Category: Film about friendship

Scenes From a Marriage (1974)

Bergman’s compelling, emotionally charged film is an intense, impressive and surprising tale

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Liv Ullman (Marianne), Erland Josephson (Johan), Bibi Andersson (Katarina), Jan Malmsjö (Peter), Gunnel Lindblom (Eva), Barbro Hiort af Ornäs (Mrs Jacobi), Anita Wall (Journalist)

A loving couple sit with an interviewer to discuss how happy their relationship is. Ten years later, years after their divorce, they meet in their old weekend cottage for an assignation away from their new partners. Along the way, they’ll lie, fight, cheat but also show time-and-again few people know them better than they do each other. Based on his own marriages and relationships (not least his relationship with Liv Ullman), Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage is a fascinatingly intimate and intense portrait of the contradictory impulses we feel towards the people we know best: how we can, in the same moment, love them, hate them, want to be a million miles away from them and also yearn to take them in our arms and tell them everything.

Skilfully cut down from a six-part TV series – the episode titles become ‘chapter headings’, each signifying a time shift – it becomes a series of intense, almost real-time, conversations between middle-brow professor Johan (Erland Josephson) and successful lawyer Marianne (Liv Ullman). From their ten-year anniversary, their happy-but-functional relationship is shattered when Johan leaves for the (unseen) Paula, heading into divorce, Marianne’s growth in sexual confidence, her little acts of revenge over Johan and their later affair. At all times they prove capable of ripping emotional wounds into each other, but also remaining strangely dependent on love and affection from each other.

It would be easy to say that Scenes of a Marriage is a theatrical piece – it came, originally, from a play Bergman was working on and well over two thirds of its running time features Josephson and Ullman alone on screen. But if the close-up is the language of cinema, Scenes from a Marriage may be the most cinematic film every made. Shot in a cooly observational style by Sven Nykvist, vast swathes of Scenes from a Marriage plays out in searing close-up, the camera studying every inch of the emotional angst its two characters are putting themselves through. Bergman knows exactly how to build the punishing tension in these scenes, frequently climaxing in visceral outbursts.

It is a film about what we say and what we chose not to say and what we decide to hear. The conversation between the couples is framed by their careful considerations: when to hold fire and when to let rip; when to listen and when to choose not to hear. And it’s clear that, when we are first introduced to them, they have mastered the art of not saying anything at all. Smilingly parroting cliches to their interviewer, they later smugly compare themselves to their feuding friends Karatina and Peter (excellent cameos from a searing Bibi Andersson and a provocative Jan Malmsjö). But their conversation never touches on deeper issues (Bergman’s called this chapter ‘The Art of Sweeping Things Under the Carpet’) and their sex life has dwindled to timetabled functionality.

It’s clear they are aware of this growing distance themselves. Johan shares his poetry with a colleague (an expertly reserved cameo from Gunnel Lindblom), complaining Marianne considers it little better than spiritual masturbation and yearns for an expressive freedom he feels is impossible in his marriage. Marianne meanwhile speaks to a client, Mrs Jacobi (a tragic Barbro Hiort af Ornäs), whose story of a lifetime trapped in a loveless marriage with children she never really wanted clearly strikes Marianne as a chilling vision of her own future.

That doesn’t stop Marianne responding with shocked subservience that tips into desperate pleading when Johan announces he wants to leave her. Bergman stages this scene beautifully, with the ridiculous logic people sink into in tragic break-ups. Johan eats a snack meal prepared by Marianne, guiltily confessing his affair, but there is something very real about Marianne’s stunned reaction which sees her planning his packing (because he’s useless at it) and continue their bedtime preparation before she starts pleading him to stay. Just there is something very real in Johan’s reaction: having steeled himself for a fight, her subservience enrages him until he is cruelly tearing verbal lumps out of her. This is the sort of searing emotional up-and-down that rings true, one allowing shock to humiliate them the other transforming shame into defensive, accusatory blame.

But Scenes from a Marriage is a film that utterly understands how much we change under circumstances. Separation is not good for Johan: his new lover doesn’t interest him, his career stalls and he tips into self-pity. Marianne, once the shock and fear of separation passes, discovers she likes her freedom. Her wardrobe shifts to more form-fitting and revealing clothes, she embraces the opportunities of singledom and repays Johan’s desertion with a seduction of him she deliberately doesn’t follow-through on. They now talk more honestly than ever before – and it’s a blistering, verbally and physically violent exchange rammed full of resentment and petty cruelty.

To do this stuff you need actors at the top of their game and who completely trust each other. Bergman certainly has this with his two stars. Josephson’s self-contented smugness moves through arrogant selfishness to desperate vulnerability, his expressive face sometimes puppy-doggish, sometimes drowning in bear-like fury. Ullman is, of course, exceptional. Her masterful ability to react, to let thoughts and emotions play fleetingly across her face was made for Bergman’s close-up film-making and she takes Marianne on a fascinating journey, from near-submissive home-maker to vibrantly confident women of the world while never letting the vulnerability and doubt be too far from her eyes. It’s an extraordinary performance, searing and tender, as raw as knife-edge.

These two play absorbingly off each other, their conversations gripping minefields of repressed then hugely expressed emotions. Their collaboration, guided by Bergman’s close (but not intrusive) camerawork is extraordinary. Fashioned from Bergman’s experiences of relationships, Scenes from a Marriage is, however, strangely hopeful. One of its key themes is that, even when they hate each other, this couple know and trust each other more than anyone else. In times of crisis and pain they always turn to each for a consolatory word or comfort.

There is something strangely warm about their relationship, despite its turmoil, and the film is refreshing in saying friendship and love doesn’t have to end with divorce, but can transform itself into something else, perhaps even something better. Perhaps it’s that strange note of hope that makes Scenes of a Marriage so influential to a generation of filmmakers. It refuses the simple moral standpoints of judgement and suggests the decision to no longer be together (or even faithful to each other) need not be the end all, but instead a bump in a longer journey: that a relationship (and even a love) doesn’t end when a marriage does.

Cyrano (2021)

Slight but enjoyable musical, with the flaws of the original but some virtues of its own

Director: Joe Wright

Cast: Peter Dinklage (Cyrano de Bergerac), Haley Bennett (Roxanne), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Christian de Neuvillette), Ben Mendelsohn (De Guiche), Monica Dolan (Marie), Bashir Salahuddin (Le Bret), Joshua James (Valvert), Anjana Vasan (Sister Claire), Ruth Sheen (Mother Marthe), Mark Benton (Montfleury), Richard McCabe (Priest), Peter Wight (Ragueneau)

Edmond Rostand’s play has been reinvented time-and-time again. After all, who can’t relate to a man convinced he’s unlovable and uses his poetic heart to write the words to help his rival woo the woman they both love. Erica Schmidt’s stage musical with songs by Aaron and Bryce Dessner from The National, pretty much keeps everything but kicks out the famous oversize nose in favour of making Cyrano a man with dwarfism. Bringing him to life – both here and on stage – is Schmidt’s husband Peter Dinklage, with his stage and screen love Roxanne portrayed by Haley Bennett, wife of Cyrano’s director Joe Wright.

It all helps create an easy-going feeling to Cyrano, a decent, at times impressive musical, that never quite turns into something really lasting but presents several fine songs in its middle act. It’s unfortunate that it’s opening section – and largely forgettable initial number – set the scene less than compellingly, dutifully repeating Rostand via a show-boating Cyrano easily besting a preening actor in a battle of wits, all while casting faintly longing looks at impressed Roxanne. What it doesn’t really do is seize the attention. In fact, what it does is really remind you what a slight story Cyrano de Bergerac really is: and that it only really starts with the Act Two introduction of Christian.

It’s certainly, it feels, where Wright’s interest begins. The romantic triangle between the three – Cyrano and Christian both in love with Roxanne, Roxanne in love with Christian and (perhaps) sub-consciously with Cyrano – introduces drama and stakes into a film that until then largely lacks either. Contrasts are drawn between Cyrano and Christian who share honour and decency, but are polar opposites in terms of confidence. Christian is physically and socially assured but crippled with inarticulate shyness when asked to speak; Cyrano can turn his feelings into poetry, but is convinced he is an unlovable imp, his confidence forever crushed by his appearance.

The concept of exchanging oversize nose for Dinklage’s dwarfism works rather well, when every single camera angle constantly reminds us of Cyrano’s otherness. It also gives a wonderful showpiece for the excellent Dinklage, who brings an intense, grungy charisma to the role. He can do the Cyrano’s performative showmanship, but also expertly demonstrates this is a front to protect his true self from being seen and potentially rejected. It becomes clear Cyrano partly embraces his titanic ghost-writing (hundreds and hundreds of pages), without Christian’s knowledge, because he genuinely feels it is the closest he can come to experiencing a relationship, just as he believes should he ever speak his true feelings they would inevitably be rejected. Dinklage does a wonderful job of balancing inner vulnerability with a mask of cocksure, arrogant confidence.

Cyrano certainly misses the subtle indicators, from the start, that Haley Bennett’s Roxanne might well have feelings for him. Aware that Cyrano de Bergerac often presents not the most flattering picture of Roxanne’s intelligence (she is a woman, after all, fooled for years into believing all those romantic words came from her husband not her lifelong friend). Bennett however let’s a – again perhaps subconscious – suspicion play just around the corner of her eyes, not to mention that her feelings for Cyrano feel a lot closer to romantic from the start. Is she as scared of rejection as Cyrano, put off by his independent front? After all she values honest feelings – and Christian, even if his words come from someone else, is clear about the way he feels in a way Cyrano never is. Kelvin Harrison Jr. is rather charming as this sweet, kind, strangely shy young man, tongue-tied and bemused by long words but with a strong sense of right and wrong.

The film – and the musical – is at its strongest when these three are interacting. Wright’s filmmaking also comes to life, with his more staid and traditional visual set-ups for the theatre-set prologue giving way (via a dynamic one-shot full of ducking and diving camerawork as Cyrano takes out ten assassins single-handed) to a series of balletic scenes. Large-scale musical numbers are accompanied by people going about every-day tasks with a wonderfully choreographed grace: be that bakers rhythmically kneading dough and stocking ovens, to a mass of soldiers fencing in perfect harmony. The songs also pick up considerably in both power and humability, culminating in the affecting Wherever I Fall, an eve-before-battle group number that sees Cyrano’s regiment preparing themselves for what could-be their final night, beautifully shot with a mist-filled coolness.

Cyrano’s slight story remains its weakness and the film can’t quite decide how to expand organically the deception plot at its heart. It’s almost a shame it bravely closes the door on the film’s most obvious protagonist, with Ben Mendelsohn’s De Guiche getting a scowling ‘villainy’ number but proving himself a man of honour. Fundamentally the long introduction to the set-up and the five-year-later coda the film wraps up with end-up feeling unsatisfying. It’s actually too faithful to Rostand, carrying across the original’s flaws. Cyrano embraces the mix of romance, comedy and sadness in its wooing-by-proxy and the odd-couple friendship between Cyrano and Christian, but feels more perfunctory as soon as it has to move beyond this section of the film.

It’s a shame as that central section is actually rather effective with Wright bringing the musical numbers in particular to life with a real delicate beauty. There are some very good performances, especially the heart-felt work from Dinklage, but it eventually strains towards an epic scale its story isn’t quite strong or engaging enough to support.

The Big Chill (1983)

Heart-warming, engaging and moving ensemble drama, low-key and all the better for it

Director: Lawrence Kasdan

Cast: Tom Berenger (Sam Weber), Glenn Close (Sarah Cooper), Jeff Goldblum (Michael Gould), William Hurt (Nick Carlton), Kevin Kline (Harold Cooper), Mary Kay Place (Meg Jones), Meg Tilly (Chloe), JoBeth Williams (Karen Bowens), Don Galloway (Richard Bowens)

Growing up is hard, isn’t it? The older you get, the harder it is to cling on to the idealism of your younger days. The past can wind up feeling both very familiar and a very different country indeed. It’s something a group of thirtysomething college friends start thinking about when they gather for the funeral of their friend Alex (the famously cut-from-the-film Kevin Costner, seen only via close-ups of his hands and chest while being prepped by an undertaker). Spending a weekend together they reminisce, argue and remind each of why (and if they are still are) friends.

Kasdan’s sharp script, full of sparkling dialogue and rich (if at times familiar) character arcs attracted a smorgasbord of the cream of 80s American film acting, all of whom give fabulously relaxed, extremely genuine performances, largely devoid of grandstanding. The disparate range of career and life-choices the friends have made influenced an armada of ‘college-reunion’ stories, but it’s a trope that works because Kasdan knew it offered such a rich potential for drama.

The Big Chill is the definitive ensemble piece, delightful because it’s structured not around heavy-handed, overtly dramatic clashes, but everyday conversations full of observational humour and low-key emotional truths. There isn’t really a plot as such in The Big Chill: the pleasure comes from Kasdan pulling off the near-impossible trick of making us feel we have been invited to share the fun rather than watching, with our noses pressed up against the window, a film where the actors are having more fun than us. The Big Chill feels truthful, universal and eventually moving because it is so down-to-earth. We’ve all had social groups where we feel absolute loyalty and love for its members, while still being capable of finding them earth-shatteringly infuriating.

Most of them have traded their youthful idealism to change the world for a Reaganite cash-grasping. Sam (Tom Berenger) stars in a hit Magnum PI style TV drama. His former partner in left-wing politics Harold (Kevin Kline) owns a successful running shoes business (named Running Dog in a subtle pop at his own selling out) while his wife Sarah (Glenn Close) is a successful doctor. Michael (Jeff Goldblum) writes shallow celebrity pieces for glossy magazines, Meg (Mary Kay Place) has traded being a public defender for real-estate law. Karen (JoBeth Williams) wanted to be a writer, but instead married an ad executive Richard (Don Galloway).

All of them feel their late friend Alex represents the path they could have taken: a genius scientist who turned down all academic promotions to focus on social work and his old principles. Not that this seems to have made Alex happy. The most like Alex’s seems to be Nick (William Hurt). A former radio-psychiatrist, left impotent after Vietnam, who jacked in his career and is now a drifting drug addict. It’s never quite said, but you can feel the concern of the rest of the group that Nick feels destined to be the next funeral they gathering for.

Much of the tension comes from Nick – largely because he feels more willing to touch nerves the rest are happy to leave unprodded. This is a group that works hard to maintain harmony – after all, Sarah’s affair with Alex hasn’t dented Harold’s genuine grief or his love for his wife, and no one else wants to address it. But there are clear tensions and resentments under the surface: small grudges or irritations many perhaps coming from that uncomfortable feeling of the group seeing their own self-recriminations reflected back at them in their friends faces.

Nick is the only one who raises the scary spectre that decade-old events hold this group together, not their lives today. If they all met for the first time now, would they even be friends? Nick is also willing to take pot-shots at their tendency to self-pitying regret and to provoke the romantic and sexual tensions the others are happy to keep unremarked or compromise on. (Even Jeff Goldblum’s seemingly provocative Michael, avoids trouble by scrupulously taking nothing seriously.)

What makes The Big Chill such a lovable film, despite this, is this doesn’t fracture the group but are islands of tension within a sea of genuine friendship and warmth. Kasdan’s insistence that the company spend a longer time than usual in rehearsal – famously the cast cemented their chemistry via an almost five-hour, Mike Leigh-style, in-character improvisation, involving cooking and eating a dinner together – paid off in spades. They genuinely feel like life-long friends, sharing in-jokes, teasing each other, looking out for each other and making generous offers of help.

There is a lot to laugh at because it feels so universal. We’ve all mucked around with friends while cooking and cleaning. When the group gather to teasingly cheer along with the opening credits of Sam’s cheesy TV show (to his good-natured embarrassment) it makes us laugh because we recognise the affection. The hilarious absurdity of Harold, Nick and Sam chasing a bat out of the attic feels real. Just as the emotions hammer home – Harold’s grief in his eulogy for Alex, Sarah’s tears at a meal, Nick’s tragic middle-distance gloom or Karen’s private ennui among her friends.

It’s all helped by superb performances. JoBeth Williams is excellent in, arguably, the film’s most challenging role, deeply unhappy with where her life has gone, wanting to pretend she can seize the day but not having the conviction to see it through. Goldblum is drily witty but distant as the group’s closest thing to an outsider, Berenger affectingly modest at his sell-out success, Place quietly desperate as a woman whose body clock is ticking down. Kline is very funny and sweet as a man desperate to help those around him, while Close in the flashier (and Oscar-nominated) part as the group’s nominal ‘mother figure’, far more deeply affected by Alex’s death than she is willing to let on.

Perhaps best of all is Hurt, vulnerable, gentle and quietly lost as Nick, his pain manifesting itself in occasional bear-prodding outbursts, but who will quietly apologise the next morning with a gentle, unremarked hug. He also forms a warm and genuine bond with Alex’s younger girlfriend Chloe, played with a sparky energy by Meg Tilly, who (not surprisingly) sees a lot of Alex in him.

Kasdan’s film gently explores the tensions of a group of adults unsure about where their life has taken them, but it does so in a warm and charming structure that makes us really care for the characters all of whom are expertly and humanly drawn. It’s lack of explosive melodrama is a large part of its success, helping ground the film as something relatable that we can feel a real bond with.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021)

Low-key, beautifully made short-story anthology, crammed with wonderfully little touches

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Cast: Kotone Furukawa (Meiko), Ayumu Nakajima (Kazuaki Kubota), Hyunri (Tsugumi Konno), Kiyohiko Shibukawa (Segawa), Katsuki Mori (Nao), Shouma Kai (Sasaki), Fusako Urabe (Moka Natsuko), Aoba Kawai (Nana Aya)

Hamaguchi’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy feels deceptively simple. But it’s the Japanese auteur combining an Ozu-inspired sensibility with the narrative flair of Chekhov. In its three acts, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy presents three short stories, each chamber pieces, each revolving around intimate, intense and life-changing conversations between two people. Hamaguchi demonstrates how lives can rotate on their axis in split seconds, with conversations shifting for one or both participants with no warning, generating unexpected, emotionally surprising results.

‘Magic’, the first story, revolves around model Meiko (Kotone Furukawa) and best friend Tsugami (Hyunri). During a long cab journey, Tsugami tells Meiko all about her new romance – only for Meiko to realise, part way through, she is talking about Meiko’s ex-boyfriend Kazuaki (Ayumu Nakajima) with whom Meiko may still love. ‘Door Wide Open’ sees distinguished professor and author Segawa (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) become the unsuspecting target of a honey trap by Nao (Katsuki Mori), after her friend-with-benefit’s Sasaki (Shouma Kai) had his media career-plans derailed by Segawa failing him. Nao and Segawa however find unexpectantly common ground. Finally, ‘Once Again’ has Natsuko (Fusako Urabe) excitedly bumping into her former high school girlfriend Aya (Aoba Kawai) at a train station – only to find, when they return to Aya’s home, both have mistaken the other for someone else. These two strangers however find it easier to talk and bond.

All three of these stories are deceptively simple. Only ‘Once Again’ features any unusual set-up (a computer virus has rendered all computers unusable, a sci-fi insertion that only exists to remove any chance of the mix-up being avoided). Hamaguchi shoots each story with an unaffected simplicity, frequently employing long-takes and staging the bulk of each story (each is about 40 minutes) in single, every-day locations – from taxis to offices to homes.

But Hamaguchi’s approach allows the performances to grow with a subtle, skilful naturalness, capturing intense (but often hidden) changes of mood in the slightest micro-expressions. Each of the three key conversations underpinning the stories develops in utterly unexpected ways and part of the magic of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is immediately wanting to play each of back and try and spot the moments where they changed their participants lives.

Hamaguchi carefully builds our empathy with these characters, using Ozu-inspired stationary set-ups complemented with unfussy two-shot set-ups, but culminating in moments of complete immersion where POV shots place us behind the eyes of each character, looking directly at the person they are talking with. It’s a superb way of quietly building our connection with the characters and the events they are experiencing and works brilliantly to immerse us in these moments that we know will shape their emotional development over months and years to come.

This gives these small scale – and they are defiantly small-scale – stories real impact. Hamaguchi’s film is about real people facing real problems: lost loves, frustrated ambitions, childhood regrets. The very human feelings in play here help make the stories affecting. It’s helped again by the subtle performances Hamguchi draws from the cast. When Meiko – a marvellous ambiguous Kotone Furukawa – fumes against her ex-boyfriend for moving on, is she angry at him or at herself for letting him go? Does Segawa (a perfectly dour, almost unreadable Kiyohiko Shibukawa) feel fear at his reputation being damaged or because of stirrings of sexual longing he has clearly repressed? Does Natsuko (a gorgeously fragile Fusako Urabe) relish the freedom of speaking her mind to a complete stranger even more than she would talking to the actual person she is recalling?

Hamaguchi mixes this with intriguing moments of fantasy. A deliberately clumsy camera zoom at one point indicates to us a no-holds-barred conversation in a café has just been in the imagination of one of its participants. Sasaki fantasises about himself reporting on the television about his former mentor. Hamaguchi also brings a wonderful sense of magic to everyday locations (not to mention the fairy tale like set-up of the final stories lack of computers, which feels like the aftereffects of a witch’s curse). The escalator Natsuko and Aya meet on takes on a mystic beauty as it moves them past each other on careful tracking shots. Meiko walks through city streets and stares back at a skyline that feels filled with meaning. Hamaguchi isn’t afraid to slow the film down at key moments to soak up atmosphere and observe the everyday beauty in objects around us.

It lends even more power to the sudden changes these characters experience. Each story carefully builds on the emotional impact of the one before, taking us through ambiguity to complex mixed feelings to a final cathartic moment at a train station that carries real emotional force. Every story ends in a very different place from what we expected at the start – or arguably even the middle – without Hamaguchi ever overplaying his Dahlish Tales of the Unexpected card.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a small-scale expression of Hamaguchi’s directorial mastery, a perfect expression of his ability to infuse small-scale stories with great emotional force and psychological depth. It’s a highly skilled piece of short-film-making, pulled together into an effective collection. A clear indicator that this – combined with Drive My Car – marks Hamaguchi out as a future great.

Challengers (2024)

Dynamic, mature, hilarious and moving relationship drama, an absolute delight

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Zendaya (Tashi Duncan), Josh O’Connor (Patrick Zweig), Mike Faist (Art Donaldson), Darnell Appling (New Rochelle Final Umpire), AJ Lister (Lily Donaldson), Nada Despotovich (Tashi’s mother), Naheem Garcia (Tashi’s father), Hailey Gates (Helen)

Tennis superstar Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) is on the slide after six majors – he’s lost his click and can’t even struggle past up-and-comers from the lower rungs of the tour. His coach, manager and wife Tashi (Zendaya) has an idea for how to get his groove back: he’ll enter a lowest-rung Challenger tournament, chalk up an easy win and return to confidence. Problem is, Art’s estranged former friend and doubles partner Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) is also in the tournament and the two of them now line up for a grudge match in the final. But there is more going on than meets the eye, as Guadagnino’s film unfolds in a non-linear style to reveal the complex, confused and frequently ambiguous sexual, emotional and sporting tensions that have beset the three over 13 years.

Challengers feels like it might be a ripe piece of teen click-bait fluff – but reveals itself to be a whipper-sharp, funny, involving and cleverly open-ended film stuffed full of excellent dialogue by Justin Kuritzkes that frequently catches you off-guard with its plot developments. Challengers is a thrillingly mature, adult and very truthful exploration of the underlying attractions and tensions between three people, all of whom seem confused about their exact feelings and motivations.

What is clear – as made explicitly clear by an intensely erotic late-night encounter in a hotel room between the three of them thirteen years earlier – is the rich, unspoken attraction they all share. Art and Patrick are strongly attracted to Tashi, she seems equally interested in different aspects of each of them, while Art and Patrick’s homoerotic bond (clued in before this by their affectionate, casual physical intimacy as well as their intense celebrations on winning the Junior US Open) is immediately clear to the savvy Tashi and briefly embraced by the two men.

Sport – particularly mano-a-mano games like tennis – has an undercurrent of sexual energy to it. Adrenalin-filled men pounding away at each other from across the net, bodies glistening with sweat? Teammates grasping each other in victory with an intensity often beyond anything they would show to a romantic partner? Challengers explores how close a dance sport and sex is, the remarkably similar effects both have on our bodies. It’s what Tashi – a former tennis sensation whose career was ended in tragic circumstances – is getting at when she says the best tennis matches aren’t about tennis. They are semi-romantic couplings, the perfect rally being two bodies in perfect harmony.

This all develops thrillingly in the inter-relationships between the three leads, each excellent. Zendaya is superb as a woman forced to live her tennis dreams vicariously through her husband, who values the loyalty of Art while being quietly troubled by his neediness, infuriated by Patrick’s arrogant performative selfishness while being deeply attracted to his don’t-give-a-damn independence. She has a tight knot of tension throughout that is compelling, a constant sense we are watching a woman struggling to find some sort of resolution from a lifetime of competing resentments and desires.

Equally superb – revelatory in fact – is Josh O’Connor, who makes Patrick a cocksure, confident, selfish but immensely charming guy. Patrick scraps a career from natural skill that he never bothered to hone (witness his bizarre crooked-arm serve), embraces his sexual confidence, bounces around with a breezy bro-confidence and does everything he can to hide the lonely, lost boy he really is. This is breathtaking work from O’Connor, from hilariously funny when shamelessly pimping himself on tour for a roof over his head, and tragically vulnerable in bashful confessions with Tashi.

Mike Faist has the least flashy role but is equally wonderful. Art is – if you will – the most closeted of the three, the least confident, most dutiful, who dedicates himself to things and doesn’t stop to think deeply about his true feelings. You suspect the unspoken intense romantic bond between Art and Patrick remains unspoken in their youth because Art himself is uncertain (scared?) about what he feels. Just as he buttons up and represses his own resentments and anger towards Tashi.

Challengers switches and re-aligns these characters beautifully and constantly leaves us guessing. When Tashi (and by extension Art) refuses to see Patrick after her injury, is this because she genuinely blames him for unsettling her before the match or because she just needs something other than random chance to blame? Does she drive Art into becoming a Grand Slam winning machine out of love, a vicarious desire for success or anger (as she shapes into something he isn’t) because she blames him as well? Does Art know or care? Does he realise how much his depression comes from severing connections with his alter-ego Patrick and does Patrick slog it out on the circuit because it’s the only way he can still feel in-any-way close to the only two people he loves (but won’t admit?).

Watching all this unfold, seeing each scene reveal a new piece of information that refocuses what we thought about each character, is compelling – helped a great deal by the vibrant, emotional and intensely sympathetic performances from the three leads. Challengers is also a superbly assembled film, sharply and snappily edited and with an electric, emotionally well-judged score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that skilfully uses refrains to link back to key emotions and sensations. It’s also a film that shoots tennis more electrically than any other. With sweeping crane shots, hand-held camera and every trick in the book, we see matches from the perspective of everything: the players, the ground, even the ball itself. It’s stunningly visually inventive.

It culminates in a truly wonderful, open-ended, emotionally satisfying ending that I actively adored. It’s a film about love, about three people who feud over petty things for years but need each other to be complete, who find there are elements of each other’s personalities that serve to complete themselves. Who are fiercely sexually attracted to each other, but also have a deep, intense emotional bond they need more than they realise. Challengers is an absolutely gorgeous, delightful, superb film – another emotional, mature triumph from Guadagnino, with three brilliant actors working wonders with a sharp script. It’s a film to love and treasure.

Ratatouille (2007)

Delightful and heart-warming cooking comedy with added rats – a Pixar gem

Director: Brad Bird

Cast: Patton Oswalt (Remy), Lou Romano (Alfredo Linguini), Ian Holm (Skinner), Brian Dennehy (Django), Peter Sohn (Émile), Peter O’Toole (Anton Ego), Brad Garrett (Auguste Gusteau), Janeane Garofalo (Colette Tatou), Will Arnett (Horst), Julius Callahan (Lalo), James Remar (Larousse), John Ratzenberger (Mustafa), Teddy Newton (Talon Labarthe)

They say anyone can cook – but surely they don’t mean a rat can cook? But in Ratatouille that’s what we get: the greatest chef in Paris is a rat. Remy (Patton Oswalt) has a sense of taste and smell that’s light years ahead of his fellow rats. While they happily munch on rotten food, Remy longs for food that’s actually good. Separated from his family, Remy finds himself in the Parisian restaurant of legendary late chef Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett). There Remy’s natural instincts make him the secret brains behind the growing success of young Alfredo Linguini (Lou Romano), who overnight moves from dish cleaner to chef. His secret? Remy of course. Can they keep their secret in the face of the suspicion of head chef Skinner (Ian Holm), Linguini’s growing romance with fellow chef Colette (Janeane Garofalo), and the threat of a damning review by feared critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole)?

All this comes together in Brad Bird’s delightful confection, a superb dish where every flavour is perfectly balanced and all ingredients are seasoned to perfection. (I promise this won’t all be full of cooking puns.) It’s absolutely wonderful good fun and on top of that, it’s a real heart-string tugging treat. Ratatouille takes a fantastical set-up (a cooking rat manipulates a talentless chef’s body through precise hair pulling) and then throws in ounces of carefully judged comedy with real emotional pathos. Ratatouille never fails to make you laugh but then hit you with tear-inducing sincerity. The film is a total delight.

What Ratatouille is really about is truth. Being true to yourself, embracing the things you love, and the struggle to find acceptance for that, be it from family or the world around you. It’s the subtext behind Gusteau’s message that anyone can cook. This is not about anyone being able to crack an egg into a pan: it’s about good food coming from a person loving what they do and wanting to share that love with someone else. Remy – an utterly delightful voice performance by Patton Oswalt – wants to experience good food, but as a rat the home of good food is always the place he’s most likely to find himself skewered by a trap.

Remy loves food in a way that the rest of his rat family – lead by his tough-as-nails father Django (Brian Dennehy) – can’t even begin to understand. They see food as just fuel. Who cares which flavours complement each other or even if its fresh? To them Remy’s extraordinary sense of smell is only useful for his ability to detect poison before it hits their mouths. And they can’t even begin to understand Remy might want more. But the very idea of heading to a kitchen – or interacting with humans who, to the other rats, get their kicks from slaughtering rats in their thousands – they can’t even begin to get their head round. Why can’t Remy be happy snuffling in the gutter?

Linguini (a very sweet, nervy Lou Romano) also has burdens of expectations that he can make a career in the kitchen. Anyone can cook – except for Linguini, who has no interest in (let alone flair for) flavours. The relationship between man and rat is beautifully done– even though neither can speak the other’s language. (In a neat touch, while we hear the rats talk – every human in the film just hears them squeak.) To Linguini, it doesn’t matter that Remy is squeaky vermin, what matters to him is that Remy is a master at what he does. But, Ratatouille gently asks: can hiding your true self make you happy in the long term?

Linguini’s success shows another side of being true: as fame goes to Linguini’s head, he starts to forget he’s the muscle not the brains of the operation. What will eventually alienate his growing relationship with fellow chef Colette (a wonderful Janene Garofalo) is not that he’s working with vermin to make the food, but that he’s lied to her about his skills. Something particularly tough since, like Remy, she has had to fight tooth and nail to live her dream in a male-dominated industry.

Accepting your true self and being happy in your own skin are themes our two villains also juggle with. Head chef Skinner (hilariously voiced with impotent rage by Ian Holm) has lost any love he once had for cooking, marketing his former mentor Gusteau as the face of a brand of cheap ready-meals (“with dignity” he absent-mindedly requests, as Gusteau is drawn as a burrito for the latest packaging) and his interest is only in turning a profit. The face of mass-produced, soulless fare, he’s the perfect antagonist of a film that praises lovingly crafted individualism.

And our other villain? Played with a beautifully plummy relish by Peter O’Toole, Anton Ego – drawn with a grey-faced, sepulchral chill – despairs that any food can meet his standards and seems to have forgotten somewhere along the line that excellence comes from love. Unlike Skinner though, Ego is (at heart) an idealist who may no longer quite remember what he is searching for – but will embrace it when he finds it at last. Ratatouille’s finest moment – always brings a tear to my eye for sure – is Ego’s being reminded at last what made him fall in love with his passion in the first place, perhaps one of the finest moments in Pixar’s long history.

Ratatouille’s emotional content and its themes of truth and acceptance are at the heart of its success, complemented always by the superb score from Michael Giacchini, crammed with Parisian inspiration. There is more life in this animated marvel than in hundreds of live-action films. And the animation is breath-taking: from the kitchen a marvel of pristine, gold and steel surfaces, via the sewers bringing back memories of The Third Man, to the visual imagination of Ego’s coffin-shaped office or the cobbled together rat colony (made from various bits of rubbish). Brad Bird’s flair (and Ratatouille is a wonderfully directed film) also carries across to his electric chase scenes through the streets and rivers of Paris, and the undeniable tension of watching Remy maneuverer his way around a kitchen without being detected.

Bird’s film though really succeeds because it has a warm-hearted love for all its characters and a heartfelt and appealing message for us to be the people we want to be, not what those around expect us to be. And who can’t relate to that? Throw in the sort of unexplained comic magic of watching a naïve young man having his body moved about by a cuddly rat sitting under his chef’s hat and with Ratatouille you onto an absolute winner. Bon appetit!

The Razor’s Edge (1946)

A bubbling soap full of incidents, disguising itself as a meditation on philosophy

Director: Edmund Goulding

Cast: Tyrone Power (Larry Darrell), Gene Tierney (Isabel Bradley), John Payne (Gray Maturin), Anne Baxter (Sophie MacDonald), Clifton Webb (Elliott Templeton), Herbert Marshall (W Somerset Maughm), Lucile Watson (Louisa Bradley), Frank Latimore (Bob MacDonald), Elsa Lanchester (Miss Keith), Cecil Humphreys (Holy Man), Fritz Korner (Kosti)

“What’s it all about?”: a question asked long before Alfie and it’s the one asked by Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power) as he returns from World War One to Chicago. Suddenly those garden parties and country clubs all look rather empty and shallow. Larry is engaged to Isabel (Gene Tierney), but he’s not interested in office work and domesticity. He wants to live a little bit, to find out what life is about. Doesn’t he owe that to the man who died in the war to save his life? With just $3k a year (over $50k today, which must help), he heads for the artistic life in Paris. After a year apart, Isabel decides it’s for her (£3k a year? What kind of life is that!) and marries a banker so dull he’s literally named Gray (John Payne). Flash forward to 1929 and the Crash has upturned the lives of the Chicago bourgeoisie – perhaps Larry’s inner contentment will mean more after all?

Adapted from W Somerset Maugham’s novel – with Maugham as a character, played by the unflappably debonair Herbert Marshall – The Razor’s Edge is a luscious period piece with pretentions at intellectualism but, rather like Maugham, is really a sort of a soapy plot-boiler with a veneer of cod-philosophy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – after all the suds in Razor’s Edge are frequently rather pleasant to relax in – but don’t kid yourself that we are watching a thoughtful piece of cinema. It’s closer in tone to Goulding’s Oscar-winning Grand Hotel than it might care to admit.

Our hero, Larry Darrell, should be a sort of warrior-poet, but to be honest he’s a bit of a self-important bore. Played with try-hard energy by a Tyrone Power desperate to be seen as a proper actor rather than action star, Larry has a blissful “water off a duck’s back” air that sees him meet calamity with a wistful smile and the knowledge that providence evens everything out. Be it the break-up of an engagement or the death of close friend, little fazes Larry who has a mantra or piece of spiritualist advice for every occasion. Bluntly, our hero is a bit of a prig whose middle-class spirituality has all the mystical wisdom of a collection of fortune cookies.

It’s no real surprise that the film’s weakest parts are whenever Larry engages with the vaguely defined collection of homilies and mumbo-jumbo he picks up about spirituality. All this culminates in an almost embarrassingly bad sequence in the Himalayas, where Larry stays under the clichéd tutelage of a shoe-polish-covered Cecil Humphrey as a Holy Man whose every utterance is a vague collection of Diet Yoda aphorisms. Larry, with all the self-importance of the financially secure middle class, returns to the West sublimely certain of his own higher contentment and rather patronisingly looking down on the rest of the characters as shallow, grasping bourgeoisie.

The Razor’s Edge’s insight into human spirituality essentially boils down to “step out of the rat race and you’ll be a better man” – again made much easier, since Larry “forsakes” worldly wealth but can still dapperly turn out to a fancy function in a perfect tux. To be honest it becomes a bit wearing to see the other characters treat him like a sage and more than a bit mystifying why Isabel remains stubbornly obsessed with him for her whole life.

But if she wasn’t, we’d lose a large chunk of the appeal of the movie. The Razor’s Edge’s philosophy may be paper thin, but as a soap it’s spot on. And the scheming, manipulative, vindictive, snobby and entitled Isabel is a gift of a part, seized with relish by Gene Tierney. Isabel wants Larry, not so much because of who he is but because he belongs to her, and she can’t believe he was willing to let her jilt him without a fight. The epitome of the self-obsession of the modern age that Larry has rejected, Isabel consistently puts herself first, clings to the luxuries of high living and can barely hide her bored disinterest in the tedious Gray (a perfect role for the solid but uninspiring John Payne). Isabel schemes and attempts seduction of the saintly Larry, and her hissable antics provides The Razor’s Edge with much of its enjoyable thrust.

Because as a soap is where this film is most happy. It’s actually very well staged and shot by Goulding, full of carefully considered camera moves (including a late “wham” line which we don’t see a character react to, leaving their response open to our interpretation) and skilfully using depth of plain to showcase a series of luscious sets and impressively recreated Parisian streets on sound stages. The Razor’s Edge has a lot of very professional Hollywood craft behind it.

Its event-filled sub plots also give a host of excellent scenes and fun dialogue to its supporting cast. Anne Baxter won an Oscar as the tragic Sophie, a bubbly socialite (and old flame of Larry’s) from Chicago, whose husband and baby are killed in a car accident, tipping her into years of alcoholism and (it’s implied) life as a “good-time-girl” in a seedy Parisian bar. Baxter seizes this role for what it’s worth, from initial charming naivety to tear-streaked discovery of her bereavement to fidgety attempts at sobriety after Larry decides to marry her to keep her on the straight-and-narrow (needless to stay, temptation is put in the way of the pacing, smoking, fist-forming Sophie by the blithely shameless Isabel). It’s a very effective and sympathetic performance.

Clifton Webb, at the time Hollywood’s leading waspish figure of camp, has an Oscar-nominated whale of a time as Elliot Templeton, preening but generous socialite, delighting the finer things in life (from fine wines to perfectly stitched dressing gowns) who provides a catty sounding board to Isabel and whose final hours are spent bemoaning being snubbed by a countess. Herbert Marshall delivers a perfect slice of British reserve and gently arch commentary as Maugham (the real Maugham prepared a script which was junked by the studio, ending his Hollywood career there and then), purring his dialogue with his rich, velvet tones.

It serves to remind you that The Razor’s Edge works best as an event-packed piece of social drama, which it swiftly becomes as deaths, tragedy, alcoholism, scheming and feuds pile on top of each other in the second half with the blissful Larry casting a quietly judgemental but kind eye over everything around him. For all its attempts to look into the human condition, this is where The Razor’s Edge is at its best: engaging supporting characters and a hissable villain, all leading to a series of juicy plot developments. For all its literary pretentions, it’s at best a shallow From Here to Eternity.

The Old Oak (2023)

Loach’s swansong is a passionate, if slightly out-of-time, call for peace and understanding

Director: Ken Loach

Cast: Dave Turner (TJ Ballantyne), Ebla Mari (Yara), Claire Rodgerson (Laura), Trevor Fox (Charlie), Chris McGlade (Vic), Col Tait (Eddy), Jordan Louis (Garry), Chrissie Robinson (Erica), Chris Gotts (Jaffa Cake)

The OId Oak is likely the swansong for 87-year-old Ken Loach, Britain’s leading independent film-maker and high-priest of left-wing political cinema. It’s an engaging valedictory effort, crammed with fine Loach touches. But it’s a film that feels slightly politically out-of-time, which works better not when making tub-thumbing points but as a simple plea for a love and understanding. There are worse things Loach (who I’ve sometimes found rather trying for all his brilliance) can sign off with.

In a small town near Durham, TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) is a former miner and passionate union man now struggling to keep his pub, The Old Oak, alive in the face of mounting costs. World-weary, he is roped into helping Syrian refugees settle in their new homes in the town. Many locals, bitterly feeling the town has been left behind by government, can barely hide their fury at these refugees. But TJ finds they re-ignite in him a desire to make the world a better place, particularly as he forms a fatherly friendship with Yara (Ebla Mari), a passionate young photographer, who doesn’t know if her own father is alive or dead and wants to build links between the refugees and the local community.

The bond between TJ and Yara is at the heart of this gentle film, with Loach drawing beautifully natural performances from Dave Turner (a former fireman union boss) and Ebla Mari. One of Loach’s greatest strengths has always been his ability to poetically draw out hugely endearing relationships. TJ and Yara are a perfect example, two people who recognise loss and isolation in each other. TJ’s purpose in life has gone, never finding anything to replace his union campaigns of the 80s, estranged from his family and going through the motions to keep his pub alive. Yara has lost her home and everything she has known, the only memento of her father being her treasured camera, facing hostility from all around her.

The Old Oak centres this relationship in a passionate cry for empathy between different communities. The refugees arrive lost, isolated, confused and scared, fleeing conditions far harsher than many of the people in the town could understand. Far from having an easy-ride (as many accuse them of, seeing them get free homes and furniture) they desire nothing else but to go home, but are forced to make the best of it here. It’s a perspective that never occurs to many of the townspeople, seeing them only as interlopers not victims with whom their community – that has never really recovered from pit closures – has more in common with than they suspect.

TJ and Yara both recognise this – and want to build bridges not burn them. Much of The Old Oak revolves around TJ’s efforts to convert his disused back room – a shrine to union action when the room was the heart of the mining community – into a food bank to support both refugees and local alike. Loach’s humanitarianism comes to the fore here in the brief stories we hear about the users of this food bank: the small boy who can’t believe the food is free, the sulky teenager who finds care she rarely encounters elsewhere, the proud boy promised his ‘secret’ thathe needs the food bank will be kept. These are real people, with real problems, which Loach excels at bringing to life.

Loach is equally skilled at subtly staging personal pain. The director of Kes hasn’t lost his touch with the staging of deaths of beloved pets. The emotional pull TJ’s dog Mara has over him – much of his life’s meaning coming from tending for this small dog – and the impact of her loss is beautifully played with a raw grief by Dave Turner and staged with maximum emotional impact by Loach without a stroke of sentimental manipulation. Just as the smashing of Yara’s camera in the film’s opening moments by an unpleasant yob, berating the arrival of these interlopers, carries real impact from the gentle desolation on her face. The building of relationships, instigated by mutual pain and a hope for a better future, is The Old Oak’s strongest material.

It’s the political content that never quite pulls itself into focus. Loach’s sympathy for the working-class community is clear. He demonstrates forcefully these communities have been left with almost nothing, lacking hope or purpose and facing lives of underfunded lack of opportunity. No wonder kids bristle when they see refugee children given old bikes and toys for free. Or that locals bristle at seeing houses assigned for free after they have had to scrimp and save to buy theirs. But I wonder if Loach finds himself slightly confused with some of the prejudices and lack of socialistic international brotherly love in some of the working class today.

Loach has always clinged to the idea of the workers of the world uniting. But throughout The Old Oak he tacks away from really facing the racially-based anger and prejudice in some working class circles and avoids tackling where some of this racism and xenophobia comes from. Or facing the fact that it’s more widely shared, on some level, by more people than he might care to think. (He seems more relaxed linking it to old battles – inevitably one of the most hostile is the son of a scab from the mining days.)

The film shows the angry grousing of the many of the regulars, but avoids getting under the skin of why they are angry about this invasion of their space, eventually writing them off as simply lacking true working-class solidarity. While sympathising with the struggles faced by many of the working class, as a consequence of decades of under investment and alienation from the status quo, Loach feels uncomfortable with acknowledging how some of this has fed into prejudice – or how the working-class dreams of Scargill have been corrupted into “us and them” ill-informed ranting.

Instead, Loach wants to fast-track to a picture he’s more comfortable with, showing many of the local community perform sudden 360 turns towards acceptance and brotherly love, with remaining racists written off as bad apples. The creation of an atmosphere where the younger generation are encouraged to feel xenophobic racial hatred – kids beat Yara’s brother outside of the school, filming it to post on YouTube, where it is watched with glee by some of the regulars – is unaddressed. It’s telling Loach seems certain getting everyone together for an old-fashioned socialist sing-along will help solve problems. It feels like a naïve, if touching, idea that doesn’t really ring true.

The Old Oak sometimes feels like a film from a man slightly out-of-step with the times (the many clumsy shots of phones playing YouTube videos adds to this). It’s a film made up of effective scenes – including a heartfelt sequence in Durham cathedral – but not quite drawn together into a satisfying whole, with so many plot developments kept off screen that it starts to feel it hinges on contrivance. It works best as a simple, human plea for love and understanding – but a more accurate understanding, or a willingness by Loach to really turn a harsh eye on the negative side of the working-class communities he has dedicated his life to, seems to have evaded it.

Chimes at Midnight (1965)

Welles reimagines Shakespeare’s Henry IV as a melancholic tribute to lost glories

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Orson Welles (Sir John Falstaff), Keith Baxter (Prince Hal), John Gielgud (King Henry IV), Margaret Rutherford (Mistress Quickly), Jeanne Moreau (Doll Tearsheet), Alan Webb (Justice Shallow), Norman Rodway (Henry Percy “Hotspur”), Walter Chiari (Justice Silence), Michael Aldridge (Pistol), Tony Beckley (Poins), Charles Farrell (Bardolph), Patrick Bedford (Nym), José Nieto (Northumberland), Fernando Rey (Worcester), Keith Pyott (Lord Chief Justice), Andrew Faulds (Westmoreland), Mariana Vlady (Lady Percy), Ralph Richardson (Narrator)

For decades Sir John Falstaff was the part Welles couldn’t get out of his head. He’d already made two attempts at re-working the first Henried for the stage, with Age of Kings in the 30s (where Welles played Falstaff in his twenties) and Chimes at Midnight in 60’s Dublin with Welles again as Falstaff and Keith Baxter as Hal in what would be Welles final stage performance. Welles was fascinated with the roistering knight so when he was offered a film of Treasure Island by a Spanish producer, he agreed on condition he could make Chimes at Midnight at the same time with the same cast. Naturally, this being Welles, not a frame of Treasure Island was made, but with Chimes at Midnight he created possibly his most influential Shakespearean work.

Surely, it’s no coincidence the two literary characters Welles felt the closest affinity to was the windmill-tilting wandering fantasist Don Quixote and the mountain of rogueish humour and memories of Golden Years long-gone, Sir John Falstaff. Welles arguably altered the interpretation of the Fat Knight for generations. Before Welles, he was a “Hail Fellow, Well Met” comic, the exuberant force-of-nature Prince Hal must sadly cast aside for the throne. But Welles knew, like few others, what a wasteland missed opportunities, lost glories and achievements-that-never-were lay behind the raconteur. His Falstaff might be cheeky and sometimes jolly, but he’s also a mountain of melancholy, a playboy with no achievements, his glory days long gone. Even without the rejection, there is no future for Falstaff, only hazy memories of a past long gone.

Chimes at Midnight brilliantly repackages, recuts and recombines several Shakespeare plays (not just Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 but also Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry V and touches of Richard II) to reframe this story around Prince Hal and Falstaff and away from both Henry IV and the politics of rebellion (now embodied by Norman Rodway’s bombastic Hotspur). Structure is imaginatively reworked, with Part 2’s recruiting scenes appearing before Part 1’s Battle of Shrewsbury and ingenious touches such as Henry V’s decision to “enlarge that man who railed against our person” retroactively applied to Falstaff rather than a nameless offender.

Welles makes Falstaff a mix of terrible influence and proud parent – no coincidence that a half-smile of pride crosses his face when Hal finally dismisses him. They banter and bounce off each other, but there is a world-weariness. Baxter’s Hal is beginning to focus his mind on the responsibilities that come with the throne. Falstaff alternates between awareness and denial that their salad days are on borrowed time. Strikingly, both of their most prominent soliloquies are overheard by the other. Hal’s secret plans to reform as King is delivered with steely regret by Baxter, while Falstaff stands a short distance behind him; later Falstaff’s mocking of honour in the aftermath of Shrewsbury is impatiently half-listened to by a Hal already starring towards the future. These are two characters who know each other, their flaws and their ruthlessness, more than they might like.

Chimes at Midnight is Welles’ lament not just for Falstaff but for the whole idea of a Merrie England. The film is a set in a wintery land, covered in cold snow and deeply unwelcoming. Mistress Quickly’s inn is a run-down building in farmland, Henry IV’s breath can be seen in his chilly castle, Silence and Falstaff huddle around a flickering fire after a wintery walk. There is a tiredness around the antics of Falstaff’s gang. Falstaff responds to Doll Tearsheet’s attentions with an impossibly weary “I am old Doll, I am old”. We are living in the winter of a whole way of life, which Hal will comprehensively kill off in favour of realpolitik. The days of dreamers like Welles-Falstaff are numbered.

Welles stresses these differences by shooting events in various locations in strikingly different ways. The Boar’s Head Tavern uses more fluidic camera-work, with events frequently happening in multiple plains – characters appear above others on balconies or at the head of stairs – with the action filled with raucous, swiftly choreographed interplay. This contrasts with the Cathedral-like classicism of Henry IV’s court. Where the Boar’s Head is confined and intimate, Henry IV’s medieval palace has towering stone walls, beams of light flowing down from large windows, courtiers still and quiet while Henry effectively speaks to himself, the exact opposite of the boisterous egalitarianism of The Boar’s Head. Justice Shallow’s ramshackle home of bittersweet memories sits somewhere between the two, where the melancholy Falstaff is closest to Henry’s regrets.

Chimes at Midnight is filled with this sort of superb visual language. The film’s centrepiece is a truly impressive set-piece of cinematic flourish, the Battle of Shrewsbury. A masterclass in fast editing, quick cuts and brilliant framing (that makes 200 extras look like a thousand) this scene captures in microcosm the film’s theme of the death of old-fashioned principles. It starts with a knightly charge and degenerates into mud-strewn, brutal hand-to-hand combat with death agonising and swift. You can see the roots here of Saving Private Ryan, with Welles not using cutting, adjusted film stock and montage to create something really visceral and even shocking, as bodies are forced into the mud or cry out in agony – and our fat ‘hero’ trembles and hides to avoid the barbarity.

This is certainly Welles’ finest acting performance in his Shakespeare films. While always a more limited actor than remembered (a combination of laziness and stage fight), Welles was born for this role. His Falstaff builds off an element of self-portrait: a man still capable of lighting up a room with humour (as seen in his delightful ‘mock trial’ of Hal) but who knows he has achieved only a fraction of what might have been (never before have references to Falstaff’s past glories felt more sad) and that only the march towards death awaits. No wonder Keith Baxter’s excellent Hal, clinging to the last chance to let his hair down, is torn somewhere between love, pity and good-natured contempt for this man. The interplay between the two is perfectly pitched.

Chimes at Midnight is filled with rich performances. It may also be Gielgud’s finest Shakespeare performance on film, his rich, fruity tones turning monologues into musings on self-doubt and regret, distancing the coldly austere king even more from the boisterous knight. (That voice is also a gift for the other actors: Welles, Baxter and Rodway all showcase impersonations of Gielgud’s distinctive voice.) This Henry is so full of doubt, bordering on contempt, for his son he may even believe Falstaff’s claims to be the true killer of Hotspur. Rutherford is wonderful as Quickly, earthy and caring; Rodway, from charging across the battle to impulsively springing out of his bath to meet a messenger clutching only a towel makes a superb contrast with Baxter’s calculating prince. Webb’s disappointed Shallow and Moreau’s kindly Doll also make an impact.

Chimes at Midnight’s main impact though is to reimagine these plays in a highly influential way – just look at the BBC’s more recent The Hollow Crown where the Henry IV productions are so indebted to Chimes it might as well be a remake, while Branagh’s Henry V is virtually a tonal sequel. Rarely again would these be plays seen as near-comedies with a sad-but-necessary final act. Instead, they became sadness-tinged meditations of lost chances and missed opportunities, with productions set not in Olivier-style pageantry, but Wellesian chill.

It’s a film tinged with melancholy, so it’s also fitting that as well as a swansong for a lost time, a “Merrie England” past where everything was possible and the future was golden, it’s also the last narrative film completed by Welles (all others would be either documentaries or filmed lectures). When Falstaff, thanked but coldly dispatched, exits clinging to the fantasy of a glorious return but heading towards death, it’s hard not to see Welles himself shuffling away, never again to persuade a young prince (or film producer) to give him a chance again. It’s a moving metatextual ending to a film that reinvents Shakespeare and expertly exploits the tools of cinema.

Wonka (2023)

Charming but light confection that repackages Wonka into a Paddington type figure

Director: Paul King

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (Willy Wonka), Calah Lane (Noodle), Keegan Michael-Key (Chief of Police), Paterson Joseph (Arthur Slugworth), Matt Lucas (Gerald Prodnose), Mathew Baynton (Felix Fickelgruber), Sally Hawkins (Mrs Wonka), Rowan Atkinson (Father Julius), Jim Carter (Abacus Crunch), Natasha Rothwell (Piper Benz), Olivia Colman (Mrs Scrubit), Hugh Grant (Lofty), Rich Fulcher (Larry Chucklesworth), Rakhee Thakrar (Lottie Bell), Tom Davis (Bleacher)

What did Willy Wonka do, before the factory and the carefully stuffed golden tickets in selected chocolate bars? According to Paul King’s amusingly light confection of a film, he was just a guy with a sweet box and a dream, befuddled by the big city. A bright-eyed, naïve young man, Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) is swiftly bested by the Chocolate Cartel and conned into a life of servitude by his landlady Mrs Scrubit (Olivia Colman), after not reading the contract small print. But Wonka’s invention, good cheer and alliance with put-upon fellow Scrubit victim, orphan Noodle (Calah Lane), sees him turn adversity into cartel-smashing triumph.

It might be clear from that paragraph that the Willy Wonka of this film bears very little resemblance to the figure from the Dahl original who happily allows children to face dangerous punishments in his factory. King’s film has some flourishes of Dahl in its character names and eccentricities but, in terms of tone, it takes far more after his successful Paddington films than anything Dahl wrote. Wonka himself, in his accident-prone naivety, decency and fundamental sense of fair-play, is certainly a figure in the shadow of Peru’s most beloved bear, with the film swiftly also giving him a version of Paddington’s eccentric surrogate family and increasingly comic traps to get out of.

Wonka isn’t really Dahl and doesn’t bother to begin to explore how on earth the man we see here might become the character from the books. Does that really matter? I suppose not. I guess you need to judge each film on its merits, and while the Dahl purists are unlikely to consider this fitting for the great storyteller, I’d point them instead towards Wes Anderson’s gorgeous short films, which are a true blast of Dahlish delight.

Wonka instead is a sweet, bouncy, family-friendly musical with a hero designed to appeal to all ages, carefully set in a non-descript European-ish location that combines elements of multiple cities, regions and periods (so much is the film a higgledy-piggledy fantasia combination of places, all enhanced with CGI, that it’s a surprise to see Oxford’s Radcliffe Camera appear in the film’s conclusion unadjusted and intact). It’s packed with songs – which, if I’m being honest, are mostly clever and decent than catchy or memorable – and is set in a world where corrupt monks and police detectives will bend any rules for another chocolate fix.

At the heart of all this, Timothée Chalamet gives a sprightly and engaging performance. Chalamet dials up the eccentricity of Wonka, creating a character that is whimsical but caring, an innocent abroad who just can’t understand why people would be cruel or lie. Chalamet throws himself into some effective singing and dancing, and generally lands the role pretty much in the sweet spot between sickly sweet and deliciously more-ish. It helps a great deal that he develops a brilliant sibling chemistry with Calah Lane, who is street-smart and a lot of fun as an orphan whom the world has taught to be cunning and creative.

King crafts a number of set-pieces that fit this revisioning of Wonka as a song-and-dance man at the heart of an Arthur Freed-style musical. There is a fine word-play packed song (as Wonka searches for effective rhymes for Noodle) in a giraffe pen, a balloon-carried number in the skies and, best of all, a very funny work song sung by those poor unfortunates conned by Mrs Scrubit into a lifetime of debt. This surrogate family, by the way, is a neat illustration of King and co-writer Simon Farnaby’s trick of turning potential one-note characters into people you care for, ably embodied by Jim Carter as a stuffy accountant, Natasha Rothwell as a bouncy seamstress, Rakhee Thakrar as a nervous telephonist and Rich Fulcher as a past-his-best comedian.

Much like his Paddington films, Wonka takes place in a world of minimal threat. The villains are largely comic – Olivia Colman surely will spend most of the next few years duelling with Helena Bonham Carter to land toothy, sweaty grotesques roles like Mrs Scrubit – with the Chocolate Cartel in particular making a droll collection of smugly superior types, ably played by Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas and Matthew Baynton. Their operations take place in a surreally complex underground base (under a cathedral guarded by chocolate-obsessed monks naturally), built around a vault full of liquid chocolate. Following the structure of both Paddington films, naturally this becomes the site of an act four heist by our heroes.

Wonka frequently feels a little too often like it is simply repeating and representing stuff that had worked well for King and Farnaby in the past. (You also feel that about the casting of Hugh Grant as an Oompa-Loompa – fundamentally that is the joke, although Grant delivers it repeatedly marvellously.) While few people do this sort of thing better than them, you feel Wonka offered the chance to be something more rather than a spiritual retread of the superior Paddington films.

It’s a film that never quite finds it own identity, or really finds a Dahlish uniqueness. It settles, happily, for being a feel-good confection, a charming series of scenes and songs delivered with just the right level of enthusiasm and glee by a cast who look like they are having a marvellous time. It’s charming enough and I enjoyed it, but I can’t say I loved it like I do Paddington 2. I can’t help but feel that’s because the emotional connection isn’t there. Wonka himself, repackaged as he is, is a little too odd to be as adorable as the Bear, and without really, deeply, caring for Wonka the film itself doesn’t carry the impact it should. It’s entertaining, but it didn’t win a place in my heart.