. Loss of reputation, of jobs, the damaging impact on a promising child’s education, the shattering of harmony in a small community – it all explodes due to a few spur-of-the-moment decisions, building on each other so delicately that you are suddenly surprised to find it’s a crisis.

What’s really painful about The Teacher’s Lounge is how scrupulously honest and moral everything Carla tries to do is. What she’s not prepared for, is other people not playing by the same rules. Privately confronting Mrs Kuhn (having caught her distinctive blouse going on camera) with an offer to stop stealing and she’ll say no more about it, she’s amazed and totally shaken by the complete unwillingness to admit any guilt. When the matter is raised with the headmaster, Carla is dumbfounded by Kuhn’s aggressive denial and furious counter-accusation of invasion of privacy. Her cause is passionately taken up by Oskar, accusing Carla of ruining his mother’s life for no reason.

At the film’s heart is a wonderful performance of repressed tension from Leonie Benesch. Carla is a good teacher, but also a slightly distant, perhaps little-too-professional person. She engages more comfortably with the children because the ‘rules’ are clearer. With her fellow teachers, she never seems relaxed. She isn’t willing, as they are, to support (or cover up) for colleagues regardless of the situation. She judges each situation on its own merits – and Benesch superbly shows through her tense frame and strained voice how stressful this is – and adjusts her views and opinions as the situation develops. To everyone else this isn’t a positive but a huge negative, her refusal to follow an agreed line a sign of her flaky lack of loyalty to the team. (Her controversial filming is entirely caused by her mistrust of her colleagues, after watching one of them shamelessly empty an honesty box).

Çatak’s film shows how fragile the rules holding society together can be under pressure. Carla’s compassionate, thoughtful teaching focuses on developing her young students’ empathy and morality. She respects their views and asks for honesty in return. When arguments arise in class, she encourages discussion and consensus building. A jolly welcoming clapping-and-singing routine she practices every morning is about bringing the class together as a group. All of this flies out of the window as events unfold, showing how fragile these precious democratic conventions are.

The control of the teachers in the school turns out to be unbelievably fragile. Carla’s students stop co-operating with her lessons, effectively forming a union. The school newspaper – older students full of idolism about being the next Woodward and Bernstein – trap Carla into a Gotcha interview and misrepresent her opinions, fuelling the crisis (and leading to a near mutiny over a ban of the school newspaper). Carla, naturally, is blamed by her colleagues for the interview.

These fragilities and small-scale repression is just one way Çatak uses the setting to illustrate larger issues. Just under the school’s surface, there is a strong ‘us-and-them’ atmosphere. Both teachers and students demand internal loyalty to their sides. The thefts have already motivated heavy-handed members of staff to pressure (in private meetings) students to inform on their classmates. Carla objects to this but lacks the strength to end it – just as she later objects but does not obstruct a forced search of the boy’s wallets for stolen cash. It becomes more and more clear that Carla’s more considerate, diplomatic way of proceeding simply hasn’t got a chance of getting heard.

There is an uncomfortable air of casual assumptions being swiftly made. The first student suspect is the son of Turkish immigrants (the father’s job as a taxi driver all but used as evidence that the boy is likely guilty). Some of the staff simply can’t believe a boy from his background could have ready cash on him. An unbearably uncomfortable meeting with his parents – who at one point are instructed to speak German – is rife with tension. No wonder Carla is so uncomfortable with her Polish roots being discussed, that she asks a colleague with a similar background to only speak to her in German. Of course that contributes even more to the untrusted sense of distance Carla accidentally gives off to her fellow teachers.

This makes it even more heartbreaking to see Carla’s world slowly collapse in on itself as her attempts to treat everyone’s view points and demands fairly and equally ends with her attacked by both her colleagues and students. With her ever tense, bewildered decency getting ever more crushed Leonie Benesch is excellent in Çatak’s wonderful small-scale morality tale about society today, where the loudest and most strident voices win out. If you were her, you’d be finding an excuse to scream in a classroom as well.

Queen Christina (1933)

Garbo is at her best in this luscious, romantic, beautifully filmed historical epic

Director: Rouben Mamoulian

Cast: Greta Garbo (Queen Christina), John Gilbert (Antonio Pimental de Prado), Ian Keith (Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie), Lewis Stone (Axel Oxenstierna), Elizabeth Young (Countess Ebba Sparre), C. Aubrey Smith (Aage), Reginald Owen (Prince Charles Gustav), David Torrence (Archbishop), Gustav von Seyffertitz (General), Akim Tamiroff (Pedro)

What could be more perfect casting than Garbo as Queen of Sweden? In Queen Christina she plays the eponymous queen, daughter of legendary martial monarch Gustavus Adolphus, killed in the never-ending European bloodbath that was the Thirty Years War. Coming to the throne as a child of six, almost twenty years later she’s ready for peace in Europe. But, after a lifetime of duty, she’s also ready for something approaching a regular life. But her lords need her to do something about providing an heir, ideally by marrying her heroic cousin Charles Gustav (Reginald Owen) despite the fact she’s conducting her latest secret affair with ambitious Count Magnus (Ian Keith). One day Christina sneaks out of town, dressed as a man and meets (and spends several nights with – the disguise doesn’t last long) Spaniard Antonio de Pradro (John Gilbert) in a snowbound inn. Returning to court she has a difficult decision: love, duty or a bit of both?

Queen Christina is a luscious period romance with Garbo in peak-form. It’s a masterful showpiece for a magnetic screen presence and charismatic performer. Queen Christina gives Garbo almost everything she could wish: grand speeches, coquettish romance, Twelfth Night style romantic farce, domineering regal control and little-girl lost vulnerability. Garbo brings all this together into one coherent whole, and is a dynamite presence at the heart of Queen Christina. Garbo nails the show-stopping speeches with regal magnetic assurance, but will be delightfully girlish when giggling with lovers. Her nervousness that her femineity could be unmasked in any moment with Antonio in the inn is played with a charming lightness that’s deeply funny, while the romantic shyness and honesty she displays with him is pitched just right. Garbo also manages to make the queen never feel selfish even as she is torn between desire and duty.

She’s at the centre of a beautifully assembled film, gorgeously shot by William H Daniels, with dynamic camera movements, soaking up the impressive sets and snow-strewn locations. Rouben Mamoulian’s direction is sharp, visually acute and balances the film’s shifts between drama and comedy extremely well – it’s a remarkable tribute that considering it shifts tone and genre so often, Queen Christina never feels like a disjointed film or jars when it shifts from Garbo holding court in Stockholm, to nervously hiding under her hat in a snowbound inn to keep up the pretence she’s just one of the guys. (How anyone could be fooled for even a moment into thinking Garbo was a boy is a mystery).

It’s a relief to Antonio to find she isn’t one of the guys, since he’s more than aware of the chemistry between the two of them when he thinks she is one. There more than a little bit of sexual fluidity in Queen Christina, with Garbo’s Queen clearly bisexual, sharing a kiss with Elizabeth Young’s countess in ‘a friendship’ that feels like a lot more. Even before escaping court, Christina’s clothes frequently blur the line between male and female, as does the way she talks about herself. She is after all, very much a woman in a man’s world. Garbo brilliantly communicates this tension, her face a careful mask that only rarely slips to reveal the strain and uncertainty below the surface. You can see it all released when she stands, abashed, nervous (and unequivocally not a boy) in front of Antonio, as if showing her true self to someone for the first time.

Seizing not being the figurehead of state but her own, real, individual is at the heart of one of Queen Christina’s most memorable sequences. After several nights of passionate, romantic love making with Antonio, Christina walks around the inn room where, for a brief time, she didn’t have to play a role. With metronomic precision, Mamoulian follows Garbo as she gently caresses surfaces and objects in the room, using touch to graft the room onto her memory, so that it can be a place she can return to in her day-dreams when burdened by monarchy. It’s very simply done, but surprisingly effective and deeply melancholic: as far as Christina knows, the last few days have been nothing but in an interim in a life where she must always be what other people require her to be, never truly herself.

But then if she never saw Antonio again, there wouldn’t be a movie would there? He inevitably turns up at court, presenting a proposal from the Spanish king – which he hilariously breaks off from in shock when he clocks he is more familiar with the Queen than he expected. John Gilbert as Antonio gives a decent performance – he took over at short notice from Laurence Olivier, who testing revealed had no chemistry with Garbo – full of carefully studied nobility. He and Garbo – not surprising considering they long personal history – have excellent chemistry and spark off each other beautifully. He also generously allows Garbo the space to relax as Christina in a way she consciously never truly does at any other point in the film.

The rumours of this romance leads to affront in Sweden, from various lords and peasants horrified at the thought of losing their beloved Queen – and to a Spaniard at that! (Queen Christina makes no mention of the issue of Catholicism, which is what would have really got their goat up – an Archbishop shouts something about pagans at one point, but he might as well be talking about the Visigoths for all the context the film gives it). The shit is promptly stirred by Ian Keith’s preening Count Magnus, making a nice counterpart to Gilbert’s restrained Antonio. It also allows another showcase for Garbo, talking down rioting peasants with iron-willed reasonableness only to release a nervous breath after resolving the problem.

Queen Christina concludes in a way that mixes history with a Mills-and-Boon high romance (there is more than a touch of campy romance throughout). Mamoulian caps the film with a truly striking shot, the sort of image that passes into cinematic history. Having abdicated into a suddenly uncertain future, Christina walks to the prow of the ship carrying her away from Switzerland. Mamoulian holds the focus on Garbo and slowly zooms in, while Garbo stands having become (once again) a literal flesh-and-blood figurehead, her eyes gloriously, searchingly impassive leaving the viewer to wonder what is going on in her head? Is she traumatised, hopeful, scared, regretful, determined? It’s all left entirely to your own impression – and is a beautiful ending to the film.

Queen Christina was a big hit – bizarrely overlooked entirely at the Academy Awards, which makes no sense to me. It’s beautifully filmed by Mamoulian who finds new, unique angles for a host of scenes and at its heart has a truly iconic performance by Garbo. If you had any doubts about whether she was a great actress, watch Queen Christina and see how thoughts and deep emotions pass briefly across her face before being replaced by a mask of cool certainty. It’s a great performance from Garbo and a lusciously conceived historical epic.

Autumn Sonata (1978)

The great Bergmans collaborate in a raw powerful film that does cover familiar Bergman ground

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Ingrid Bergman (Charlotte Andergast), Liv Ullmann (Eva), Lena Nyman (Helena), Halvar Björk (Viktor), Erland Josephson (Josef), Gunnar Björnstrand (Paul), Georg Løkkeberg (Leonardo)

In the history of Swedish cinema, there was one mighty collaboration the world was waiting for. The Bergmans (no relation) Ingmar and Ingrid, two generations of iconic Swedish filmmaking, to work together for the first time. It’s ironic that when it finally happened – and Autumn Sonata was the final time both Bergman’s worked on a project exclusively intended for cinema – it came during Ingmar’s self-imposed exile, meaning it was shot in Norway via a German company (and with a title originally in German) with British and American money. But one thing you couldn’t change: this would bring Ingrid back to the artistic Euro-film-making of her own Hollywood exile and that Ingmar wouldn’t flinch on his forensic, emotionally traumatic style for the legend.

Ingrid plays Charlotte, a famed classical pianist whose entire life has been her career, with brief stop-offs between concerts for marriages and kids. It’s meant she’s not seen her now-adult daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann) for over seven years. And that she’s also missed most of Eva’s affectionate-but-passionless marriage to Viktor (Halvar Björk) and the entire life (including birth and funeral) of her grandson Erik. Charlotte also has no idea Eva has moved her disabled younger sister Helena (Lena Nyman) from the nursing home Charlotte deposited her in years ago into her own home. A visit brings mother and daughter together again for an awkward reunion that turns into a cathartic emotional outpouring, as Eva unbottles decades of resentment, anger and pain.

Autumn Sonata revolves around this extended confrontation scene, which takes up a sizeable portion of Ingmar Bergman’s thoughtful, measured film where conversations are all too clearly ticking time bombs leading to revelations that might be best unsaid. It fixates powerfully on the damage parents can inflict on their children and the shattering pain children can cause their parents. It’s a film about the brutal, challenging complexities of family and the unspoken resentments they can cause on those within them, who see their own opportunities and freedoms eaten into by a never-ending stream of demands and expectations from ‘loved ones’.

It’s a feeling familiar to all three of the principles. Ingmar was all-too-aware of his difficult relationship with both his parents and his children, Ullmann wrote about her self-perceived failings as a mother while Ingrid’s elopement with Roberto Rossellini in the 40s led her to not seeing her own daughter for almost five years. And it plays into this incredibly raw film which, while it covers familiar Ingmar ground, is played with such powerful, visceral commitment from its leads (held grippingly in frame by Ingmar’s regular collaborator Sven Nykvist), that it’s still one of his tougher watches.

Ingrid is superb as Charlotte, a woman who arrives in the remote vicarage home of her daughter, bursting with glamour. Assured, certain and utterly confident of her position as the centre of any room, Charlotte has a tendency to narrate her own life, self-assuredly mapping out her actions (from what to wear to the decision to gift Eva a car) and basks in advance in the positive reactions she anticipates. Charlotte maps her life out in terms of concerts and recitals (constantly, when Eva asks about an event from her childhood, Charlotte will ground herself by referring to a performance from that time). She automatically assumes maestro status in the house, including listening to Eva’s piano playing, moving her aside to take over and lecturing her on how the piece should be played.

She’s also though a woman deeply uncomfortable with emotion and emotional commitment. It’s an insight into how distant and unconnected Eva’s childhood must have been (brief flashbacks show Charlotte’s politely affectionate utter lack of interest in the young Eva) that what’s motivated her to visit Eva is to distract herself from the unpleasant burden of dealing with her recent husband’s death. Not grief or the need for comfort mind: it’s the experience of dealing with the events connected to the death that’s unsettled her. Her refusal to engage with anything emotional continues, from avoiding the topic of Eva’s dead son entirely to reacting to something close to barely concealed irritation at discovering her disabled daughter Helena in the home: she didn’t come here to be reminded about this other difficult emotional bond she’d outsourced to a professional.

Charlotte’s emotional coldness and distance under her warm confidence is brilliantly embodied by Ingrid. She’s a woman so overwhelmingly focused on her career she probably should never have had children at all (and perhaps regrets doing do), wasn’t remotely interested in Eva and Helena’s father (a decent, bank-manager sort played silently by Erland Josephson in flashbacks) and wants nothing from this visit except to feel better about herself. The lacerating home truths unleashed on her, see Ingrid’s composure fracture in shock, guilt and regret, her eyes becoming wells of shamed emotion.

Equally brilliant is Liv Ullman, perhaps even more so. Ullmann appears at first mousey, dowdy, humble and deferential – her husband opens the film with a heartfelt monologue about her being convinced she is not worth loving and that he only regrets he has never been able to persuade her otherwise. The cause for this becomes clear as Eva releases years of pent-up fury and anger at her mother’s oscillating from ignoring her to bursts of obsessive attention focused on coaching Eva into becoming what Charlotte wants her to be (Ingrid is fantastic at establishing Charlotte’s dumb-founded amazement that these times she fondly remembers were in fact purgatory for her daughter). Ullman’s delivery of this is powerful, viciously resentful and overwhelmingly painful.

This confrontation is the centre of Autumn Sonata but Ingmar knows that, despite what happens in Hollywood, moments like this don’t cure festering boils. In fact, our great gift as humans is to forget, re-form and move on. The film’s coda sees both women doing this: Charlotte feels her shame, but in a one-sided conversation with her agent (a wordless cameo from Gunnar Björnstrand) has already begun the process of self-justifying self-mythologising of her past. Similarly, having released years of frustration, Eva returns to her compromising self, drafting letters of apology to her mother. Or perhaps these are springs of hope? Somehow in Bergman it’s hard to think so.

You can argue that all of this very familiar to Bergman watchers: and it is (the presence of Ingrid is probably what cements it as one of his best-known films). But this is also a thought-provoking work in its own right. Autumn Sonata suggests we may try to confront or deal with things that have caused us pain. But in reality, the long, continual work of doing so is too much or us: we revert instead to compromise, adjustment and familiar patterns. Flashpoints carry emotional and dramatic weight, but life is made up of forgetting. It’s a powerful closing idea in this viciously raw piece of film-making from Ingmar, that draws such heart-breaking and emotional performances from Ingrid and Ullman.

Wicked (2024)

Hugely enjoyable and electrically filmed (sung and danced) adaptation of the classic stage musical

Director: John M. Chu

Cast: Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba Thropp), Ariana Grande (Galinda Upland), Jonathan Bailey (Fiyero Tigellar), Michelle Yeoh (Madame Morrible), Jeff Goldblum (Wizard of Oz), Ethan Slater (Boq Woodsman), Bowen Young (Pfannee), Marissa Bode (Nessarose Thropp), Peter Dinklage (Dr Dillamond), Bronwyn James (Shenshen), Andy Nyman (Governor Thropp)

I might be the only person who missed the phenomenon of Wicked, a smash-hit musical that filled in the back story of The Wizard of Oz. Set long before the arrival of Dorothy and her march down that yellow brick road, it covers the meeting and eventual friendship of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) future Wicked Witch of the West and Galinda (Ariana Grande) future Glinda the Good, at Shiz University (a sort of Ozian Hogwarts). Wicked is a grand, visual spectacular crammed with memorable tunes and show-stopping dance numbers and it’s bought to cinematic life in vibrant, dynamic and highly enjoyable style by John M. Chu.

At Shiz, Elphaba is snubbed by all and sundry who can’t see past her green skin. Despised by her father (Andy Nyman) – who we know isn’t her true father (I wonder who it could be?) – she’s lived a life of defensive self-sufficiency. Galinda, in contrast, is effortlessly popular and has never found herself in any situation where she can’t get what she wants. But Elphaba has something Galinda wants – a natural talent for magic that makes her the protégé of Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) – and circumstances end up with the two of them sharing rooms. Surprisingly, a friendship forms when these two opposites find common ground. But will this be challenged when Elphaba is called to the Emerald City to meet with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum)?

Wicked Part One covers (in almost two and half hours!) only the first act of Wicked, meaning the film culminates with the musical’s most famous number ’Defying Gravity’. The producers proudly stated this was to not compromise on character development by rushing – the more cynical might say they were motivated by double-dipping into mountains of box-office moolah. Despite this, Wicked Part 1 (despite taking pretty much as long to cover Act 1 as it takes theatres to stage the entire musical) feels surprisingly well-paced and the film itself is so energetic, charming and fun you quickly forget the fundamental financial cynicism behind it.

Wicked is directed with real verve and energy by John M. Chu – it’s easily the most purely enjoyable Hollywood musical since West Side Story and one of the most entertaining Broadway adaptations of this century. Wicked is expertly shot and very well edited, its camerawork making the many dance sequences both high-tempo and also easy to follow (Wicked avoids many musicals’ high-cutting failures that make choreography almost impossible to see). And it looks fabulous, the design embracing the bold colours and steam-punk magic of Oz.

It also perfectly casts its two leads, both of whom are gifted performers bringing passion and commitment. Cynthia Erivo’s voice is spectacular, and she taps into Elphaba’s loneliness and pain under her defensive, defiant outer core. It’s a fabulously sad-eyed performance of weary pain and Erivo beautifully conveys Elphaba’s moral outrage at the lies that underpin Oz. Just as fantastic is Ariana Grande. Grande says she had dreamed about playing Galinda since she was a kid (yup, that’s how old this musical is) – and it shows. It’s an electric, hilarious performance that embraces Galinda’s studied sweet physicality, her little bobs and flicks and blithe unawareness of her aching privilege and self-entitlement, but what Grande does stunningly well is really make you like Galinda no matter how misguidedly self-centred she is.

And she really is. Part of Wicked’s appeal is mixing Oz with Mean Girls with more than a dash of racial prejudice. Elphaba is immediately snubbed because she literally doesn’t look right (anti-green prejudice is an unspoken constant) compared to Galinda’s pink-coated, blond-haired perfectness. Galinda is Shiz’s queen bee, followed everywhere by two sycophantic acolytes (delightfully slappable performances from Bowen Young and Bronwyn James) who cheer everything she does and push Galinda to maximise her subtle hazing of the green-skinned outsider. After all, they see popularity as a zero-sum game: the more Elphaba might have, the less there must be to go around for them.

It’s not really a surprise that Elphaba has had a tough time. Oz is dripping with prejudice, racist assumptions and strict hierarchies. From the film’s opening number – ‘No one mourns the wicked’, where Munchkins wildly celebrate Elphaba’s future death – we are left in little doubt there is a culture of blaming those who are different for misfortunes. This sits alongside a purge of unwanted citizens: namely talking animals. Goat professor Dr Dillamond (a lovely vocal performance from Peter Dinklage) is subtly belittled for his goat-accent then dragged in disgrace from the school. A new professor extols the virtues of keeping frightened animals in cages. The casting of Jeff Goldblum helps with creating this genial but cruel world, his improvisational mumbling suggesting a man of arrogant, sociopathic distance under initial aw-shucks charm.

These secrets will impact the friendship between our leads. The extended runtime means it already takes a very long time for the ice between them to thaw (and, for me, their ballroom reconciliation doesn’t land with the cathartic force it needed for the transition from hostility to friendship to completely work), but the exceptional chemistry between Erivo and Grande helps sell it. What Wicked does very well though is show the fault-lines in this relationship. Galinda’s answer to all Elphaba’s problems is for her to be more like her, while Elphaba has clearly never had a real friend in her life and wants one more than anything. There is true kindness and love between them, but Elphaba remains an outsider with cause to be angry against the system while Galinda is the ultimate insider for whom the system has always worked. Wicked Part 1 does a very good job of never letting these facts escape your notice, for all the charm of an unexpected friendship.

Wicked Part 1 though is also a monstrously entertaining film. The song and dance numbers are spectacular – the pin-point choreography of ‘What Is This Feeling’ is superb, while the power ballad intensity if ‘The Wizard and I’ is perfectly nailed by Erivo. Jonathan Bailey comes close to stealing the limelight with a show-stopping turn as the charming, likeable but slightly rogueish Fiyero, his ‘Dancing Through Life’ routine in particular being a stunning display of athletic dancing matched with perfect vocals. Every number is given its own carefully judged tone, with wonderfully complementary photography and editing, to create a film that leaves you eagerly wanting more.

I didn’t really know the musical coming into it, but after Jon M Chu’s excellent production, I’m excited to see what happens in Part (Act) 2.