Category: Female led film

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Dreyer’s searing, close-up dominated, silent masterpiece is a truly unique piece of cinema – and still astounding

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Cast: Renée Jeanne Falconetti (Joan of Arc), Eugène Silvain (Bishop Pierre Cauchon), André Berley (Jean d’Estivet, prosecutor), Maurice Schutz (Canon Nicholas Loyseleur), Antonin Artaud (Bishop Jean Massieu), Gilbert Dalleu (Jean Lamaitre, Vice-Inquisitor), Jean d’Yd (Nicholas de Houppeville), Louis Ravert (Jean Beaupère), Camile Bardou (Lord Warwick)

It falls to few films to have the grace to redefine what cinema could do. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is one of those films that simply demands to be seen – and once seen will haunt you forever. For a film in many ways so profoundly simple, it is also profoundly wise, deeply affecting, troubling, moving and finally almost unbearably painful. Shot in an iconic collection of interrogative close-ups, Dreyer’s masterpiece earns its place as one of the greatest films ever made.

Dreyer’s masterstroke here was not to create a conventional biopic. We see nothing at all of Joan’s finding of her faith, her campaign against the English or exploits on the battlefield. Instead, we witness only the final days of her life, pulled up as a heretic before a biased and arrogantly superior ecclesiastical court. We first see her not as a strong figure (or even defiant) but a frightened girl creeping into frame, dwarfed by spears and towered over by a priest. If the French producers were expecting a triumphant eulogy to their recently beautified national saint, they had a shock.

Mind you, they had plenty of shocks already. Dreyer’s film used one of the most expensive sets ever built. Seven million francs were shelled out on an intricate medieval castle and courtyard, full of interconnecting passage ways. Dreyer’s surviving model of the set is impressive. You have to assume the real thing looked impressive as well, because the film almost never shows it. The Passion of Joan of Arc takes place in tight, fixed, searching close-ups – most strikingly of Joan but also of her interrogators and the witnesses of her martyrdom. The epic is pulled down to the tightest and most intimate framing of all: the human face, with all its blemishes, imperfections and dizzying emotions.

Those emotions play most sharply across the face of Renée Jeanne Falconetti. Falconetti had performed briefly in one film eleven years previously, but this was effectively her only work on camera. And it is extraordinary, one of the most searing, memorable performances in the history of cinema. You will never forget the fixed glare of her eyes, the devotional joy in her face and the self-accusatory pain in those same eyes when she briefly recants. Dreyer and Falconetti worked closely together to chart every single moment of the complex array of emotions.

Hope, despair, defiance, fear, self-loathing, determination, shrewdness, timidity – all these expressions form both in micro and in carefully held shots that allow Falconetti to naturally move from one to another. This is one of the few films that really has the patience to record thinking. We see realisations dawn upon her, her face slowly changing to process them and then (frequently) her eyes filling with genuine, heart-rending emotion. It becomes an intense – painful – study in powerlessness and vulnerability, dappled with little moments of hope. Her joyful face when the shadow of a window forms a cross on the floor is almost unbearable.

Not least, because as she stares enraptured at this shadow, we cut back and forth to her interrogators forging a letter from the Dauphin to further break her spirit. Dreyer introduces the priestly interrogators with one of the few motion shots, a long tracking shot panning across the rows and rows of well-fed, comfortable men who are about to stand trial over this young woman. The close-ups reveal as much about the priests as it does Joan. A complacent, arrogant Bishop smirks while he picks his ear. Others snigger and stare in disgust at this abomination.

But Dreyer’s film is remarkable for how much scope he gives many of the priests. We see some of them begin to form serious doubts as Joan’s sincerity flies in the face of their expectations. Schutz’s Canon – writer of that fake letter – doubts grow, finally seen sadly turning away as she is prepared for burning. Even Silvain’s Pierre Cauchon isn’t a sadist, or really a bully – just someone who can’t imagine a world in which he is wrong. It’s what leads him to push and push, sometimes with a resigned unease, willing Joan to recant. Some burn her sadly: but burn her none-the-less.

Dreyer’s film though is a passion – and, like the medieval plays that inspire it, it wants to take us on a journey to understand the power of Joan’s faith and nobility of her martyrdom. The priests convey us and Joan to the torture chamber – one of the few wide shots Dreyer uses, to show us the extent of the ghastly devices. A giant breaking wheel is turned with increasing, horrifying speed, its many spikes blurring, as Cauchon demands Joan recant. It drives her into a fainting fit and she is bled. A real AD gave up his vein to produce shockingly, horrifyingly genuine spurts of blood.

Dreyer’s claustrophobic close-ups are not designed to throw us into Joan’s POV, but to make us feel as trapped as she does. It’s striking that many of the close-ups can’t be either Joan’s perspective or the priests. There isn’t always continuity between them – we’ll cut from a full-on view, to a side-on one, a camera angle above and then below, staring up or glaring down. The effect is less about putting us into the eyes of its characters, than to make us feel like a spirit in the room, powerless to intercede. There are no establishing shots for geography, only the onslaught of faces shouting at the camera or starring with confessional pain at the lens.

Which helps even more with the sense of devotional mystery play Dreyer is aiming to create, using the language of cinema in ways no theatre-maker ever could. As Joan is mocked, and garlanded with a false crown, by braying English soldiers, we feel as trapped as she does. When her hair is sliced away, the shears feel uncomfortably close, but just as traumatising is the agony of guilt on Falconetti’s face, at the realisation she has turned her back on her God.

It’s been said watching the film is like watching, as if by a miracle, actual documentary footage of the trial. This realism is one of Dreyer’s master-strokes. So many other directors would have allowed touches of medieval pageantry, of poetry among the stark images. The closest we get to this is a doubtful Joan starring at freshly dug up skull, from the eye socket of which wiggles a worm, while deciding whether to confess. Other than that, the lavishness (that perhaps the producers expected) is nowhere to be seen, helping make the film as punishing and (finally) moving to watch as it is.

The final burning offers no release. The camera maintains its focus on Joan, who quietly passes the rope to her executioner so he can bind her to the stake, then turns her eyes one final time to heaven before her face is obscured in smoke and flames. Dreyer’s camera doesn’t flinch, and its fair to say Joan’s death is as horrifying as anything caught on screen. An alarmingly life-like body blackens, burns and shrivels in uncomfortable mid-shot. In a stunning swinging camera shot, soldiers prepare weapons to disperse the crowd. Dreyer’s camera doesn’t shy away from this atrocity either: bodies are battered, a fallen woman stares sightlessly in the camera, screaming mothers run with children in their arms, a cannon pans across the camera and fires into the crowd. The smoke of the burning – to which we constantly cut back to – fills the screen. It’s bleak and hellish.

This is truly a passion, a sense of the ascension of the spirit through the dread of pain and suffering. And we feel every moment of it through the uncomfortable but profoundly moving immersiveness of Dreyer’s camera – and the breathtaking camerawork of Rudolph Maté – and the astonishing raw performance of Falconetti. The Passion of Joan of Arc sears itself onto your memory, a visceral, unique piece of film-making unparalleled in the history of the medium.

Waiting Women (1952)

Bergman experiments with form and genre in this fascinating collection of female-led short stories

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Anita Björk (Rakel), Eva Dahlbeck (Karin), Maj-Britt Nilsson (Marta), Birger Malmsten (Martin Lobelius), Gunnar Björnstrand (Fredrik Lobelius), Karl-Arne Holmsten (Eugen Lobelius), Jarl Kulle (Kaj), Aino Taube (Annette), Håkan Westergren (Paul Lobelius), Gerd Andersson (Maj), Björn Bjelfvenstam (Henrik Lobelius)

Waiting Women is another early step in Bergman becoming one of the great directors in cinema. It’s easy to feel it’s a film worth seeing largely for completeness sake – I certainly felt that, seeing this unknown nesting at the bottom of a BFI box set containing Wild Strawberries, Smiles of a Summer Night and The Seventh Seal. But Waiting Women is a playful and inventive film that sees Bergman experimenting with form and genre and show-piecing his inventive use of the camera (it’s a key reminder this famed wordsmith also worked with two of the most gifted cinematographers in movie history, Gunnar Fischer and (later) Sven Nykvist).

Three women sit waiting at a country-side retreat (echoes of the holiday home in Wild Strawberries) waiting for their husbands (three brothers) to arrive. While they wait, they share stories. Rakel (Anita Björk) talks about her husband Eugene’s (Karl-Arne Holmsten) suicidal response to discovering her affair with childhood friend Kaj (Jarl Kulle). Marta (Maj-Britt Nilsson) remembers keeping her pregnancy from her now-husband Martin (Birger Malmsten), who she met thinking he was a penniless artist rather than the son of an industrial power-house family. And Karin (Eva Dahlbeck) remembers a night after a function which she and driven husband Fredrik (Gunnar Bjornstrand) spent trapped in a lift and almost rekindled the spark in their marriage.

Bergman’s takes these three stories and presents each in strikingly different ways. The first he packages as a full-blown romantic melodrama, with heightened passions, elaborate threats of death and dramatic proclamations of affection and desperation. The second shifts gear into a moody expressionistic drama, almost a silent-movie, with minimal dialogue and the scene shifting from striking shadow-play on hospital walls to silent comedy in a Parisian nightclub. The third caps the film with a single-location farce with witty wordplay and a dollop of sadness and regret.

It makes for a film that constantly surprises you – and a director looking to experiment and stretch his artistic legs, finding new ways of expressing himself in film. (He even pops up for a Hitchcock-like cameo!) It’s also three entertaining (in different ways) short stories and another, superb, Bergman female-centric film. Because, make no mistake, our sympathies are all with the women, whose stories leave you with more than a little impression – for all they have joyfully prepared the house for their husbands – that each of them are not leading the lives they might have wished.

The first story is the most conventional – perhaps because Rakel’s hormonal love-affair with a long-lost school friend feels like a twist on Bergman’s Summer Interlude. But all is carefully dialled up to eleven in a romance that would not feel out-of-place in Emily Brontë. The flirtatious lust between Rakel and Kaj – centred around a joint trip to a bathing house which drips with illicit sexual energy – simmers. There is an early Chekovian introduction of a gun, before Kaj’s essential coldness is revealed and Eugen’s shock swiftly turns to anger and suicidal resentment. It’s a marvellous Bergman scripting touch that Eugen always feels like the sort of man who will shoot himself to make his wife feel bad about herself rather than because of his own pain.

Bergman shoots it with brisk tracking shots interspersed with close-ups and allows the action to become increasingly bombastic as it builds towards its melodramatic conclusion of Eugen shuttered away in a boat house, threatening to end it all. It makes for a striking gear change as our second story begins, and the visual mastery of Bergman and Fischer’s partnership comes to the fore in a middle-chapter that homages the Silent Masters. Marta’s memories of her pregnancy and her meeting with her husband, begins with the nightmareish image of a face behind frosted glass, distorted out of all recognition (Bergman, as always, the lost great-horror director) before she finds herself in a hospital ward, breathing in anaesthetic gas, and seeing the shadows of the branches from the tree outside, twist and dance like possessive hands on the walls around her.

Played with a sympathetic sweetness, tinged with just the right touch of edgy defiance, by Maj-Britt Nilsson, Marta’s memories of meeting her husband in Paris plays out in her memory like an expressionistic film. In a Parisian nightclub, the camera ducks and swerves around exotic dancers, beautiful compositions of body and movement in every frame. She drops her GI boyfriend for a Martin after a series of surreptitious glances across the room and passed notes. Their courtship and early relationship in his blissful studio play out like a romance – until his family arrive with a chilling explosion of words about expectations and duties that shatter the illusion. The chapter closes with something that could be either memory or dream – Martin and Marta, with the warmth of their early days returned, on a beach together. Reality or regret? Bergman gives reasons to believe both.

The final story is the most enjoyable, lightest and also (in its own way) saddest. Beautifully shot largely in a single confined location – and this is a workshop for Bergman to build his confidence with composition – it gains hugely from the witty and controlled performances of Dahlbeck and Björnstrand as the austere married couple. Home truths and flashes of attraction seep out – and Bergman makes us feel for a moment that a corner has been turned when they return (at last) to their family home. It’s all an illusion though – its still Bergman after all – as the mood is shattered by Fredrik’s almost immediate resumption of his professional duties after a chance phone-call.

If its one thing you can pick up from these three stories, its that finding love, contentment and satisfaction is difficult for women. As three very different women, Björk, Nilsson and Dahlbeck are all superb, and the little hints of sadness Bergman gives all of them turns what could be a collection of shaggy dog stories into something suddenly, surprisingly, profound. Yes they are waiting – but is it for their husbands, or for the lives they (privately) might wish they had? As Marta’s sister Maj (Gerd Andersson) considers elopement with Marta’s nephew Henrik (Björn Bjelfvenstam), the normal expectations of discouraging such an action are challenged. After all, why shouldn’t Marta try for happiness? What’s the worst that could happen: that they could gain wisdom (as the other women have done?) from a summer of forbidden and confused love? Perhaps Bergman wanted to find out: his next film was the romantic first-love fable that turns sour Summer with Monika.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Grief and loss are the beating heart of this tender and heartfelt Marvel film, mixed with standard action tropes

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Letitia Wright (Shuri), Lupita Nyong’o (Nakia), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Angela Bassett (Queen Ramonda), Tenich Huerta Mejía (Namor), Dominique Thorne (Riri Williams), Winston Duke (M’Baku), Martin Freeman (Everett K Ross), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Valentina Allegra de Fontaine), Florence Kasumba (Ayo), Michaela Coel (Aneka)

There is one thing you can never imagine – and never want to – having to plan for in your franchise. The tragic loss of your lynchpin. For Black Panther that man was Chadwick Boseman, and his heart-breaking early passing hangs over the film like a shroud.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is two films in one. One is a standard Marvel adventure film, with gags, set pieces and careful groundwork laid for future entries. The other is a heartfelt eulogy, a processing of the raw shock the people making the film – and many watching it – felt at the loss of this fine actor. In universe, T’Challa (Boseman) has passed away. His sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) blames herself for failing to save his life and his mother Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) has become protective and unrelenting in her judgements.

With its monopoly on vibranium, Wakanda is now the most powerful nation on Earth. Other powers want a piece of that apple – and the US are plumping the deaths of the oceans for vibranium. But their search intrudes on a secret underwater civilisation led by wing-footed, super-strength Namor (Huerta Mejía). Namor threatens to unleash destruction unless Wakanda deliver him the scientist who created the US’s vibranium detector – who turns out to be a college student genius with Tony Stark vibes, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne). When Shuri refuses to hand her over, Namor states he is coming for the surface – and will destroy Wakanda, a country he cannot trust.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is bookended by two heart-breakingly genuine moments of emotion. The death of T’Challa (off screen) and his funeral – a grief stricken, beautifully filmed funeral procession – carries a great deal of genuine rawness. A final montage of shots of Boseman, presented as the memories of Shuri finally coming to terms with her brother’s death is moving. The strongest parts of the film are these human moments. Wright has been open at her shock and pain at Boseman’s death and this translates beautifully in her affecting performance.

These adjustments to the script are the strongest parts of the film. Letitia Wright and Angela Bassett provide subtle, delicate work as two people affected by grief in very different ways, but both now more reckless, protective and retributive than before. The responses, guilt and pain of several characters carry real force and leave the deepest mark on the audience. It also builds a subtle “passing the torch” narrative, as Wakanda fears they have seen the last of their “Black Panther” who protected their nation through history.

Away from this, the film settles into being a more traditional Marvel franchise extender. Rightly much time has been given to the real-life tragedy, but this means much of the remainder of the plot feels rushed. Our new antagonists are hurriedly introduced – so much so that leader Namor (well played by Tenich Huerta Mejía with a charisma that covers an under-written part) introduces his people’s entire culture in an awkward info dump an hour into the film. Not a single other character of his merman race gets so much as a name (as I can remember) let alone a personality.

Despite being a slightly silly concept of an Atlantan (but definitely not Atlantis because that’s already been claimed by another franchise) underwater city with water pressure having given its inhabitants super-human strength, it is another strong commitment to diversity. These people descend from the Mayan civilisation, meaning they share the same history of persecution by the West as the African nations Wakanda represents. It should make them natural allies, right?

Of course, it doesn’t as this is a film that pivots on the mistakes and miscalculations of political leaders and how these force them into war. The film makes its point about political rivalries early with Ramonda giving the French and US an almighty ticking off at (a surprisingly small) UN for their ruthless attempt to obtain vibranium for themselves. However, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever dodges really delving into the most interesting implications of this.

Because there is a kernel of a really interesting, challenging idea here. In many ways Wakanda behaves with exactly the same domineering arrogance as the Western powers they criticise. The Wakandans take unilateral decisions for the world because they know best, treat other nations like recalcitrant children and horde the world’s most powerful resource for themselves. They are this close to a benign, dictatorial state. But the film isn’t interested in exploring this.

Bringing Wakanda and Talokan into rivalry on the grounds of Talokan seeing them as potential oppressors – as the most powerful among the surface nations they have always feared would crush them – would have been more interesting than the confused, convoluted “with us or against us” war we end up with. But I understand that a film, which prides itself on celebrating African culture, is not going to want to be seen as undermining any of that with something sharper.

Besides, this is all a set-up for the inevitable large scale action sequences. The finest is a haunting attack on a ship, where the Talokans use their siren voices to inspire the crew of an American black ops ship to drown themselves. There’s a decent car chase, some well-choreographed fights a pitched battles that thrill. It’s also notable that the loss of Boseman has led to this franchise being dominated by women of colour, all of whom deal with the sort of dilemmas and consequences that are normally the preserve of male (and white) comic-book heroes.

But the film’s heart is in the personal moments – and more interesting when looking at Shuri’s protective affection for Dominique Thorne’s plucky (sometimes overly so) inventor. It’s also interesting that this is a film that flirts more than I was expecting with its leads choosing anger and vengeance, over forgiveness and conciliation. Shuri and Ramonda lash out, with dangerous consequences, and express minimal regret. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever deserves points for being willing to tackle the negative implications of grief.

That’s the strength of the film, just as a pain of Boseman’s death is the beating heart. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is overlong and skips more challenging ideas, but it is also shot through with genuine grief. It’s not perfect, but it’s real, well-meaning and (for all its silliness and bombast in places) has a heart firmly in the right place. When a Black Panther rises in the final act, you will feel the film has earned it.

She Said (2022)

Earnest, well-meaning but not entirely dramatic recounting of the New York Times investigation into Weinstein

Director: Maria Schrader

Cast: Carey Mulligan (Megan Twohey), Zoe Kazan (Jodi Kantor), Patricia Clarkson (Rebecca Corbett), Andre Braugher (Dean Baquet), Jennifer Ehle (Laura Madden), Samantha Morton (Zelda Perkins), Ashley Judd (Herself), Zach Grenier (Irwn Reiter), Peter Friedman (Lanny Davis), Angela Yeoh (Rowena Chiu)

In 2017, the New York Times published revelations about Miramax kingpin Harvey Weinstein that shocked the world. Weinstein had used his position to force his sexual attentions on anyone from aspiring actresses to employees, with a rap sheet of crimes ranging from gropes to rape. It shook Hollywood to its core. She Said is the dramatization of the investigation carried out by reporters Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) who sought out the victims, won their trust and pushed the story through despite threats of legal action.

She Said is a worthy, well-meaning film. It has moments of genuine power and its recreation of the testimony of the victims is tragic and heart-rending. But yet… I didn’t find it dramatic. I was left wondering, why did this true story of journalistic tenacity not carry the same impact as Spotlight or All the President’s Men?

Perhaps it’s because the film doesn’t really cover this story as an investigation. There isn’t the sense of facts slowly emerging to form a horrifying picture, or one small incident ballooning into an earth-shattering scandal. Instead, Twohey and Kantor are certain they have the basic facts from the start, with the film being instead a reveal of how many cases there are, rather than an expose of a wrong. While this is still important, it isn’t necessarily always dramatic and, eventually, She Said starts to feel every minute of its two-hour-plus run time.

The real focus of the film probably should have been the journalists’ determined work to win the trust of the principal witnesses – in particular Jennifer Ehle’s Laura Madden, whose whole life has been partially in the shadow of Weinstein’s assault in the 90s. Kantor – played with an empathetic richness by Zoe Kazan – worked night and day to encourage these women to bring their stories to the public. Instead, the film gets distracted with trying to cover too much, both the famous and the unknown victims, and the peripheral presence of Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd (playing herself) unbalance the movie away from the difficult, challenging – but more dramatically rewarding – work exploring office workers called into meetings to “massage” their gross boss.

It’s a shame the focus gets pulled away from these unknown women, who were little more than teenagers when Weinstein abused them in the 90s, since the sequences where they tell their stories are the ones that carry the most impact. There are superb cameo appearances from a trio of great actors. Ehle is superb as a woman resigned to trying to put things behind her, Morton brilliant as another prickling with rage and resentment, and Yeoh very good as a woman who never really managed to process her trauma. The careful, respectful, but deeply sad recounting of these women’s experiences by this trio are the film’s highlights.

Too much of the rest of the film gets bogged down in editorial procedure and the flat collecting of facts. It’s a bad sign when the film has to continuously state the “danger” the characters are facing while investigating and how every wall has ears. While Weinstein was a horrible man, terrifyingly powerful within his industry, I find it a stretch when (unchallenged) a character fears Weinstein will have him killed. I can’t see Weinstein hiring a hitman or utilising the sort of espionage techniques that would make the FBI jealous.

The film also struggles to get to grips with the depressing limits to any struggle for justice in the field of sexual harassment and assault. It starts by depicting Twohey’s investigation into Trump’s “locker room” pussy-grabbing “banter”, which peters out into a total failure to have any real impact at all. While the film suggests this as a motivating factor for the journalists to “get it right” this time, it doesn’t seem to acknowledge the limits of #metoo. It’s clearly very different to get Hollywood to clean out its house, compared to taking on someone with real power. Equally, the film gives no space to attempting to understand why Lisa Bloom, who represented victims of Bill O’Reilly and Trump, went to town defending Weinstein. There are interesting topics to explore here, but She Said wants to simplify its narrative down to goodies and baddies.

Time is also given over to the journalist’s home lives, none of which adds much to the overall narrative. Kantor’s relationship with a 10-year-old daughter just beginning to understand words like “rape” never quite solidifies into a thematic motivator. Twohey’s struggles with post-natal depression are bravely raised, but effectively disappear from the film (which makes me feel even a feminist film is squeamish about saying anything except motherhood is the dream for all women).

The final arc gets equally slightly bogged down in the fact-checking procedure. At times, the film has a little too much of a documentary feel, as if drama might have got in the way of the message. Despite this, there are some very good performances, with Kazan and Mulligan concealing mounting outrage under professional, dispassionate cool (Mulligan gets an outburst at a harassing bar patron, which does feel like too much of a “for your consideration” moment), even if we get little sense of who they are as people.

She Said is a very worthy look at a seismic news story, which never quite translates its coverage of impactful events into a truly compelling narrative.

The Broadway Melody (1929)

Forgettable Best Picture winner, the musical that helped bring sound to Hollywood looks simplistic today

Director: Harry Beaumont

Cast: Anita Page (Queenie Mahoney), Bessie Love (“Hank” Mahoney), Charles King (Eddie Kearns), Jed Prouty (Uncle Jed), Kenneth Thomson (Jacques Warriner), Eddie Kane (Zanefield), Edward Dillon (Stage Manager)

The early years of sound in Hollywood were difficult. Before sound, movies were often visual treats, crammed with inventive and imaginative camera moves. Watch some of the silent movie masters, and you’ll be blown away by the majesty and creativity of their vision. Then came sound. And to capture sound on movies, you held the camera as still as possible while the clunky sound recording equipment struggled to work. For years, all that visual invention was history and movies became flat, dull looking and clumsy.

But that didn’t affect the thrill audiences had at hearing synchronised sound. I mean wow! Could you imagine a painting talking to you? That would be incredible. Imagine it singing and dancing. You’d be blown away. It’s that context you need to bear in mind when watching The Broadway Melody. How did this fundamentally average, largely forgotten, flatly shot film win Best Picture? Because, quite simply, no one had seen anything like it before. This revolutionised cinema – and while that might look inexplicable now, it was like splitting the atom as far as Hollywood was concerned.

The plot, such as it is, is very minor. The Mahoney sisters, Queenie (Anita Page) and Hank (Bessie Love) arrive on Broadway to become stars with the support of Eddie Kearns (Charles King) who is engaged to Hank. But, don’t you know it, Eddie falls in love with Queenie and she with him. Who will end up with whom? And will the sister’s close relationship survive their love for the same man?

The Broadway Melody starts with an orgy of overlapping sound, music and speech all filling a Broadway office, as if trying to hammer home to the viewers how amazing all this is. And it probably was amazing. The filmmakers literally had to work out how to record sound as they went. Sets were rebuilt after takes to improve the sound conditions. Technology was tweaked and reworked. The actors performed their scenes over and over again to get the best recording. It must have been punishing to make.

Visually it’s hugely un-interesting. Shot almost entirely in mid-shot, the actors stand as still as possible so that the microphones can pick up every word (moving and talking was almost impossible). There are moments dialogue is less clear, in particular when actors turn away from camera. Storytelling is hugely influenced by silent cinema – there are even intertitle cards to announce different locations. The script is often just an excuse to move from one musical number to another. The film even stops to effectively stage a Broadway show, including shots of the programme introducing each act.

None of the songs comment on the actions and emotions of the characters. Instead, they are all established by the actor’s saying words to the effect of “I heard a great song – wanna hear it?”. Some of the songs are good and the singing of Kearns and Love in particular is fine. But they are snippable moments, not storytelling. It was to be a few years before film musicals did something more than filmed karaoke, and used songs to express character’s inner emotions.

There is a certain charm about The Broadway Melody though, for all its faults and it’s not the turkey you might have been led to believe. Sure, it’s primitive, but it has a certain bounce to it and the playing of the three leads is surprisingly committed. Its attitudes are surprisingly modern, reflecting its pre-code status. It doesn’t punish its characters for their ‘transgressions’ and is quite emotionally honest about the impact of a man falling in love with the beloved sister of his fiancée on all concerned. Other things have dated less well, in particular a camp costumier and Uncle Jed’s comic stammer, both played for dubious laughs.

But the romance plotline is surprisingly complex. There are moments of rawness in The Broadway Melody. Queenie (well played by Anita Page) is plunged into a self-loathing depression by her feelings for her sister’s fiancée, spiralling into the arms of a playboy – not the sort of reaction you expect from someone presented as “the sensible one”. Hank who reacts not with fury, but with a genuinely quite moving emotional desolation at realising her very existence is keeping the two people she loves most from being happy.

The real love story here might be between the two sisters, both desperate not to hurt each other. Bessie Love gives a very fine (Oscar-nominated) performance as Hank, torn up with guilt and surprisingly vulnerable, who eventually makes huge sacrifices. There is a very effective late breakdown scene for Love, after she deliberately burns her bridges with Eddie for her sister’s sake. The films finest moments are covered in the sad, regretful guilt between these two sisters, and a film focused more on this and less on the musical numbers would have more going for it today. As it is it manages at points to elevate its conventional love triangle.

The musical numbers are the real problem though: very much staged exactly as if the camera was filming an actual Broadway show from the middle of the stalls. In mid-shot, the camera is pointed at the numbers and the actors dance their way through them. You better like the title song by the way, because you are going to hear it performed three times in the first 40 minutes. It’s not really storytelling – and all of the dancing would be effortlessly bested by other films in the next few years. None of the numbers have zing or interest and end up bumping up the runtime.

It’s easy to be critical of The Broadway Melody. Sadly, time has dated it since the one thing that made it stand out was the sound. Now that we have literally heard-it-all-before and better in the decades since, the actual thing that now draws attention is its dull filming, middling story and repetitive musical numbers. Not a disaster as some claim, but a very forgettable film – one for completists.

Blonde (2022)

Exploitative biopic of Marilyn Monroe that doubles down on misery, discomfort and leaves you feeling rather like a Peeping Tom

Director: Andrew Dominik

Cast: Ana de Armas (Norma Jeane Mortenson/Marilyn Monroe), Adrien Brody (The Playwright), Bobby Cannavale (Ex-Athlete), Xavier Samuel (Cass Chaplin), Julianne Nicholson (Gladys Pearl Baker), Evan Williams (Edward G Robinson Jnr), Toby Huss (Whitey), David Warshofsky (Mr Z), Caspar Phillipson (Mr President), Dan Butler (IE Shinn), Sara Paxton (Miss Flynn)

Few icons had such cultural impact in the 20^th century as Marilyn Monroe. Maybe Elvis – coincidentally also the subject of a 2022 biopic. Even people who have never seen a Monroe film can impersonate her or knows about that dress being blown up around her. It’s also pretty widely know she had a difficult life, troubled family and some disastrous marriages culminating in her tragically early death from an overdose. Blonde, based on a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, dives into a heavily fictionalised account of Monroe’s life, focusing overwhelmingly on anything that could be seen as miserable, shocking and traumatic to the exclusion of almost everything else.

In doing so it’s hard not to think that, for all its attempts to shine a light on the difficulties of Monroe’s life, it’s not also partly exploiting her as well, turning her into a sort of misery porn entertainment. Over the course of nearly three hours, we see her raped at least three times, beaten, fall victim to elaborate revenge plots, forced through two blood-soaked abortions, pumped full of drugs to get her through film shoots and constantly at the centre of slavering piles of male filmgoers who scream for her attention and call her a whore the second she walks past. To say Blonde is a miserable film that’s tough to watch is putting it lightly.

Why does Marilyn put herself through it? The film offers no real answers, beyond the simplest, crudest flashes of pop-psychology possible: Daddy issues. Growing up not knowing who her father is, Marilyn’s life is a quest to find either her father or an acceptable substitute. That could be the audience, the husbands she calls “Daddy” or the hope that the person claiming to be her father who sends her a letters, might one day meet her. This is about as far as the insight goes. How issues influenced her choices and decisions is left frustratingly untold.

The film skims over the creative control she gained over her movies, the production company she set up and her skill as comic actor (it focuses much more on her dramatic Actor’s Studio work). It never once tries to understand why she continues in a career she hates so much – she had plenty of chances, even in this film, to back out – or what lured her to the silver screen and a quest for superstardom in the first place. It’s as if acknowledging Monroe worked hard to get her career would undermine the victimhood the film is determined to define her with.

The film suggests “Marilyn Monroe” is a persona put on by Norma Jean. This is another crude piece of psychology. We completely skip the years Norma Jean must have spent creating this persona and we never learn what influences it or get an understanding of “who” this Marilyn is. I suppose it’s “Marilyn” who smiles at film premieres or appears on screen: but we get little sense of how Norma Jean might have used this alternative persona to get her through the day. For all the time we spend with her, we never understand her beyond someone desperate for love with severe Daddy issues.

The film is so clumsily mishandled, its makers were reduced to stating it was not intended as an anti-abortion movie. This despite both abortions being horrifying experiences (one with a drugged Marilyn begging that she’s changed her mind, the other a late blood-soaked possible-fantasy where Marilyn is kidnapped has an implied Kennedy baby removed). Worse than this, the film Marilyn hammers home Marilyn’s sense of guilt. During her first abortion she imagines herself in a house burning down around her and later imagines a conversation with a giant foetus, which asks “Mummy why did you kill me?” and begs her not to do the same for her future babies. Not exactly the sort of messaging you expect from a #metoo film.

On top of this, Blonde is a film almost unbearably pleased with itself. This is Art with a capital A, R and T. Dominik shifts from colour to black-and-white, changes film stock and constantly shifts and changes the aspect ratio from shot-to-shot. In almost three hours, only once could I see any logic in this: as Marilyn agrees to marry Joe DiMaggio, the frame closes in on her from 2.35:1 to 4:3, a neat visual metaphor for the constricting marriage she has signed up for. Other than that, there is no rhyme or reason for any of these visual changes in the film. It doesn’t comment on the action, reflect emotional beats, delineate between reality or fantasy… it just smacks of an overindulged director using all the flashy tools for the sake of it. It becomes intensely irritating.

There is a committed lead performance from Ana de Armas (even if her Cuban accent does sneak through), who captures beautifully Monroe’s physical and vocal traits and sells what emotional titbits she is given in the salacious, muck-raking framing of the film. Her traumatic relationship with her disturbed mother, a sex-filled thruple with Hollywood princes Cass Chaplin and Eddy Robinson Jnr, raped by Darryl F Zanuck and a surprisingly-vile John Kennedy (while a TV in the background shows missiles rising – boom boom), knocked about by a jealous Joe DiMaggio (in real life he remined close to her and organised her funeral, but hey ho)… it’s all meant to be shocking but it’s all dialled up with glee of a two-bit muck-rag, flogging the hot goss.

That’s standard for the whole film, a flashy, pleased-with-itself epic that focuses on misery and pain for its subject at the cost of everything else and ends up telling us very little about her or her inner life, instead leaving us feel slightly like peeping toms for watching.

The Woman King (2022)

Punchy historical action epic is very entertaining (if not hugely original narratively) as well as being a triumph of representation

Director: Gina Prince-Bythe

Cast: Viola Davis (General Nanisca), Thuso Mbedu (Nawi), Lashana Lynch (Izogie), Sheila Atim (Amenza), John Boyega (King Ghezo), Hero Fiennes Tiffin (Santo Ferreira), Adrienne Warren (Ode), Jayme Lawson (Shante), Masali Baduza (Fumbe), Angélique Kidjo (The Meunon), Jimmy Odukoya General Oba Ade), Thando Dlomo (Kelu), Jordan Bolger (Malik)

It’s 1823 in the West African Kingdom of Dahomey. The kingdom is trapped in the middle of a host of competing interests: most notably the rival Oyo empire and the European slavers controlling the region’s main port. Dahomey depends for its security on the Agojie, an elite group of women warriors commanded by their respected general Nanisca (Viola Davis). War brews between Dahomey and Oyo, and Nanisca is pushing King Ghezo (John Boyega) to end Dahomey’s involvement in the slave trade. At the same time, a new Agojie recruit, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu) brings memories of past traumas flooding back to Nanisca – might she and Nawi have some lost bond?

The Woman King is a pulsating action film, a mixture of Braveheart and Black Panther (it even has a cold open, as the Agojie storm an Oyo village to save captured Dahomey citizens bound for the slave ships, that feels like a straight lift from the latter film’s opening). Proudly celebrating both women and black people (men are very much in secondary roles, while the only white character is a hypocritical slaver played with relish by Hero Fiennes Tiffin), it’s a punch in the solar plexus for what’s been a male-dominated genre.

Watching it I suddenly realised, half-way through, that if the film had been made 10 or 15 years ago, the plucky new recruit having to prove she belonged among the Agojie would have been played by a white actress. There would have been a flashback to the child being found by the Agojie and then a montage of her searching from fear to longing to emulate the women around her. Like Cruise in The Last Samurai, she would have become the best-of-the-best, accepted by her new black sisterhood. It’s a triumph that Hollywood no longer needs stories like this filtered through white eyes before they would even consider bringing them to the screen.

Instead, the focus is strongly on a story that wants to celebrate the rich culture and history of African kingdoms. Dahomey’s civilisation, advanced farming and irrigation, egalitarian culture and humane religious and spiritual practices, are shown in loving detail. Their tenuous position as a small kingdom surrounded by rivals is carefully presented, just as the corrupting nature of European powers is made clear. It is they who have turned slavery – an ever-present in African history – into an industry that dominates the African economy and has led to a subtle devaluation of human lives that many Africans openly collaborate in.

In this, Prince-Bythe’s tightly directed film juggles a coming-of-age story for Nawi with a coming-to-terms story for Nanisca. It’s a film that manages to present both in the context of a series of action set-pieces and exciting training montages (the Agojie effectively have to complete a massive obstacle course to qualify as a member of the sisterhood). To be honest, much in the film isn’t really that original, more a remix of set-pieces and ideas from similar films. What makes it stand out is the representation and the context where it is taking place.

It also allows impressive actors to take on roles way outside of public expectations. None more so than Viola Davis, whose pumped up physique shatters any perceptions of what you might expect. This is a tour-de-force role from Davis, as she plays a defiant and strong woman, secretly terrified of trauma in her own past (and worries about her own weakness) who leads by charismatic example, but is just as capable of unjust slap-downs. She’s a woman struggling to embrace all facets of herself, doing so in the spotlight of a whole country looking to her for leadership. It makes for a powerful performance from Davis, perfectly fusing her skill at playing matronly warmth, imperious distance and deep reserves of determination and courage.

There are similarly excellent performances from a uniformly strong cast, with Lashana Lynch a stand-out as a courageous fighter who surprises herself with her mentorship abilities. Thuso Mbedu gives a star-making turn as Nawi, a young woman who matches Nanisca for bull-headedness and suppressed self-doubt, who reveals herself as a natural leader. Shelia Atim is excellent as Nanisca’s level-headed trusted number two, while John Boyega walks perfectly a fine-line of a man teetering between being a wise leader and a playboy.

They are helped by a film that may lack originality in its plotting and structure, but makes up for that with its warmth for its characters, and the gritty, involving realism of its shooting. Prince-Bythe keeps the pace of the film running smoothly and stages each of the film’s many set-pieces with a dynamism that keep you on the edge of your seat. She also successfully manages to incorporate some searching material around Nanisca’s past traumas without being exploitative.

Historically, the film is a little dubious, walking a carefully curated line on Dahomey’s involvement in slavery (in many ways it might have been better if the film was set in a fictional kingdom inspired by Dahomey). It doesn’t dwell on the Agojie chaining up their captives to be shipped to the slavery markets. It pushes an anti-slavery message strongly – but ignores the historical fact that the real Ghezo continued in the trade until the bitter end. (Legitimate points could have been made about his right to the same compensation as plantation owners elsewhere.) There is a complex, difficult story here that the film romanticises into something with cleaner rights and wrongs.

But, with a history of poor representation and white-only-lens view on African culture in film, you can forgive a film aiming to redress that balance. Strongly directed, exciting and crowd-pleasing, with well-drawn characters played with real skill by a very strong cast, it might recycle many ideas from other films, but it does it with a compelling freshness.

Summertime (1955)

An independent woman finds romance in Venice in this luscious travelogue, one of the best of its genre

Director: David Lean

Cast: Katharine Hepburn (Jane Hudson), Rossano Brazzi (Renato de Rossi), Darren McGavin (Eddie Yaeger), Jane Rose (Mrs McIlhenny), Mari Aldon (Phyl Yaeger), Macdonald Parker (Mr McIlhenny), Gaetano Autiero (Mauro), Jeremy Spender (Vito de Rossi), Isa Miranda (Signore Fiorini)

American spinster Jane Hudson (Katharine Hepburn) has dreamed of her holiday-of-a-lifetime in Venice for as long as she can remember. So long in fact, that she wants to capture every single minute on camera and not miss a single sight in the gloriously romantic city. But there is more in this canal city than she expected, something her life of proud, self-sufficient, isolation has had little of: romance – namely from antiques dealer Renato (Rossano Brazzi), the two of them thrown together by chance, in a meeting of hearts and minds.

Summertime was, surprisingly, referred to by David Lean as his personal favourite of his films. It feels like an odd choice: the final film shot in the period between his ever-green 1940s British classics (and Summertime has echoes of Brief Encounter, from love affairs to train stations) and the super-epics that would fill the rest of his career. But, in its patient, quiet and slightly sad look at the continuous presence of regret in our lives and our feelings of loneliness, it perhaps speaks of something in the soul of this surprisingly vulnerable great director.

It won’t have hurt either that Lean himself fell in love with Venice during the shooting of the film. Summertime is very much in the genre of “romantic holiday travelogue” so beloved of the 1950s, when it was practically de rigeur to send glamourous Hollywood stars to exotic locations to conduct star-cross’d love affairs. Summertime might just be the finest of these, combining one of Hollywood’s all-time greats with a director and cameraman who made the setting truly cinematic, rather than the holiday snaps the journeymen who shot similar films reduced the locations to.

I’ll admit it helps I love Venice as well (and it’s amazing, watching this, how little the city has changed in the past 70 years). But Lean and gifted photographer Jack Hildyard shoot it with an intimate wonder. We follow Hepburn down the city’s winding streets and across its many bridges with a close intimacy that doesn’t shy away from the bustle of the city. A beautiful moment sees the camera slowly reveal the appearance of the St Mark’s Square campanile through an arched streetway. Carefully cut imagery flicks over striking features of Venetian architecture. Lean and Hildyard make the city feel like both a dream of a destination, but also a real, organic place, full of delightful nooks and crannies. It’s a masterclass in how to shoot a city both for impact and truth.

It’s a backdrop for an affecting, low-key, character study that gains hugely from the intelligent, emotionally precise performance from Hepburn. No actress in Hollywood could convince more as a woman full of enough brio and confidence to be very comfortable in her own solitude. The brilliance of Hepburn though is to play this all as a carefully maintained front shielding a loneliness she is always aware of but doesn’t want to acknowledge. It’s there from her compulsive need to make conversation with a fellow passenger (a lovely uncredited cameo from André Morell) on the train into the city, or with the people she meets at her hotel. The desire for human contact fills the easy rapport she builds with street urchin Mauro (a lovely performance from Gaetano Autiero) or the awkwardness she feels sitting alone in the bustle of St Mark’s.

It’s why romance – or perhaps the lack of it in her life – creeps up on Jane. Her first chance encounter with Renato is at a café in St Mark’s when he signals down the waiter she’s struggled to catch the eye of, leaving her discombobulated and uncomfortable, as if surprised that a man has taken even a passing interest in her, and uncertain how to respond. She retreats and sit on the canal-side, her eyes caught by a lion-headed drain that water laps in and out of. Perhaps only Hepburn could turn such a small moment into one of such profound passing reflection – and Lean shoots it with a beautiful simplicity.

The relationship slowly builds as she happens to chance on Renato’s antiques shop and he sells her an 18^th-century Venetian red glass goblet. Hepburn has a beautifully sensitive, almost girlish tentativeness to her as they walk idly together the next night through the streets. After they kiss under a bridge, she impulsively mumbles she loves him and then runs, as if she was startled by her own confession. The next night she prepares to meet him with a pampering session not out of place in a teen drama, sitting waiting for him with a giddy excitement.

As her beau, Rossano Brazzi has a wonderful unknowable quality to him. There are touches of his own sensitivity and isolation. There is also the worry, as he sits with cosmopolitan ease at a café table or (possibly) flogs Jane a worthless red glass goblet (she later discovers they are ten a penny, though he swears his is a genuine antique) that he could be a heartless roué. Jane worries it as well. But does she care? After all, this is a holiday-of-a-lifetime and perhaps a love affair is just part of that. It might well be the same for Renato: like Brief Encounter, two lonely people who recognise qualities in each other come together for a brief time, to find a little comfort. Let the fireworks explode (which Lean literally does in one more-than-suggestive cross-cut late in the film).

Summertime is very romantic, but it’s also very true. Both Jane and Renato know exactly what they are getting going into this: a blissful moment in time, but not a lasting commitment. There is something very true about this: and a pleasing acknowledgement that independence isn’t a condition to be fixed, but a state that allows bursts of companionship in between voyages of self-contentment. It’s mixes this with touches of humour (Hepburn sportingly performs a pratfall into the Venetian water – although it left her with an eye infection that troubled her for the rest of her life).

It’s possibly the finest travelogue romance ever made, very well paced and gently but handsomely filmed by Lean. Hepburn gives a stunningly intelligent, gentle and wise performance and its honest look at loneliness and passing regret at that loneliness – but still being contented at the choices you have made in life – also make it perhaps one of the most realistic and true-to-life.

The Prince of Tides (1991)

Past traumas are uncovered and a gentle love story unfolds in Streisand’s extremely effective relationship drama

Director: Barbra Streisand

Cast: Nick Nolte (Tom Wingo), Barbra Streisand (Dr Susan Lowenstein), Blythe Danner (Sally Wingo), Kate Nelligan (Lila Ward Newbury), Jeroen Krabbé (Herbert Woodruff), Melinda Dillon (Savannah Wingo), George Carlin (Eddie Detreville), Jason Gould (Bernard Woodruff)

For many, La Streisand is easy to knock. She developed a reputation as difficult: controlling, demanding and perfectionist. But don’t we praise these qualities in men? Perhaps she has more than a point when she claims complaints against her are grounded in sexism. Her snubbing by the Academy – The Prince of Tides got seven nominations including Best Picture, but none for Streisand bar as Producer – certainly feels like a crusty boys’ club deciding there is no place at their big night for a strong-minded woman. Doubly unfair since Streisand deserves plenty of praise for a film as rich, heartfelt, moving and surprisingly funny as The Prince of Tides.

Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte) is a football coach in South Carolina, where his marriage to Sally (Blythe Danner) is drifting towards the rocks, largely thanks to Tom’s jovial inability to be emotionally open. He’s called to New York when his poet sister Savannah (Melinda Dillon) attempts suicide. To aid her recovery, Tom must talk to her psychiatrist about the traumas of their childhood. But Tom himself is far, far away from putting bottled-up pain behind him. Streisand plays the psychiatrist, Dr Susan Lowenstein, struggling in an unhappy marriage with an arrogant violinist (Jeroen Krabbé, being Euro-smug as only he can) and with a troubled relationship with her son Bernard (played by Streisand’s real-life son Jason Gould). Despite initial uncertainty, will a spark of romance flair up between Wingo and Lowenstein?

Well, if you listen to the luscious score by James Newton Howard for a few seconds, you can be pretty confident the answer will be “yes”. (But it’s fine – Lowenstein’s husband is an arrogant tosser and Wingo’s wife tearfully confesses her own affair; no need to worry about betrayal here.) Officially adapted from his own huge novel by Pat Conroy,working with Becky Johnston (though it was an open secret Conroy frequently confirmed that Streisand wrote the script), it distils a massive novel into a tightly paced, extremely well-made romance that feels, in many ways, a throwback to the “women’s pictures” of the 1940s. (Conroy was thrilled.)

The big difference is that the typical Bette Davis role is here played by Nick Nolte. This is an extraordinarily superb performance by Nolte: never before had I appreciated what a deeply soulful, sensitive performer he is, especially when he is called to play the “gruff” card so frequently. Nolte’s Wingo is a Southern, gentlemanly good-old-boy, a man’s man who laughs off trouble and moves with the physicality of a rough-and-tumble sportsman. But, under the surface, he’s a sensitive, vulnerable a man tortured by past traumas he can barely bring himself to think about and consumed with guilt, self-loathing and the inability to express his feelings.

In nearly every frame of the film, Nolte is sensational: endearing, funny, joyful (his dancing at a house party has a hilarious self-mockery to it) but also stand-offish and self-contained. The film revolves around key meetings between him and Streisand’s Lowenstein, which grow increasingly intense as the taciturn joker Tom, almost against his will, has his carefully mounted defences stripped away. We see nothing, by the way, of Lowenstein’s treatment of Savannah, so tightly focused is the drama on Tom’s story. While narratively sensible, this does mean that Savannah is reduced to little more than a narrative device.

It makes for effective drama, well directed by Streisand. It’s a film that mixes moments of shock – Tom seeing his sister’s bloodstains on her apartment floor or deflate into mumbling incoherence when pushed on his past – with moments of genuine warmth and sweetness. Heck even a heated argument between the two of them segues suddenly into something comic when Lowenstein impulsively throws an Oxford English Dictionary at him, damn near breaking his nose. It should also be noted Streisand unselfishly casts herself in the less showy role – essentially a feed for Nolte – and cedes the finest moments and meat of the film to him.

Perhaps that’s also partly why Streisand’s doctor is the least convincing part of the film. With her diva nails and famous features, no amount of dome-like-glasses ever really makes you forget you are watching one of the world’s icons pretend to be a psychiatrist. (Particularly as the film relies on the magic therapist trope so beloved of Hollywood, where gentle probing and quiet “what do you think” lines lead to huge emotional revelation.) If anything, she’s more convincing and comfortable as the socialite mum struggling with her dreadful husband and resentful son.

Why the son is quite as resentful as he is to his mother, is left a bit of a mystery. Nevertheless, Jason Gould does a decent job as a young man torn between playing the football he loves and fulfilling the musical promise his father expects. (He also has a great father-son chemistry with Nolte, who coaches him in football skills.) Much clearer is why Lowenstein is struggling with her ghastly husband. Jeroen Krabbé is beautifully, smackably, smug and condescending. So much so that I laughed heartedly at the film’s most crowd-pleasing moment, as Tom punishes him for his rudeness over a dinner party by juggling his priceless Stradivarius over the edge of a penthouse balcony.

It makes it easy for us to accept Streisand’s eventual affair – much as Blythe Danner’s Sally regretfully confessing that Tom’s emotional closed-offness has driven her into the arms of another man. Despite the poster’s impression though, this is far from a steamy romance, waiting almost four fifths of its runtime before the two confess their feelings for a cathartic affair. For the bulk of the film, it’s an unspoken mutual affection, driven by Tom’s Southern flirtatious manner and Susan’s half-smiles. Again, it’s a slow-build, carefully paced romance that feels real.

Also because the film’s real build is not towards the two stars converting flirting to grinding, but in uncovering the exact trauma Tom is suppressing and has made him resent his mother (Kate Nelligan very good as an aspirant social-climber, refusing to invest love in her children) almost as much as his violent father (a surly Brad Sullivan). The reveal is, in some ways, expected – but also shockingly unexpected, particularly due to the visceral rawness which Streisand shoots the Nolte-narrated flashback with (Nolte is, needless to say, wonderful in this scene).

It’s part of the surprisingly effectiveness of a film that, in other hands, could have been a sentimental family drama, but is lifted by excellent, committed performances (Streisand is clearly a whizz with actors) and sensitive, patient direction. Streisand resists attention-grabbing flash, carefully letting scenes and emotions build, using subtle but effective camera movements. It comes together into a film that surprised me greatly with its richness. It eventually has a heart-warming message to tell of the power and importance of having the courage to admit your pain and emotions and, in its portrait of a man’s man engaging with his vulnerability, projects a message still powerful today. If Redford or Eastwood had directed it, they would have won an Oscar.

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Questions of family, up-bringing and sexuality are explored with tenderness and a great deal of wit in this thought-provoking family drama

Director: Lisa Cholodenko

Cast: Annette Bening (Nic Allgood), Julianne Moore (Jules Allgood), Mark Ruffalo (Paul Hatfield), Mia Wasikowska (Joni Algood), Josh Hutcherson (Laser Allgood), Yaya DaCosta (Tanya), Eddie Hassell (Clay), Zosia Mamet (Sasha)

Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) Allgood are just like any other married couple after years of living together and raising two children: seemingly contented, settled in their ways and routines, missing some of the passion they had in the beginning, locked into their designated roles in the marriage. Nic is the dedicated doctor (with a slight drink problem) whose alpha personality dictates much of how the household is run; Jules is the more relaxed, more bohemian figure, who has rotated through several possible careers while raising their children.

Those children are inadvertently about to shake things up. Both mothers have each given birth to one of the children, using sperm from the same anonymous donor. Older daughter – straight A high-school graduating Joni (Mia Wasikowska) – is Nic’s child; slightly slacker, sports-fixated son Laser (Josh Hutcherson) is Jules’. But both children are curious about who their father is: and, with Joni now old enough to request the information, they discover him to be local bohemian restauranteur Paul (Mark Ruffalo). Meeting Paul – and bringing him into their family life – opens up cracks in their parents’ marriage which will have far-reaching consequences.

Some from the LGBTQ community criticised Lisa Cholodenko’ film on its release for presenting a lesbian marriage in such a largely conventional way. In many ways though that is in fact its strength. This engaging dramady doesn’t see anything unusual or unworldly about a lesbian marriage: in fact it shows that the problems that can beset long-term heterosexual marriages are just as likely to happen in homosexual ones. Nic and Jules are essentially – even if they don’t realise it at first – stuck in a rut. The passion has largely gone after years, the knowledge that you need to make an effort has evaporated, too many conversations are about household and parental duties. Jules quietly, almost unknowingly, resents what she sees as Nic’s dominance in their lives, while Nic privately feels she pulls much more weight in keeping things running. Not that they consciously realise this at first, in conversations that drip with in-jokes and a very casual familiarity (both Bening and Moore are superb at embodying a relationship that has become so long-term it has developed its own language).

But into this drops a bombshell in Paul. Wonderfully played by Mark Ruffalo, Paul is relaxed, playful, optimistic and upbeat. To some in the family – in particular Jules and Joni – he is everything that the more uptight and regimented Nic is not. No wonder these two both find themselves drawn to him. Unfortunately, nice guy that he is, Paul is also superbly unruffled by consequences. Events roll off his back. At first this seems like a great thing. He’s patient, understanding and thoughtful when talking to the kids. He helps the uptight Joni to relax. He gives helpful advice to Laser about his unpleasant friend Clay. But his lack of thought about his actions is there from the start (Laser, astutely, is disappointed in his first impression of Paul as self-obsessed). His advice for Joni openly encourages her to defy Nic’s boundaries. He accompanies Laser to watch Clay attempt a dangerous skating stunt like he’s a bro not a dad. And then there is Jules.

The film also drew fire from the LGBTQ community for presenting one half of its normalised lesbian couple entering into an affair with a man. But for Jules, it’s clear, the relationship is really about getting the sort of attention, focus and (to be honest) sexual interest that Nic seemed to stop giving her a long time ago (at one point, Nic prepares a luxurious bath for Jules – but then takes a phone call from work and abandons the promised massage for work). Paul is flirty, sensual and horny: sure he’s a man, but he can give her the sort of sexual pleasure that absent-minded fondlings with Nic late at night no longer even begin to give.

But that’s all it really is to Jules – a sudden, unexpected craving. There is no doubt that her heart belongs to Nic – just as there is no doubt that both she and Nic will be devastated when the affair comes out. (Cholodenko shoots Nic’s realisation beautifully. During a “family dinner” with Paul, the sound drains out during a fixed shot on Bening’s face which pained, heartbroken realisation and anger crosses across. It’s a tour-de-force for Bening that probably went a long way to securing her Oscar nomination). Paul, conversely, seems supremely unaware of the likely impact of his actions – during that family dinner he shows no compunction about bonding for the first time with Nic (who relaxes as we have never seen before until the truth is revealed) over a mutual love for Joni Mitchell.

Paul is, unknowingly, the serpent in the garden that will unbalance the careful equilibrium in the family. Nic is hostile to him from the start, his presence seeming to play into deep rooted insecurities and a fear of being supplanted. For Jules he presents an exotic alternative chance – a relationship with someone who feels accommodating and deferential to her. It blows open the comfortable but familiar rut the two of them are in. In the cracks, Jules becomes distracted and selfish, Nic doubles down on drinking and demands for obedience to her family rules.

If it sounds heavy going, it surprisingly isn’t. Cholodenko (sharing script writing with Stuart Blomberg) throws in plenty of jokes and moments of sweetness. Bening and Moore are both incredibly good in the lead roles: Moore is bubbly, relaxed, sexy but sad deep down dissatisfied and surprisingly selfish. Bening seems at first merely a domineering control freak with a drink problem, but she is revealed as deeply fragile, loving and devoted, a woman whose love is expressed in ways the objects can find overbearing, however well meaning they are. (Wasikowska and Hutcherson are both also great as their kids.)

The Kids Are All Right bubbles with some well judged moments of comedy, drama and tragedy. This is a film, eventually, about the strength of family. Paul may tempt with his care-free optimism and consequence-free thinking. But this film sides, overwhelmingly, with people like Nic who may sometimes make you want to tear your hair out, but will be there time and again, day-after-day, offering love in a way people like Paul never can. Laser and Joni may tease her, may bridle at her rules – but they love her unconditionally, in a way the film shows us with gestures small and large time and again. So, for that matter, does Jules: her actions grow from wanting a more overt return on the affection she more naturally gives.

It’s a film that wears its heart firmly and shamelessly on its sleeve, as it urges us to both recognise and empathise with this fundamentally loving marriage going through a rough patch. And by normalising families like this, it sends a strong message of inclusivity: after all, if we all share the same problems, doesn’t that all help us realise we are the same?