Category: Relationship film

Children of a Lesser God (1986)

Clumsy Pygmalion drama that very uncomfortably mixes its messages during its obvious plot points

Director: Randa Haines

Cast: William Hurt (James Leeds), Marlee Matlin (Sarah Norman), Piper Laurie (Mrs. Norman), Philip Bosco (Dr Curtis Franklin), Allison Gompf (Lydia), Bob Hiltermann (Orin)

Adapted from a hit Broadway play, Children of a Lesser God (its title plucked from Tennyson’s The Passing of Arthur – though, like much of the film, I’ve no idea what point it’s trying to make) was hailed as a landmark in disability representation. Truthfully, it’s possibly slightly more retrograde than Johnny Belinda (made almost forty years earlier) and certainly not as good a film, its plodding plot and confused message not salvaged by two excellent performances.

James Leeds (William Hurt) is a charismatic teacher, newly arrived at a New England school for the deaf. His mission is to encourage the kids to speak, as he’s convinced they will struggle in the world on sign language alone. He becomes fascinated with the school’s janitor Sarah Norman (Marlee Matlin), a recent student, whipper-smart but defiantly silent, speaking only through fluent, witty sign language. Determined to teach her to speak and open-up a panorama of new opportunities for her, James and Sarah start a passionate relationship that increasingly flounders on the language barrier between them and Sarah’s own insecurities.

The positives first: both leads are excellent. Hurt is dynamic, engaging and charming – so much so it’s easy to overlook what a dick his character is (of which more later). Hurt accompanies all his dialogue with fluent sign language (no mean feat) and convinces utterly as the sort of maverick teacher who wins minds while carrying a prickly ego from uninterrupted success and validation. Opposite him, Matlin (still the youngest winner of the Best Actress Oscar) is electric: defiant, unaccommodating, sensual and damaged but able to burst into a radiant smile of confidence. Matlin makes her prickly but sensitive, defensive but determined and passion bursts out of her.

These two leads display obvious chemistry (although Matlin’s later recounting of Hurt’s serious domestic abuse during their relationship, barely denied by him, casts an uncomfortable shadow over the film). This lifts an otherwise straightforward film. It’s awash with expected plot points and beats from a meet-cute, to growing passion, falling outs and reconciliation. Aside from a few under-water shots (Sarah feeling completely comfortable under water, where her hearing is the same as everyone’s), it’s flatly filmed (it’s not a surprise Haines lost out a Best Director slot to David Lynch for Blue Velvet) and would not have looked out of place as a TV movie-of-the-week.

However, it’s main issues are the plays it makes for representation, while presenting deafness as an obstacle where the onus is on the deaf people themselves to fit in as much as possible. For a film about two people struggling to find a middle-ground between sound and silence, it never once dares us to experience the world as Sarah does. From its insistent score onwards, sound is an ever-present. None of Matlin’s dialogue is subtitled (she speaks aloud only once), with all of it translated by Hurt. For a film about finding common ground, its not interested in letting us experience even a taste of Sarah’s world.

Would it have killed them to have one scene where, perhaps, we walked around the school hearing what Sarah hears (nothing)? Or a scene where James and Sarah speak only through sign, with captioned translation? Instead, without really realising it, the film largely vindicates James’ position that not being able to speak is an abnormality Sarah is sticking to out of wilful, self-damaging stubbornness, rather than a choice she is entitled to make to engage with the world on her terms.

Unpack this stuff, and suddenly the whole film is a confusing mess of unclear positions and perspectives. James’ maverick teacher – in true Dead Poet’s style he wins the kids over by being unstuffy – is peddling a message that the deaf kids would be better off, if they became as much like him as possible. The film never once comments on James ignoring the one student in his class immune to his charm, essentially exiling him from his ‘in crowd’ during class. Is this great teaching? James has an unattractive messianic complex and a large part of his initial interest in Sarah is based on an arrogant belief that he can ‘save’ her from life as janitor, expecting her gratitude in return.

This Pygmalion like set-up quickly demonstrates it has way less insight about the self-occupied arrogance of its teacher than Shaw. It becomes clear to Sarah, that her successes (and the successes of James’ students, who under his tutelage perform a song-and-dance routine at parents day) are seen as his successes. When she wows James’ colleagues at a poker night with her wit and skill, they praise him (right in front of her), which he soaks up with a smug pleasure. The film never quite puts these dots together, or sees the irony in James’ bored disengagement with her deaf friends or his giving up on explaining Bach to her.

Worse than this, James ignores her early comment that she doesn’t want to be made to speak (she tells him that, as a teenager, she used sex to silence boys who pushed her to talk). Despite his vows, he increasingly, insistently demands she speaks, and fails to recognise when she resorts to using sex to try and shut him up. The film never pulls him up his selfishness and pushy imposing of his views, its sympathy for Sarah not changing its quiet view that her own problems are a major brick in the wall between them.

The film doesn’t really question James’ arrogance, because it can’t shake its habit of viewing her a problem to be solved. It effectively endorses James’ view that she should adjust and change as much as possible. Is it really wrong for Sarah to want to live on her own terms, not other people’s? To refuse to perform as James demands?

In fact, much as the film wants us to dislike Philip Bosco’s rules-bound obstructive headmaster, he makes two very valid points: one, it’s not for James to decide what’s best for Sarah and it’s not appropriate for James to fuck someone who is both a junior member of staff and (effectively) his student. Children of a Lesser God doesn’t even try to explore the moral complexities of any of this, instead settling for the idea that a disability can be overcome if someone works hard, overcomes their own issues and defers to an inspirational teacher. Combine that with its plodding, unoriginal story and you’ve got a film that hasn’t aged well.

Hamnet (2025)

A powerful film about grief that works best in its smaller moments rather than its grand ending

Director: Chloé Zhao

Cast: Jessie Buckley (Agnes Shakespeare), Paul Mescal (Will Shakespeare), Emily Watson (Mary Shakespeare), Joe Alwyn (Bartholomew Hathaway), Jacopi Jupe (Hamnet Shakespeare), Olivia Lynes (Judith Shakespeare), Justine Mitchell (Joan Shakespeare), David Wilmot (John Shakespeare), Bodhi Rae Breathnach (Susanna Shakespeare), Noah Jupe (Hamlet)

“Grief fills the room up with my absent child”. It’s possibly one of the most profound things said about grief and loss. Naturally, it came from Shakespeare who, more than any other writer, could peer inside our souls and understand their inner workings. Grief can strike anyone, and overwhelm them, leaving them hollowed out husks, uncertain how to carry on. It’s a terrifying force that grows to dominate Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s literary best seller: how it creeps, unexpectantly, into lives that are contented and happy and works to tear down their foundations.

Hamnet imagines the emotional impact of the death of a young boy on his parents: those parents in this case being Will (Paul Mescal) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley) Shakespeare. The film takes us from courtship to marriage, Agnes pushing Will to follow his dreams in London, the birth of their children and death’s seizure of their son Hamnet (Jacopi Jupe). It will have a deep impact on their lives: for Agnes a world of grief and isolation, for Will a cathartic injection of his grief into his new play, Hamlet.

There are many things in Hamnet that work extremely well, not least it’s strong emotional force. Much of the film’s second half is extremely moving, a lot of that from the gentle build of its first half. Grief isn’t an expectant force – it bursts, unannounced into lives. The first half of Hamnet is romantic and optimistic. Will and Agnes’ courtship, two awkward outsiders in a small, rural town, is touchingly portrayed, full of awkward gestures and flashes of joy. Their marriage – over the objections of many, but with the endearing support of Agnes devoted brother, played with real heart by Joe Alwyn – is very happy and they have delightful children who they love very much.

There are tensions: it’s tough to live under the roof of Will’s parents. His father John (David Wilmot) is an abusive bully, his mother Mary (Emily Watson, on excellent empathetic form under a harsh exterior) judgemental. Will is desperate for something more than being a second-rate glove-maker. It’s actually sweet that Hamnet interprets their living apart not due to marital troubles, but a recognition that their love doesn’t need constant contact. Will’s need of London’s bustle is balanced by Agnes’ desire for nature and (ironically) to protect her children from the disease-ridden big city.

It’s the first hour’s playful, graceful unfolding that makes much of the second half hit home. Zhao’s film has an ethereal romanticism, with the camera gliding with patient, unobtrusive warmth around Agnes and Will. While dealing with raw emotions, Zhao brings a sense of magical realism to the film without overplaying her hand. A large part of Agnes outsider status is based on perceptions of her as a witch, who spends her time in the forest building her herbal knowledge (Zhao introduces her with a phenomenal birds-eye shot, nestled womb-like in the roots of a large tree), trusts her dreams and has formed a deep link with a pet hawk. This other-worldly presence in Agnes, carries across in the film’s vibrant, dreamy nature – and shows why Agnes is so drawn to the shy, awkward poet, who similarly feels most alive in his own visions and dreams.

It makes the second half particularly impactful, as the truly shocking death of a child (surely one of the most traumatic child deaths put on screen, devoid of peaceful, Little Nell-like beauty and with Hamnet suffering in prolonged, agonising pain) rips into the happy haven of this life. Zhao’s compassionate distance works brilliantly here, as the film brings us into the pained lives of these bereaved parents, without every once making us feel like intruding voyeurs. Instead, we feel every blow of the film’s perfectly observed exploration of the mundane reality of grief.

A lot of that is also due to Jessie Buckley’s searing performance as Agnes. Buckley is perfect as this slightly jagged, eccentric but determined women who knows her own mind and refuses to bend to others, full of an earthy romanticism. Her vulnerability is there – there is a very moving moment during her twin’s birth, when Buckley rests her head on Watson’s shoulder and weeps pitifully for her (deceased) mummy. But it doesn’t prepare us for Buckley’s perfectly judged raw emotionality. From an agonised, near silent scream at Hamnet’s death, Buckley shifts brilliantly into a shocked quiet whisper that she must tidy up the mess. Over the next few scenes, she collapses into herself, berating her husband with cold fury, wanting him to feel as paralysed with grief as she is. This is a fabulous performance by Buckley, well-matched by Mescal, whose pained soulfulness is perfect for a man processing grief through drama.

But I found the transition of this grief into the creation of Hamlet strangely less moving and more contrived. I’ve always found the attempts to use Shakespeare’s work to fill historical gaps in his biography tiresome. Hamnet studiously ignores that the role was played first by the middle-aged Richard Burbage, rather than a young actor – Noah Jupe, brother to Jacobi playing Hamnet – resembling the late Hamnet. Hamnet carefully re-cuts and selectively stages scenes of Hamlet to present it solely as the tragedy of a lost, sensitive soul. Lord knows what the emotionally enthralled Agnes made of the parts of Hamlet the film doesn’t stage: Polonius’ murder, the abuse of Ophelia, Hamlet making “country matter” gags and so on. Fundamentally it’s a lazy conceit that art can only come by replicating someone’s real experience and is presented in an obvious way designed to score straight-forward emotional points.

Hamnet gets so much right, it hurts that it doesn’t always work. There is an emotional anachronism to the central concept that didn’t land with me: was Hamlet just an inspired, cathartic therapy session for Shakespeare (unlikely since he ripped the plot from an older Danish legend called Amleth)? It lifts me out of things, just as the production and costumes frequently feels a little too clean, a little heritage (even more so considering the raw emotions). Moments of dialogue don’t quite ring true and little things like Shakespeare’s swimming ability (a skill possessed by virtually no one in Tudor England) or its coy dance around confirming Agnes’ historical illiteracy that jar. I’ll also confess I’m irritated by the film’s carrying across of the books conceit in avoiding naming Shakespeare for as long as possible (for almost 100 minutes), while making it clear from quotes throughout exactly who Mescal is playing.

But of course, I know, it’s an emotional fantasia, so perhaps it doesn’t matter that it feels like something shot on a National Trust property. When Zhao’s poetic, observational realism works, it carries real impact. There is a moment at the film’s end when a mirrored overhead shot with the film’s opening, and a look of such radiant hope crosses Buckley’s face, you forgive the manipulative and obvious musical choice accompanying it. Hamnet works best, not in its final showboating act, but in the raw, quiet, everyday moments that show both happiness and grief it gets close to an emotional force that leaves a lasting impact.

Sentimental Value (2025)

A autuer director tries to bond with his daughters in this heartfelt drama of family dynamics

Director: Joachim Trier

Cast: Renate Reinsve (Nora Borg), Stellan Skarsgård (Gustav Borg), Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (Agnes Borg Pettersen), Elle Fanning (Rachel Kemp), Anders Danielsen Lie (Jakob), Jesper Christensen (Michael), Lena Endre (Ingrid Berger), Cory Michael Smith (Sam), Catherine Cohen (Nicky), Andreas Stoltenberg Granerud (Even Pettersen), Øyvind Hesjedal Loven (Erik), Lars Väringer (Peter)

Famed auteur director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) has seen his career quietly stall in the past fifteen years. He frequently failed as a father to his two daughters, Nora (Renate Reinsve) now a leading classical actor and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) a married academic researcher with her own son, who she and Nora give a care and attention they never received from Gustav. However, Gustav has an olive branch for Nora – a semi-autobiographical film about his mother that he wrote for Nora. When she rejects him, he secures funding with Hollywood star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) and remains a presence in their lives as he plans to shoot the film in their family home.

Trier’s compelling portrait of a family confronting their feelings, explores the bonds that tie families together and if they go deeper than just sentiment. Superbly directed, it masterfully explores the confused, awkward tensions between children and their father and is blessed with three superb performances from Reinsve, Lilleaas and Skarsgård that genuinely feel like a family unit. With a naturalness in their comfort with each other, all three give a master class in micro-reactions (and aggressions) that show the raw nerves a father can touch with his clumsy attempts to connect with his daughters.

The connection between Reinsve and Lilleaas is so intensely moving, it’s hard not to believe they aren’t sisters. These two extraordinary actors share scenes of sisterly love that are heartfelt in their simplicity. Just as their pained, struggling to hold back tears when expressing their feelings carries a huge impact. Beneath all the snapped words, both daughters have a genuine need to love and be loved by their father, someone they clearly don’t always like but who they also need – and, in a strange way, understand.

Reinsve (absolutely brilliant) shows Nora hiding her emotions but collapsing into herself when distraught. She’s reduced to shocked hostility when re-encountering her father, who she blames for her struggle to form emotional bonds with others. Reinsve is compelling as this fragile, empathetic person who has buttoned herself into a protective shell: she has a beautiful moment after opening her heart to a fellow married actor she is having an affair with, only for her to recoil with pain when he politely rejects her. Nora invests so much of her feelings in her acting, that it leaves her with crippling stage-fight before performances (a brilliantly staged scene sees her demand to be practically man-handled on stage mid-stage fright, which anyone whose acted can sympathise with). The more we learn about her pained background, the more Reinsve invests this character with a deeply affecting sadness just under the surface, making us more and more aware of her vulnerability.

She’s equally matched by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as Agnes, who feels she must provide the emotional glue to hold this strange family together. She has built the warm, protective home for her family which the others are drawn to (both Nora and Gustav are devoted to her young son Erik), but Lilleaas shows Agne has worked to re-channel her feelings. Having once played the child-lead in one of Borg’s films, she painfully tells him it was the best summer of her life as it was the only one where she had her father’s full attention. It’s a generous, subtle and deeply affecting performance, of emotional bravery as we discover the depths of her love and loyalty to her sister.

Skarsgård, meanwhile, gives one of the finest performances of his career as the egotistical but regretful Borg, whose pain at his growing artistic and familial irrelevance is clear. He’s full of charm and warmth, but also ruthlessness: he forms close bonds with those he’s working with, but moves on the second the project completes. It’s an attitude he has extended to his family, which he wishes to change, but lacks the emotional intelligence to do so, as the charm he uses for the festival circuit fails to land with his family. He’s a man who can only express his true feelings in the language of film, through art rather than his own words. It’s a superb performance.

Sentimental Value is frequently shrewd and funny about filmmaking. Borg is facing the dying of the light, making his film for Netflix and looking intensely pained when its suggested it may never be screened in a cinema. There is a brilliant joke where he gifts Erik a hideously inappropriate collection of DVDs (including The Piano Teacher and Irreversible) made even funny when Agnes says they don’t even own a DVD player. If there is one way Borg does differ from Bergman (his clear inspiration), it’s his boredom with theatre: he has never seen Nora act, clumsily assumes she is playing Orphelia in her next show (she’s actually playing Hamlet) and tells her (one of Norway’s leading stage actors) that appearing in his film could be ‘a big break’.

But in the film world, Borg is clearly a master: calm, patient and able to inspire with enthralling descriptions of proposed shots, able to tease out beautiful work from actors. No wonder Rachel Kemp wants to work with him. Elle Fanning is excellent in a nuanced, intelligent performance as a gifted Hollywood starlet who begins to instinctively feel she is wrong for the lead in a European auteur-epic blatantly written for someone else. Fanning has an extraordinary scene, where she gives a reading of a key monologue from Borg’s film: her talent is immediately clear, but her skilled emotional reading is also completely out-of-tune for the mannered, imagery-dense text. Fanning makes this character empathetic, respectful, earnest and a true artiste, Trier inverting our expectations of any pop at Hollywood self-obsession.

A beautifully played chamber piece, it’s not just the Bergman-inspired career of Borg (his proposed film is pure Bergman stylistic homage) that makes Sentimental Value feel like it has a little touch of the master. Trier brings his camera to focus intensely on his actors, to let their emotions fill the screen and play in front of us. He even indulges a Persona style flourish where their three faces merge and combine with each other, under-lining the essential bonds that tie them together.

In a classic Bergman-style metaphor, the film is framed around ancestral family-home which literally has a flaw crack running through it. The film opens with Nora recounting a school essay she wrote imagining her house responding to events filling it – a mix of her childhood play and ferocious parental arguments. Sentimental Value subtly layers in roots of adopted trauma, with memories of Gustav’s mother (an imprisoned and tortured resistance fighter) who committed suicide when he was a young boy, which deepen the emotional complexities and fraught baggage every character carries.

What’s also beautiful about Sentimental Value is that it always feels true. There are not artificial moments of actorly grand-standing leading to emotional breakthroughs, but quiet (and even more moving) moments of genuine truth and honesty. Trier isn’t afraid to make the film funny, but also brilliantly shows that there is a lot more than just sentiment drawing families together, with a revelation that while Borg may never be able to express it the way his daughters want, he understands and loves them in ways no-one else can. It’s a beautiful, masterfully made, deeply thought-provoking and emotionally mature work that continues to mark Trier (and his actors) as major talents.

Belle du Jour (1967)

Buñuel’s sensual mix of fantasy and reality, asks intriguing and searching questions with ambiguous answers

Director: Luis Buñuel

Cast: Catherine Deneuve (Séverine “Belle de Jour” Serizy), Jean Sorel (Pierre Serizy), Michel Piccoli (Henri Husson), Geneviève Page (Madame Anaïs), Pierre Clémenti (Marcel), Francisco Rabal (Hyppolite), Françoise Fabian (Charlotte), Macha Méril (Renée), Maria Latour (Mathilde), Marguerite Muni (Pallas), Francis Blanche (Monsieur Adolphe), François Maistre (The professor), Georges Marchal (Duke)

Desire can be a scary thing; a deep dive into the things that excite and titillate us can be deeply unnerving. That’s the heart of Buñuel’s compellingly intriguing Belle de Jour, where dreams and fantasy merge with confused and repressed desires struggling to find an outlet. It makes for a fascinating, unsettling and erotic film, powered by a fearlessly superb performance by Deneuve. Buñuel’s film avoids judgement, frequently inverting lazy moral judgements in a film that flirts with playfulness and dark dangers.

Séverine (Catherine Deneuve) is happily married to Pierre (Jean Sorel) but seems unable to find any sexual satisfaction with him. Sleeping in separate beds, the couple are supportive and loving but chaste. Séverine’s fantasy life though is awash with day-dreams of erotic, sadomasochistic desires in which she is degraded and humiliated, scenarios clearly alien in her marriage. Séverine finds an outlet for her desires by taking an afternoon job as a prostitute in Madame Anaïs (Geneviève Page) high-class brothel, where she can experience an erotic thrill in debasement that she barely understands herself. But can her secret survive the probing of sinister Husson (a brilliantly creepy Michel Piccoli) or her confused fascination with gangster Marcel (Pierre Clémenti).

Belle de Jour explores the dark desires many of us hold but never acknowledge – either to the world at large or to ourselves. It’s told with Buñuel’s masterful control, moves with smooth narrative economy and throws our expectations off kilter with carefully controlled switches from reality to fantasy. Buñuel’s unsettling opening shows Séverine and Pierre riding in a carriage through a tree lined country lane, their conversation tinged with hostility. We wonder what film it might be – we probably don’t expect Pierre to order the carriage to stop, demand the drivers drag Séverine from it, take her into the woods, flog her bare back and then allows one of his burly men to have his way with her. Just as we don’t expect the look of pleasure on Séverine’s face.

Fantasies like this re-occur time-and-time again throughout the film, as Séverine’s only way of truly explore sexual fantasies her husband is (presumably) unable to fulfil. In her fantasies she is abused, tied up, has mud flung at her and services men in the full knowledge of her husband. Buñuel presents this, as you might expect (for a man whose foot fetish has become something of a running joke) with a striking lack of judgement or moral ticking off. Instead, it feels more like Séverine is a woman trapped between two stools of seemingly knowing what she might want, but struggling to find the sexual and emotional confidence to acknowledge it. None of this, in any case, has any impact on her love for her husband or the importance she places on their marriage.

Buñuel captures this brilliantly with her hesitancy to follow through on her desire to knock on the door of hostess Madame Anaïs (an excellent Geneviève Page). We watch Séverine dawdle outside the apartment block, doubling back, staring blankly at shop windows and waiting until she cannot be seen and then shuffling up the stairs and back-and-forth outside the door. Buñuel repeats the trick later (with a shot focused on her feet) as she hesitates about whether to push her way through the door again next week.

In the bedroom, Séverine frequently feels awkward and uncertain (even a little embarrassed), which is striking until you realise this is less of the fear factor and more a kink one. She’s fails utterly with the Professor (François Maistre), a client who desires to be punished, a lust completely counter to her own desires. However, she ends a session with a burly Japanese customer, whose physicality terrifies the other girls (he also carries with him a mysterious buzzing box – Buñuel joked he was asked more about the content of this box than anything else in his films), exhausted but with a look of reclining, feline satisfaction on her that we don’t see before or since.

Buñuel’s film slips and slides ever more intriguingly into oblique uncertainty as Séverine explores the further reaches of her sensuality. A fascinating sequence tips uncertainly between dream and reality. Séverine encounters a mysterious nobleman (an austere Georges Marchal) during a casual café pick-up. But his coach drivers are the same as those from her earlier dream (tellingly, Buñuel also makes a Hitchcockian cameo as a café customer –tipping the wink this might not be reality). At the Duke’s home, Séverine lies in a coffin (in another dream call back, the butler is ordered to keep the cats out, the same bizarre cry Séverine made during her woodside thrashing) while the Duke masturbates under the coffin before flinging her out of the house like trash. Fantasy or reality? Is exposure to wider sexual desires expanding Séverine own dreams?

How much has she told Pierre about what happens in these dreams? It’s hard to believe Jean Sorel’s straight-shooting doctor would be as blasé as he appears about a recurring fantasy of his wife on a carriage ride followed of sexual humiliation. Did she just tell him about the first part? Séverine seems determined to shelter Pierre from her desires, part of compartmentalising her inner and outer lives. You could argue the general autonomy and respect he gives her not only powers her love for him, but also runs so counter to her inclinations that she finds it represses all desire for him.

Belle du Jour sees no contradiction between a desire for casual, need-filling sex with strangers and a loving marriage. You could argue Buñuel’s film suggests Séverine’s problems only start when she finds emotional bonds blurring in a fascination with Pierre Clémenti’s brutal, scarred gangster Marcel, who arrives like the violent embodiment of her dreams and who she longs to see again and again. Only when genuine feelings start to intrude, does what she is doing even begin to feel like any sort of betrayal. Buñuel presents Marcel as a destructive raging id, impulsively violent. But he also plays with our expectations of moral punishment for Séverine, throwing in a moment of Pierre studying an abandoned wheelchair with such jarring foreboding it’s easy to see it as a subtle joke on our expectations for Séverine’s expected narrative punishment.

The ending tips back into fantasy, presenting us with a choice of how much we choose to believe is real or not. While Séverine fears Pierre’s discovery of her secret, you can also imagine the shame and humiliation she would feel would also satisfy many of her deeper fantasies, with her fantasies of Pierre routinely berating her as a slut. Buñuel’s brilliant merging of fantasy and reality, with audio and visual hints and call backs that intrude into and loop back over both worlds is brilliantly suggestive.

Belle de Jour also owes a huge part of its success to the sensitive, non-judgemental performance of Catherine Deneuve which is brilliantly subtle and ambiguous, never presenting us with a constantly shifting range of possibilities about Séverine’s emotions. Deneuve is compellingly sympathetic and frustrating in equal measure, perfectly attuning herself to Buñuel’s complex canvas. That is a picture of puzzles and possibilities, that asks us to take deep and unsettling looks at ourselves and our own desires. Buñuel’s gift here is to take what could be red-light zone smut and turn it into something profoundly, challengingly opaque and intriguing.

Marty Supreme (2025)

Tension and anxiety overwhelm a dark caper film that’s easier to respect than enjoy

Director: Josh Safdie

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (Marty Mauser), Gwyneth Paltrow (Kay Stone), Odessa A’zion (Rachel Mizler), Kevin O’Leary (Milton Rockwell), Tyler Okonma (Wally), Abel Ferrara (Ezra Mishkin), Fran Drescher (Rebecca Mauser), Luke Manley (Dion Galanis), John Catsimatidis (Christopher Galanis), Géza Röhrig (Bela Kletzki)

It’s 1952 and Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is in the gutter aiming for the stars. A prodigiously talented table tennis player, he’s convinced it’s his destiny to become the world champion and face of the sport. To achieve this, he’ll go to any lengths lying, cheating and stealing. Marty relies on his relentless charisma to rope people in to support his increasingly risky scams and ploys. Among these are Rachel (Odessa A’zion), the married childhood friend he has got pregnant and Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) a retired Hollywood star, married to ruthless billionaire Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary).

Marty Supreme initially feels like it’s going to be a plucky underdog sports movie, with triumph due to defeat over adversity. What it actually turns out to be is something far closer to Safdie’s Uncut Gems, an immersive, sometimes hard to watch study in a man almost unaware of how frantically (and self-destructively) he is trying to keep lots of balls in the air. The bulk of the film focuses on Marty going to increasingly desperate lengths to secure the funding to get to the Tokyo World Championships. This picaresque journey sails into a swamp of stress and tension, involving gangsters with missing dogs, gun-toting New Jersey rednecks, sporting jocks furious at being hustled at table tennis, corrupt policemen in Central Park and constant parade of dangers, humiliations and threats with the odd spark of jet-black humour.

This is shot with a close-focused, shaky-cam series of close-ups, jerkily edited that practically spreads the stress of the on-screen desperation and disguised fear to the audience. The dialogue is frequently a parade of shouting, as the furiously deceived or exploited scream in between the never-ending stream of bare-faced, confidently delivered lies from Marty. And at its heart is charismatic dreamer Marty, who believes rules don’t apply to him and whose chaotic impulse control constantly pushes things further than can safely go, leading to him constantly seizing failure from success. Go into this expecting a lot of fun and laughs and you are probably in for a disappointment: go on expecting to be put through the wringer, and you will be better prepared!

Marty is a not a million miles from a Trump or Boris: a man of charisma and persuasion able to influence people to things, despite his shameless track record of instinctive lies and selfishness. Chalamet gives an extraordinary, screen-burningly vivid performance creating a man of total and complete certainty that he has a special destiny and therefore the normal rules of life do not apply to him, making him completely comfortable with routinely using and then abandoning the people around him. The fact he does this but still makes it constantly understandable why so many people keep coming back to Marty (despite being constantly stung) is a tribute to his soulfulness.

Beyond his in-the-moment confidence, Marty is a desperate, almost-principle-free force-of-nature, constantly re-spinning himself and his actions to new circumstances or audiences. Outrages become triumphs, lovers become sisters, compromises become commitments… Nothing is as it seems. His ego is also stunning: he demands tournament organisers put him up in the Ritz (where he eventually abuses the free bar), seduces Paltrow’s movie star largely it seems out of wanting to be seen as an equal and throws a colossal temper tantrum when outmatched at a tournament.

He’s constantly reinventing himself. Ideas he rejects as ridiculous or humiliating – a tour as half-time entertainment for the Harlem GlobeTrotters or an exhibition match with his Japanese rival – are later repackaged by him as his own flashes of inspiration when he eventually decides to do them. He genuinely can’t understand why others don’t see his greatness, or why the table tennis authorities can’t see his grandstanding and temper on court might be the best thing to grow the sport in the American market.

Marty believes he has all the tools for success, but his vaulting ambition and relentless energy is constantly undermined by his recklessness and tendency to act and, most especially, speak before he thinks constantly blows him up. He frequently turns on would-be supporters and friends with spontaneous abuse or smart-arse comments. He isn’t cruel (he says “I love you” persistently after various rude comments), but the damage is done. Over the course of film he’ll make a shockingly off-colour Holocaust joke (even he clocks the reaction, nervously saying it’s okay he’s Jewish), mocks Rockwell’s loss of his son fighting the same Japanese he’s now doing business with and bluntly tells Rachel she can’t understand him because she is not special (like he is).

Marty is, however, a phenomenally gifted table tennis player. Marty Supreme’s shooting of the sport is electrically fast (Chalamet trained for months to master the fast-pace, wildly aggressive style Marty plays with) and its staging of the matches is a surprisingly relaxing and entertaining. Especially when compared to the nerve-shredding anxiety-inducing terror of Marty’s less than successful hustling and scam career. Chalamet’s injects subtle panic and desperation under his relentless confidence.

Confidence is secretly what is lacking from retired Hollywood star Kay Stone, played with a wearily amused energy by Gwyneth Paltrow, both flattered and intrigued by the much younger Marty’s interest (you can see In Paltrow’s face the enjoyment behind her surface exasperation), This helps spark a desire to kickstart her career with a Broadway play – an awful looking Tennesse Wiliams pastiche, co-starring a self-important Brando-style method actor she despises (and Marty humiliates, to her delight). Her desire to be loved again is clear. There is a lovely shot where an entrance applause sees her turn away from the audience and her face to break into a radiant grin. It’s the same buzz of feeling desired and loved that keeps her connected to the disastrous Marty.

It’s also an escape from a life comes under the domineering control of her husband, pen-magnate Milton Rockwell (a reptilian and superbly vile Kevin O’Leary). Rockwell’s selfishness and manipulation of people is far more ruthless than Marty’s naïve, childish self-focus. It’s one of a host of great supporting turns. Odessa A’zion gives Rachel a scammers natural instinct (pregnancy and all) under her genuine devotion to Marty. A’zion is terrific, genuinely confused about her own feelings for Marty, anxious but determined and as prone to self-destructive gambits as he is. Tyler Okonma is similarly excellent as his best friend constantly dragged into Marty’s dangerous, half-baked crazy schemes at high risk to himself.

Marty Supreme throws all this towards with a relentless cavalcade of energy which is often easier to respect than to really enjoy. It’s such an anxiety inducing film, both in its plot and the shooting style, that it can leave you feeling genuinely uncomfortable in your chair. Does it offer any hope for Marty? It’s ending can suggest a level of personal growth: but seeing as we have witnessed throughout the film flashes of instinctive decency from Marty that have been cast aside for his own ambitions, I wouldn’t be confident. But that discomfort is probably right for a film that’s almost trying to make you feel sweaty and uncomfortable in your chair.

Wicked: For Good (2025)

Part 2 doesn’t match Part 1 for entertainment or depth, but has enough moments to work

Director: Jon M. Chu

Cast: Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba Thropp), Ariana Grande-Butera (Glinda Upland), Jonathan Bailey (Fiyero Tigelaar), Michelle Yeoh (Madame Morrible), Jeff Goldblum (The Wizard of Oz), Ethan Slater (Boq Woodsman), Marissa Bode (Nessarose Thropp), Bowen Yang (Pfannee), Bronwyn James (ShenShen), Colman Domingo (Cowardly Lion)

Act Two comes to the screen in Wicked: For Good, putting the finishing touches to a five-hour journey through a single stage musical. While there are literally hundreds of millions of reasons for splitting the film in two, you can’t doubt the passion and love for the source material from everyone involved. However, Wicked: For Good, while shorter than the first film, feels longer: more padded but also more aimless, exposing more of the flaws of the musical less apparent when Act Two breezes past in about an hour. It’s still an entertaining watch, but it lacks the explosive, glorious impact of the first film.

Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) has been firmly branded public enemy number one as the Wicked Witch of the West. Meanwhile, her old friend Glinda (Ariana Grande-Butera) is the universally beloved face of the regime, showmanship and trickery hiding her complete lack of magic. Elphaba is fighting a losing battle for hearts and minds, failint at her attempts to expose the Wizard’s (Jeff Goldblum) lies and to protect the animals of Oz from persecution. Attempts at good deeds constantly go wrong and the arrival of a young girl from Kansas brings chaos. Will Elphaba and Glinda heal their relationship and will Oz be saved?

Wicked: For Good suffers for covering the weaker second act. Most of the best songs were in the first film. The first act also has more interplay between the two leads (whose relationship is the heart of the story) and had a clearer coming-of-age arc with Elphaba’s eyes being opened to the nature of Oz. Wicked: For Good tries to tackle an awful lot (Good and Evil! Animal rights! The Wizard’s oppression and guilt! Propaganda and manipulation! Backstory for every character in The Wizard of Oz! Elphaba and Glinda’s relationships with Fiyero!) But it often ends up under-cooking, hand-waving and fudging many of them. It chops and changes its focus so often, that developments seem sudden or under-explained.

This is where the extended run-time doesn’t help. The logic leaps that can be done in a few minutes of dialogue between songs in an hour of stage-time, make less sense when stretched over two hours plus. One of Elphaba’s main motivations is protecting the animal’s rights, with these creatures literally losing their voice. Despite opening with her trying to free slave-worker animals from building the Yellow Brick Road, eventually this plot-line feels lost in the shuffle. The motivations and mechanisms of the persecution are unclear, and then confusingly bunched in with racist laws against Munchkins. Similarly, Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard switches from a sociopathic arch-manipulator, into a drink-dependent man coated in guilt, without this journey being amply explained.

Wicked: For Good also awkwardly shoe-horns in events from The Wizard of Oz (there is a lot of Dorothy and her companions on the margins) and comes up with not-always-well-developed reasons why Elphaba and Glinda do the things-they-do as required by Wizard of Oz, without contradicting the more complex, interesting characters they are here. Again, these are flaws revealed by the extended run-time which gives more depth to the leads, but little of its added hour to giving more depth and context to the plot and themes the film is trying to handle, making them feel under-powered.

That’s not to say there are not plenty of positives. Wicked: For Good really understands its core strength is the relationship between its leads, and the chemistry between Erivo and Grande is still dynamite. It’s made very clear they are taking opposite approaches in interpreting ‘what’s best for Oz’ (for Elphaba it’s ending the lies, for Glinda it’s keeping people happy – very on brand for both). Their scenes are the film’s emotional heart, whether laughing or crying together, or even (in one laugh-out-loud moment) literally fighting. Just as in the first film, Wicked: For Good demonstrates the different perception an outsider and an insider brings to a situation and how this informs their loyalties and actions.

Erivo’s wonderfully draws on deep loneliness and growing frustration at her inability to change things, capturing the sense of someone certain she’s in the wrong, but who utterly lacks the ability to persuade (be that animals to stay and fight, or Ozians to take another look at the Wizard). Her deep need for friendship (and romance with Jonathan Bailey’s effortlessly charismatic Fiyero – rather short-changed by screen time here) is clear, even if her transition to embracing elements of ‘the villain’ seems rather forced. Her singing remains breathtakingly good with ‘No Good Deed’ an extraordinary show-stopper.

However, the film might just belong to Ariana Grande. If Wicked was Elphaba’s coming-of-age, this is Glinda’s. Grande brilliantly shows how fragile the bubble of happiness Glinda has built is. Glinda’s realisation that from an early age (an excellent childhood flashback scene helps here) she hid her feelings with an immaculate smile is very well explored – as is her realisation that she is universally beloved, but has no real friends. Grande finds a desperation, fragility and sense of pain that only just peak out – feelings covered well in the best of the film’s two new songs ‘The Girl in the Bubble’, with Chu using reflections to stress Glinda’s realisation of the lies she has told herself.

Of the many themes the film tries to cover in a broad sweep, this one comes out best while others fall by the wayside. Propaganda and dictatorship in Oz sort of sits there as a presence without getting real focus. The oppression of the animals (and imagery of them working in whips and chains) makes a big emotional swing the film isn’t willing to commit to. The other new song, ‘No Place Like Home’, is an unforgettable ballad that awkwardly stages Elphaba begging animal users of an Underground Railroad to stay and hope for the best (imagine telling that to real-life Railroad users). There are darker elements I liked (Marissa Boda’s Nessarose and Ethan Slater’s Boq explore jealousy, possessiveness and rage in a surprisingly daring way, told with an effective economy I wish Chu could have found more often).

When Wicked: For Good works, it works. The impressive visual design from the first film is still in place. Chu directs with energy and vibrancy and gets real emotion from the moments between the leads. But I miss the large choreographed numbers here (perhaps expected from a darker Act Two) and its plot is often unfocused, forced and manages to use double the time to barely extend (or make more interesting) the level of thematic exploration the original musical does. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first one and becomes a little too trapped by fitting into Wizard of Oz but it’s still an entertaining ride.

A Touch of Class (1973)

A decent farce gets buried in a film that tries to make a profound point about relationships

Director: Melvin Frank

Cast: George Segal (Steve Blackburn), Glenda Jackson (Vickie Allessio), Hildegard Neil (Gloria Blackburn), Paul Sorvino (Walter Menkes), K Callan (Patty Menkes), Cec Linder (Wendell Thompson), Nadim Sawalha (Hotel manager), David de Keyser (Doctor Alvarez), Eve Kampf (Miss Ramos)

London-based American banker Steve Blackburn (George Segal) and divorced fashion designer Vickie Allessio (Glenda Jackson) feel an instant spark when they literally bump into each other while he’s playing baseball in the park. She loves the idea of some no-strings sex; he’s got more than a little experience of cheating on his wife. They head to Málaga for a dirty weekend, only to find a string of circumstances keep getting in their way of a relaxing (dirty) weekend.

A Touch of Class seems an odd choice as Best Picture nominee – just as Glenda Jackson seems an unlikely Oscar winner for a fairly straight-forward role of comic exasperation. (Surely part of Oscar was the voters surprise that the fiercely serious Jackson even had a sense of humour). But this film has its moments of entertaining farce, particularly in its opening half covering the disastrous trip to Málaga where literally nothing seems to go right. It works less well when A Touch of Class segues later into something trying to be more serious, not least since the film’s attempt to explore genuine feelings works best when it embraces the fact its lead characters realise that, beyond a sexual charge, they pretty much can’t stand each other.

There is something very British about this farce of manners. The first hour chronicles a series of embarrassments, nearly all of them revolving around a constant sense of social obligation and clumsy propriety, much of it coming from Steve’s desperation not to be caught out as an unfaithful husband. From booking tickets for their flight – an arch travel advisor (a very funny Eve Kampf) responding with mocking po-faced seriousness to attempts by Steve to pass Vickie off as his ‘mother’ – to the two awkwardly pretending not to know each other when Steve bumps into film producer friend Walter (Paul Sorvino) – who you suspect wouldn’t care less – it quickly goes from bad to worse.

Like any classic farce, they end up trading their winning pre-booked car for a juddering mini with a faulty clutch (so Steven can escape Sorvino’s character without having to explain why he can’t give him a lift), arrive at their hotel to be shunted from room-to-toom, Steve putting his back out after a bizarre argument about which side of the bed each will sleep on and eventually both being invited separately to dinner with Walter and his wife (who, unknowingly to them, are awkwardly shadowing part of their holiday). The comedy of this social awkwardness, the terror of saying something that might shock or embarrass someone, genuinely generates some decent comic mileage.

A Touch of Class also generates an entertaining sense that the two have very little in common. George Segal’s Steve is an overgrown, spoilt schoolboy, obsessed with winning who celebrates like he’s scooped The Open when he beats the child (as talented as a young Seve) he’s hired to play golf with him. (Vickie’s look of scornful disgust throughout this match is great.) When it comes to sex, you get the sense he’s demanding and in constant need of praise. Their first major argument kicks off when he responds very poorly to her review of their first tumble as ‘very nice’. Segal mixes this with a frantic desire to constantly be seen as a nice guy by everyone, from his wife to his friends while making minimal sacrifices for a relationship with Vickie.

In fact, the film would work best if it just focused on the disastrous holiday and two people discovering an initial spark disguised feelings clearly closer to mutual loathing. A more nimble film would have allowed more peaks and troughs where strong sexual desire mix with growing dislike outside of the tumbles in the sheet, leading to the affair beginning and ending in Málaga. Instead, A Touch of Class suddenly shifts in its final third to exploring the two attempting a long-term adulterous affair, a beat of seriousness it’s not adept enough to pull off. It’s not helped by the fact it repeats points already made (Steve is interested in booty calls with minimal concentration, Vickie is torn between having some fun and wanting something serious). It becomes a different – and to be honest, not that good, movie (not helped by an in-movie screening of Brief Encounter which really points up how much weaker this films depiction of infidelity is).

Part of the problem is it’s really hard to see what Glenda Jackson’s Vicki could find to respect in this guy once she got to know him. Jackson is a much better comic performer than you might expect – she landed the role after Frank saw her royally take the piss out of her impossibly-serious image on TV’s Morecambe and Wise – but her comedy is one of dry, arch exasperation not flat-out farce. She’s at her most relaxed in the moments where she can barely hide her contempt for Steve, or when laying into his selfishness and immaturity with arch sarcastic monologues. But this strength of character makes it all the more unlikely Vicki would consider continuing the affair in London – or that she would ever tolerate being used as essentially a sex toy by a selfish lover.

A sudden pivot to wider ambitions the film can undermining what could have been a decent comic farce. Expanding the film’s first two thirds and embracing showing the life cycle of a relationship starting as a fling and disintegrating under the pressure of actually spending time together gets lost under a clumsy attempt to say something profound about infidelity. A strange desire to suggest there is in fact real emotion between these two clashes constantly with the comic drive of the film suggesting the exact opposite. As the humour drains awkwardly out the film, so does its purpose and success. It’s as if Frank and team were as embarrassed as Steve to be caught out in a sex farce and felt they needed to add a clumsy social message and character study to make it feel legit. This never meshes with the film’s most successful moments and never rings true.

Arrowsmith (1931)

An uninspired prestige drama suddenly turns at the end into an intriguingly subversive drama

Director: John Ford

Cast: Ronald Colman (Dr Martin Arrowsmith), Helen Hayes (Leora Arrowsmith), Richard Bennett (Gustav Sondelius), A.E. Anson (Professor Max Gottlieb), Clarence Brooks (Dr Oliver Marchand), Alec B Francis (Twyford), Claude King (Dr Tubbs), Bert Roach (Bert Tozer), Myrna Loy (Mrs Joyce Lanyon), Russell Hopton (Terry Wickett), Lumsden Hare (Sir Robert Fairland)

A neat trivia question: what was the first John Ford film nominated for Best Picture? Not many people remember Arrowsmith today – although, since Ford was ordered by producer Samuel Goldwyn to not touch a drop of the sauce while making it, we can be pretty sure he did. Adapted from a hulking Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Sinclair Lewis, it was the epitome of prestige Hollywood filmmaking. It’s a far from a perfect film, but it contains flashes of real beauty and genius – and presents one of the most surprising, subversive visions of infidelity you’ll see in 30’s Hollywood.

Martin Arrowsmith (Ronald Colman) is desperate to be a high-flyer. A scientist and doctor, he’s wants to make his mark – and his mentors such as noted bacteriologist Professor Gottlieb (A.E. Anson) and Swedish scientist Gustav Sondelius (Richard Bennett) think he can. But Arrowsmith postpones his dreams for a spontaneous marriage to Leora (Helen Hayes), before re-embracing science. When plague breaks out in the West Indies, the Arrowsmiths travel there, ordered to test a possible cure on the natives: half will receive the cure, the other a placebo. But temptation and tragedy will be Arrowsmith’s constant companion there.

Arrowsmith is very much a film of two halves (or, in terms of its run-time, two-thirds, one-third). To be honest, much of its first hour is frequently rushed, ponderous and dull, flatly filmed with the air of uninspiring prestige production. Watching it play, it’s hard to connect a film as flat, perfunctory and serviceable as this with Ford’s energy and flair. It’s not helped by the accelerated storytelling. Stuffing in as much of Lewis’s door-stop best-seller as it can (the first fifteen minutes cover as many events as whole movies often content themselves with), the plot barrels along so fast it can leave your head spinning. Scenes either feel like sketches from a larger whole or like narrative cul-de-sacs included to tick a box from the novel.

Arrowsmith feels like a compromised film. I suspect Goldwyn’s aim was to cover the book. But I feel Ford’s interest – if he had one in the film’s opening hour – was the Arrowsmith marriage. On the surface this is your standard loving-husband-supportive-wife pairing. But, underneath, there is a lot more going on here. Everything about their courtship and registry office marriage feels perfunctory. Arrowsmith treats his wife with a fondness that never tips into passion. When she suffers a miscarriage (which prevents her having children), he is sad but moves on remarkably quickly. At one point, Leona discusses the idea of leaving her preoccupied, distant husband who disappears for days on end (you feel she’s only half joking). Arrowsmith calls her ‘old girl’, which feels rather complacent and smug.

You suspect Ford might be hinting that, frankly, Arrowsmith is a self-important shit with grandiose ideas. It’s an idea the film can’t quite push – Ronald Colman’s undoubted charm smooths off Arrowsmith’s rough edges, even while he makes him self-righteous and pompous. But as Leona (Hayes is excellent in subtly suggesting this woman is much more lonely than she admits) watches her house jerry-rigged into a Frankenstein-laboratory (his atrociously poor safety measures will come back to haunt him later) or is left for days alone at home, it’s hard not to feel this is a more complex, strained relationship than the film can openly say.

These half-stated implications lead us into the film’s final act in the West Indies, which almost redeems the slightly confused mish-mash it proceeds. From the opening shot of this sequence – focused on Clarence Brooks’ doctor (notable for treating a Black character as an assured professional) with his patients sitting on a balcony, excluded from the conversation about their health going on down below – it’s impossible not to see Ford’s sympathy more openly lying with the West Indian villagers, whose health is of little interest to the white population and who even our nominal hero (reluctantly) uses as guinea pigs for his cure. This powers us through a half-hour sequence that is by far-and-away the most focused and interesting of the entire film.

This tragedy-laden sequence not only buzzes with an indignation of the unfairness of this system – in which our hero is a semi-reluctant participant – but unleashes the most beautiful, shadow-filled, expressionistic lighting in the film. Ford signposts moments of high emotion by casting people’s bodies in shadow. This mesmerising effect is used brilliantly, combined with shots deliberately echoing each other (most strikingly two contrasting shots of the Arrowsmith home, both framed at low angles with foreground chairs – the second laced with tragedy). Visual imagery reflects, not least the cutting between two cigarettes smoked by the Arrowsmith’s. There is a host of heart-rendering, inventive ideas in visual storytelling: at one point, Arrowsmith’s phone call with a sweating colleague goes dead – we cut to see a shot of the empty phone on the other end bathed in shadow, enough to tell us his interlocutor has literally died mid-call.

This shadow-filled sequence also powers the film’s most subtle moment: possibly the most under-the-wire depiction of infidelity seen in the movies. The original novel made clear Arrowsmith was serially unfaithful. Here, he meets Myrna Loy’s wealthy heiress, to whom he admits an immediate kinship. At night, wordlessly, Ford cuts back and forth between Loy preparing for bed and Colman sitting (bathed in shadow) smoking and possibly waiting. Wordlessly the cuts go back and forth – and then fades to black as we see a shadow approach the door of Colman’s bedroom. You can miss it entirely: but its clear they sleep together. (A late scene with Colman and Loy, with a lingering handhold, feels like proof positive). A late scene of Colman filled with manic energy, in this context feels powered more by guilt and shame.

It’s subtle because we know that in scenes of open emotion and dramatic import we’ve seen faces thrown into shadow. When its repeated here, in an otherwise inconsequential scene, we’re having visually communicated to us something the film can’t openly tell us: Arrowsmith is cheating on his wife. It’s the highlight of a compelling final act, full of drama, tragedy and beautiful filmmaking. When the film leaves the West Indies for its lab-set coda, it returns to flat film-making and sudden, jarring plot developments. But for this half-hour section, it’s a fascinating, oblique, challenging and rewarding film: one of the best short films buried in a large one you’ll see. Arrowsmith may not be a classic, but’s it’s a fascinating film.

Materialists (2025)

Smug, contrived and misguided romantic comedy with a self important air

Director: Celine Song

Cast: Dakota Johnson (Lucy Mason), Chris Evans (John P), Pedro Pascal (Harry Castillo), Zoë Winters (Sophie), Marin Ireland (Violet)

In the modern world, what do we look for most in a partner? To professional matchmaker Lucy Mason (Dakota Johnson) “the math is simple” (strap in folks, that’s a phrase you’ll hear a lot): we want someone who ticks plenty of our boxes, offers financial and social security as well as being the right height with the right level of charm. Love, you’ll notice, doesn’t play a role in that. So, what’s Lucy to do when she starts a relationship with ‘unicorn’ Harry (Pedro Pascal), exactly the sort of charming, super-wealthy and tall guy women dream of, just when her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), part-time-actor-and-waiter, suddenly resurfaces in her life. How strong will her principles to make the best deal possible be?

It sounds like the set-up for a romantic comedy. And honestly, it would have made a perfectly good one. Our heroine would be warm and charming even as she professed her cynicism, and the plot focussed on the whimsically old-fashioned concept of matchmaking would have gradually led her to embrace love (along with, inevitably, the poor but adorable love interest.) But Celine Song’s follow-up to Past Lives is a scrupulously dry character study, that wants you to think it’s got a deep and meaningful message about relationships in the world today, but eventually pedals the same rom-com message you imagine it would call trite.

But in a rom-com, the audience knows they’re watching a candyfloss fantasy – Song tries to staple the same “abandon realism here” kind of ending onto her ponderously, pretentious story, despite it contradicting the heroine’s entire personality and the characters’ painstakingly spelled out obstacles, and doesn’t seem to have noticed it makes the whole thing a complete dog’s dinner.

Putting it simply: I didn’t particularly like Materialists, found its smugly superior attitude irritating, its final message deeply confusing, and felt it eventually chickened out of making a real point about modern dating. It’s an art-house film, dressed as a rom-com, trying to fool you into thinking it’s a state-of-the-nation film while letting its lead end up in a reassuring fantasy that only happens in the movies.

Partly based on Song’s experience as a match-maker, the most interesting content in Materialists is its exploration of what makes people choose who to date. I think this is a very interesting topic: at a time when people find it harder to meet (and the financial demands of the modern world harder to cope with), hundreds of thousands of people will be making relationship decisions based on cold hard financial and social facts. And yeah, some of them probably do feel guilty about that, much as Materialists suggests.

But exploring the loneliness of modern life isn’t Song’s goal. Lucy’s clients (bar one) are deliberately awful caricatures – who cares why someone like that would be looking for love, right? The film is solely here for Lucy’s Great Dilemma: How far will she go in a relationship with a box-ticking man she likes, but whom she doesn’t love. (A more challenging version of Materialists might have left out Evans’ unbelievably-handsome-and-decent penniless actor, and just really explored this dilemma for Lucy.)

But instead, the love triangle offers an easy get-out card for Lucy. Because, unlike her clients, Lucy has already met her perfect match. In fact, while her desperate and deluded clients just want to meet someone who can stand to be at the same table sa them, Lucy has two gorgeous, considerate, tall, charming men begging her to let them commit their lives to her. (And who, by the way, can believe a charming, six-foot multi-millionaire who looks like Pedro freaking Pascal can’t get a date?) She’s got the lovely Harry, whose stunning Manhattan penthouse she gazes at awe-struck, like Lizzy Bennett at Pemberly. And there is literally nothing wrong with John, aside from his lack of income (he’s the only actor in the world who doesn’t have an agent and doesn’t want commercial work) – he’s kind and decent and trying to follow a dream. It makes her conundrum a false fantasy.

That’s one of the worst things about Materialists which, in many ways, is even less risky and daring than flipping Pretty Woman. It talks a big game about dating and relationships being economic and social decisions. It bangs on endlessly about this topic but, deep down, clearly doesn’t believe in it at all. Because even an astute analyst of people’s personalities (as Song can be) isn’t brave enough to make a film that commits to its initial proposition. Instead, Song sets up a parade of straw-man arguments that Lucy’s experiences can knock down to reach the ‘correct’ decision.

Ah Lucy. This mystifyingly motivated character who Dakota Johnson struggles to make coherent sense from. It’s not helped by Johnson’s breathy, evenly paced delivery that makes it very hard sometimes to work out what her character is meant to be thinking or feeling. Her air of dead-eyed professional monotone makes sense for her interactions with clients, but her colourless delivery of nearly all her lines made it almost impossible for me to work out when her character’s views change.

It’s not completely Johnson’s fault that Lucy is a deeply irritating character, but it would take a significantly more charismatic actor to make you overlook what a self-pitying, self-loathing waif she is, whose fundamental selfishness isn’t softened by constantly telling us she knows how selfish she is. Are we supposed to be rooting for her, when she essentially treats John (Evans, very likeable, sweet and witty) as an emotional-comfort-blanket, who can be dropped when she gets bored with him? Even when John calls her out on this, by the next sentence he’s absolving her for it.

Then in order to provoke her epiphany, the film clumsily introduces a sexual assault plotline for a supporting character, which exists solely to give Lucy the equivalent of “man-pain” – honestly, if the same plot was put in a film with a male lead, the socials would be burning up with cries of foul. This plotline is ludicrous from start to finish, while simultaneously treating a genuinely serious issue in dating like a ‘problem-of-the-week’ that can be solved with a hug. No male writer could have gotten away with the shallow, clumsy, plot-contrived development – and I don’t think Song should either.

Materialists takes place in a crazy world, where a dating firm has offices across the world, where the Manhattan police don’t respond to harassment call-outs from rapists, where everyone is paying tens of thousands of dollars to hook-up and John seems to be the only poor person. It’s dripping with smug assurance at its own cleverness, while offering a sort of moral message identical to a Sanda Bullock 90s romcom (but with fewer gags and chemistry). It’s frequently ponderous, stuffed with overly mannered dialogue and goes on forever. Having a Michael Haneke inspired closing shot, doesn’t change the fact the scene itself could have come straight out of The Runaway Bride. Materialists was not good.

Random Harvest (1942)

Two superb leading performances hold together a romantic confection of a film

Director: Mervyn Le Roy

Cast: Ronald Colman (Charles Rainier/”Smithy”), Greer Garson (Paula Ridgeway/ “Margaret Hanson”), Philip Dorn (Dr. Jonathan Benet), Susan Peters (Kitty Chilcet), Henry Travers (Dr. Sims), Reginald Owen (Biffer), Bramwell Fletcher (Harrison), Rhys Williams (Sam), Una O’Connor (Tobacco Shopkeeper), Aubrey Mather (Sheldon), Margaret Wycherly (Mrs. Deventer), Arthur Margetson (Chetwynd Rainier), Melville Cooper (George Rainier), Alan Napier (Julian Rainier), Jill Esmond (Lydia Rainier)

Random Harvest is one of the most fondly remembered romances of Golden Age Hollywood – if you want yearning dedication bought to life, this is the film for you. It might also be one of the barmiest films ever made, stuffed with so many outlandish plot developments, hilarious logic gaps and hand-waved contrivances it would put a Netflix soap to shame. You can see why Syndey Pollack and Anthony Minghella eventually abandoned remakes: you can’t imagine a modern audience going with Random Harvest’s essential loopiness and not laughing somewhere along the line. Which is not to say it isn’t beautifully made and winningly bought to life at times.

It’s the final days of World War One, and amnesic soldier “John Smith” (Ronald Colman) can’t remember anything about his life. On the final day of the war, he sneaks out of the asylum and runs into music hall performer Paula (Greer Garson). She takes a shine to “Smithy” and decides to save him. They run away to the country, fall in love, get married, have a baby, he starts to write, goes to Liverpool to start a journalism career… and gets hit by a cab. The collision restores his original memory – but also causes him to forget everything about Paula and his life as Smithy. Instead, he restarts his original life as industrial heir Charles Rainier, presumed dead by his family. While he lives this life for years, Paula takes a job as his secretary “Margaret”. Will he remember who she is?

It says a lot that that summary only scratches the surface of a plot that throws in the kitchen sink in attempting to ring as many tear-soaked tissues out of you as possible. Smithy and Paula carry out their little memory dance over the course of over twenty years. It’s the sort of a film where millionaire Charles only thinks about investigating what might have happened to him in Liverpool when nudged to do so after over a decade. Where the couple enter a ‘marriage of convenience’ as the memory-free Charles and fake Margaret. Where Charles’ owns a major factory in the town where our lovers first met, but neither (a) stepped foot there in 15 years (since the moment he does his memory starts to return) and (b) the heir to the town’s major employer wasn’t recognised by anyone while living in an asylum five minutes walk down the road.

Take it on the merits of logic and conventional narrative and Random Harvest crashes and burns. But this isn’t a film about those things. This is a classic weepie that stole the hearts of a war-torn nation in 1942 (it was the biggest hit of the year). Powered by two committed and emotional performances, if it hits you in the right mood its probably irresistible. The sort of long-term adversity that makes Romeo and Juliet’s look like a casual dalliance (so full of tragedy, the death of their son is literally a throwaway moment). It’s framed with a great, sensual beauty by Mervyn LeRoy and powered by an emotionally throbbing score by Herbert Stothart that’s just the right side of sickly.

Ronald Colman’s performance is quiet, measured and vulnerable (especially in his “Smithy” performance). From the start, he has eyes of hesitant, unknown sorrow and stumbles into a relationship with Paula like a new-born discovering life. Threads of his gentleness and excitability work their way into his Charles persona, tinged this time with the natural confidence of wealth. Nevertheless, Colman makes Charles a man who has dealt with unnerving amnesia by actively not thinking about it, carrying on a watch-chain the key to his “Smithy” home as a subconscious reminder. It’s a fine performance – so much so you can overlook he’s twenty-five years too old (the restored Charles forgoes returning to university, something that looks long gone for Colman).

Just as fine is Greer Garson, fully embracing an emotional roller-coaster as Paula. Introduced as a good-natured music hall singer (and Garson sings a high-kicking She’s Ma Daisy number in possibly the shortest skirt the Hays Code ever allowed), Garson’s warm and playful Paula is drawn towards “Smithy” in ways she almost can’t understand. But it’s a wonderfully different side for an actress so often associated with self-sacrificing wives and mothers: Paula is vivacious, forward and seizes the things she wants from life. It’s the second half – the patient, yearning desperation of “Margaret” hoping her husband will remember her – that leans more into her Mrs Miniver wheelhouse, but Garson mixes this with a real lingering, desperate sadness tinged with just enough hope that her husband might just recognise her.

Both performers overwhelmingly lift this otherwise (frankly) slightly contrived film into something rather sweet and endearing. It is, however, a film that would be even more so if it was shorter: the general morass of missed opportunities, misunderstandings and wrong ends of sticks being grasped would be easier to sustain over 90 than 120 minutes. It’s a rare film that covers so much ground over so much time that it’s lead character is declared dead twice.

The second declaration is Paula gaining that status for “Smithy”, dissolving their marriage and removing (you suspect for Hay’s Code reasons) the risk that Charles might accidentally commit bigamy by marrying his young niece. This is a lovely performance of youthful idealism and earnest devotion from Susan Peters (a tragic accident shortly after curtailed her promising career), and if the whole years-long subplot of the possibility of Charles marrying his besotted niece is a narrative cul-de-sac the overall film would be better without, it does at least mean we get the pleasure of Peters, performance captured forever.

But Random Harvest remains a pure romance: where no less than two women spend decades of their life in selfless, one-sided devotion for the lead and he still comes across as the sort of saintly man cheered by his own factory workers for sorting out a strike. The whole confection is a very fragile thing, but LeRoy carries this fully-loaded glass ornament with pure skill and the performances of Colman and Garson set the bar for classic Hollywood tragic romance. Minghella and Pollack were right – our cynical age can’t believe the nonsense – but on its own terms it still works.