Category: Writer biographer

Benediction (2021)

Davies’ final film is a beautifully made, deeply sad, exploration of the long-term impact of trauma

Director: Terence Davies

Cast: Jack Lowden (Siegfried Sassoon), Peter Capaldi (Older Siegfried Sassoon), Simon Russell Beale (Robbie Ross), Jeremy Irvine (Ivor Novello), Kate Phillips (Hester Gatty), Gemma Jones (Older Hester Gatty), Ben Daniels (Dr Rivers), Calam Lynch (Stephen Tennant), Anton Lesser (Older Stephen Tennant), Tom Blyth (Glen Byam Shaw), Matthew Tennyson (Wilfred Owen), Geraldine James (Theresa Thornycroft), Richard Goulding (George Sassoon), Lia Williams (Edith Sitwell), Julian Sands (Chief Medical Officer)

Few generations carried scars as deep as that which saw millions of their fellows mown down in the endless bloody slaughter of World War One. For us, whatever understanding of the horrors of that conflict we have is often filtered through the war poets, who fought in unimaginable conditions. Terence Davies’ final film explores the life of Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden, ageing into Peter Capaldi) whose life never escaped the shadow of those terrible sights and awful losses.

Benediction is a sombre, mellow, deeply sad portrait of a man who spent a lifetime searching for something, anything to fill the void the war had left in him. Following Sassoon’s life in a series of tableaux-style scenes that mix poetry reading, period music, news footage with flash-forwards to the tetchy, weary older man he will become, it’s a sad, reflective work that presents memory as a sort of prison that consigns everyone to a life sentence. Davies catches this beautifully in his stately, melancholic film where survival guilt goes hand in hand with bitter regret at missed opportunities.

It opens with Sassoon’s protest against the war – denouncing its content from his first-hand experience. Saved from the possibility of a firing squad by influential friends (chief among them, Simon Russell Beale’s good-natured Robbie Ross) Sassoon is dispatched to an Edinburgh military hospital to “recuperate”. There he meets and falls in love with the sensitive, shy poet Wilfrid Owen (Matthew Tennyson), a love he is scared to confess. After Owen is killed, Sassoon commits himself to a series of romantic relationships with selfish, bitchy men including Ivor Novello (a marvellously supercilious Jeremy Irvine, whose eyes are stone cold) and the shallow, vain Stephen Tennent (Calam Lynch, full of Bright Young Thing smugness, turning into a lonely, tragic Anton Lesser). As an older man, he converts to Catholicism and struggles to understand his son George (Richard Goulding).

Davies’ film posits a Sassoon who never recovered from grief at the death of Wilfrid Owen and could never truly forgive himself for being too timid to express his feelings. Davies films Sassoon and Owen in scenes that sing of unspoken intimacy, from an overhead shot of a swimming pool dip that feels like a pirouette, to the matching body language they exhibit while sitting watching a variety show at the hospital. They laugh and dance together, but at parting Sassoon cannot move himself beyond a tightly clasped handshake and a whispered urge to stay a few minutes longer.

In discussions with his doctor and friend Rivers (a lovely tender cameo from Ben Daniels), Sassoon tearfully talks of his fear of expressing his own emotions. Perhaps this, coupled with his self-blame, is why Sassoon placed himself in so many relationships with such transparently flamboyant shits? Davies certainly seems to suggest so: Sassoon had less fear of “being himself” when he was with arrogantly confident men like Novello and Tennant. Did he also, the film suggests, feel so crippled with regret and survivor guilt, that he couldn’t believe himself worthy of the love of gentle, decent men, such as the Owen-like Glen Byam Shaw (Tom Blyth).

Sassoon becomes a man who can never fully escape the never-ending hurt of memories. Even as an older man, Davies shows Capaldi’s Sassoon sitting in his garden, the background replaced by news footage of slaughter in the trenches. It’s mixed in with the shame Sassoon felt at his “stand” against the war being, in the end, a moment that changed nothing. Davies further paints his poetry as declining post-war, as if parts of his creative life never survived the shocks he experienced.

And always he hopes something might make him whole again. Sassoon races through these false dawns during the film: relationships with men, marriage to Hetty (Kate Phillips as the younger Hetty is nearly as oppressed with unspoken sadness as Sassoon), the birth of his son – all fail to deliver. So as an older man – in a neat CGI transition during a 360 camera move – Davies transforms Lowden to Capaldi as he tries Catholicism (there is another wonderful cut that takes us from young Sassoon’s silver military cross being dropped into a river, that transitions into the grey-suited older Sassoon lying in a crucifix position on the floor of a church).

But the tragedy of Benediction – and there is no denying it’s a deeply sad and even slightly depressing film – is none of these attempts fill his soul. The older Sassoon – sharp, prickly and with a stare that goes on and on from Capaldi – snaps at things he doesn’t understand, cruelly dismisses the older Tennant and bitterly complains at the lack of recognition his later work received. He’s a man desperate for companionship, but comfortable only on his own.

It’s particularly sad having seen the brighter, passionate and warm man he was. Much of Benediction succeeds due to an exceptional performance by Jack Lowden. Lowden brilliantly conveys Sassoon’s lingering depression and loss under the surface of every interaction. The cheery wit that covers the self-loathing that leads him into destructive relationships and painful situations is as well captured as the self-deceiving optimism he had that everything could be different. Lowden ends the film with an extraordinary emotional moment – filmed in tight one-shot by Davies – where we see, one the last day of the war, his impossible burdens lead him to a single, quiet, emotional outburst of the vast reams of pain that then continued to burn inside him for the rest of his life.

Benediction is about guilt, loss, regret and denying yourself opportunities at happiness and joy through an internal determination that it is not for you. There is something profoundly personal in this – Sassoon’s life in this film, mirroring many of the regrets Davies spoke of in his own life – a fact increased by the heartfelt, gentle construction of the film with its melancholic air and rich sense of empathy for its subject. As a final work, it’s a fitting tribute to both the poet and its director.

Il Postino (1995)

A friendship (of a sort) across the divide in this sentimental, overtly charming romantic comedy drama

Director: Michael Radford

Cast: Massimo Troisi (Mario Ruoppolo), Philippe Noiret (Pablo Neruda), Maria Grazia Cucinotta (Beatrice Russo), Renata Scarpa (The Telegrapher), Linda Moretti (Donna Rosa), Mariano Rigillo (Di Cosimo), Anna Bonaiuto (Matilde Urrutia)

Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) arrives on an Italian island in 1950, exiled from his home in Chile. He brings celebrity to the small community: but also transforms the life of local Mario Ruoppolo (Massimo Troisi). Mario, a quiet and slightly lost man who doesn’t want to follow in his father’s fishing footsteps, takes a job delivering Neruda’s mail. He becomes fascinated by poetry and idolises Neruda with whom he forms a friendship, after he enlists him to help woo Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), daughter of the local café worker. Mario becomes more and more influenced by Neruda’s communism and love of language. How will he cope when Neruda’s exile ends?

A massive box office success – one of the biggest foreign language hits in the USA – Il Postino is a film born from tragedy. Troisi had long wanted to adapt the novel by Antonio Skarmeta. So much so, he delayed urgent heart surgery to make the film. With filming due to start, Troisi was so ill he could work little more than an hour a day. Many of his scenes were done in a single take. Radford re-worked scenes to allow Troisi to sit as much as possible, while a body double did all long shots, medium shots and any close-up where Troisi’s face didn’t need to be seen. Troisi recorded all his dialogue before filming – and tragically died the day after shooting completed.

It’s a moving story: and it’s hard to separate your reaction to it from your reaction to the film. Perhaps influenced by Troisi’s illness, Radford turns Il Postino into a quiet, gentle and mediative piece, crammed with restrained camerawork and thoughtful pacing. There is a gentle, easily digestible warmness to Il Postino, with relatable themes around love, friendship and the power of poetry. But you can’t help but feel subtitles made some feel they were watching something arty, rather than something that is essentially a bit of popular fiction turned into a film.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of positives. Radford perfectly captures the warmth and eye-opening wonder of a man discovering intellectual horizons he never imagined. Mario at first seems not particularly bright – but we discover he is simply a man who has grown up without intellectual stimulation of any sort. No one ever leaves his island and the only ambition anyone has is to become a fisherman. Watching a newsreel of Neruda’s arrival in Italy, the villagers seem as stunned by seeing these magic moving pictures as they do the famous poet’s arrival.

Into this tiny world drops a magic figure: someone who makes Mario discover that the functional words that only ever dropped hesitantly from his mouth, can actually be crafted into gorgeously elaborate sentences, full of power and beauty. Poetry at first just seems like a great way to get girls – Mario is stunned by the amount of mail from ladies Neruda receives – but then becomes an end in itself. Slowly Mario appreciates things around him – the moon, the lapping of waves on the shore, the sound of the wind in the hills – in a way he never even thought about before. Similarly, he begins to question the quiet acquiescence the village shows to all-too-obviously corrupt local politician Di Cassimo.

This largely works due to a quiet, unforced and gentle performance from Troisi. Shyly muttering his lines and rarely raising his head up to look directly at the person he is talking to, Troisi’s performance has an unaffected naturalness to it. He’s quiet, abashed and shy, also childlike, worshipping Neruda with a puppy-dog intensity (that never wilts, even after Neruda leaves the island) and reacts to things around him with an awe-filled wonder.

Opposite him, Noiret soaks himself in artistic confidence as Neruda, a man very aware he’s a huge fish in a small pond. Perhaps because he’s lonely, perhaps because he finds Mario’s childlike openness endearing, he indulges and encourages Mario’s attempts to befriend him. But, despite appearances, I’m not sure Il Postino wants to commit to the fact that this is not a friendship of equals. Neruda is fond of Mario – but he never, truly, sees him as an equal. Mario is, at heart, a distraction Neruda is fond of. He indulges Neruda’s clumsy attempts to win his attention, and there is a slight quiet background air of fatherly condescension in his treatment of him.

It means people overlook the more interesting parts of Il Postino. Because, despite the way it’s presented, this isn’t a story of a friendship over a divide. The final act is in fact more interesting in showing, after Neruda leaves, that a relationship that changed Mario’s life forever was just a brief, fond distraction to Neruda. Neruda remains the most important person in Mario’s life – but he wouldn’t even make the top hundred in Neruda’s life. Neruda makes little effort to keep in touch, gets a secretary to write a functional letter to Mario and takes years to even consider a visit.

The real point of interest here is how Mario flew, Icarus like, close to the sun – but found he could only get so close. He will only ever be a footnote in Neruda’s life, while Neruda is his life. Even when faced with evidence of Neruda’s affectionate disregard, he will still insist on naming his child after him. Similarly, poetry is something he can love but never quite master himself. This is interesting stuff. Il Postino avoids it.

Instead, it’s a film that settles on sentiment. You can’t argue with the skill Radford directs the film, or the quiet power of a late sequence when Mario records the sounds of the island for Neruda. Radford’s unobtrusive direction – partly influenced by working around Troisi’s illness – works to wring the maximum emotion from it. But it’s still a sentimental package: a package skilfully presented to Academy voters by Miramax (Luis Bacalov’s Oscar win for score was surely connected to Weinstein mailing a recording to every member of the Academy) and presents a pleasant fantasy story for the masses, that veers away from its more complex parts to present something far more reassuring and gentle.

Time After Time (1979)

HG Wells zooms through time on the trail of Jack the Ripper in this surprisingly charming time travel romantic thriller

Director: Nicholas Meyer

Cast: Malcolm McDowell (HG Wells), David Warner (Dr John Leslie Stevenson), Mary Steenburgen (Amy Robbins), Charles Cioffi (Lt Mitchell), Kent Williams (Assistant), Patti d’Arbanville (Shirley), Joseph Maher (Adams)

1979 was clearly the Year of the Ripper. New conspiracy theories abounded on his mysterious identity. In Murder By Decree, Sherlock Holmes took on the investigation. And in Nicholas Meyer’s Time Travel fish-out-of-water drama, he pops up in 1970s San Francisco, still up to his wicked ways. How did he get there? Well, imagine instead of just writing The Time Machine, HG Wells had actually built it: and that, during a dinner with a doctor friend, he not only discovers his friend is the infamous killer, but watches him pinch his time machine to escape the long arm of the law.

HG Wells is played by Malcolm McDowell – who surely when he was sent the script assumed he was being asked to take a look at the role of the Ripper – who uses his machine to follow the Ripper to the 1970s to find him. The Ripper is played by David Warner (one of the few actors even more demonic than McDowell), and he’s rather more at home in the 1970s than Wells, who expected to find a utopia. Wells is helped by Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen), who is drawn to this charming Englishman, who she believes is a Scotland Yard detective on the hunt for a serial killer.

Meyer’s first film is a little raw – you can see he’s still learning his craft, a few shots are a little rough around the edges in their framing and some plot points and transitions are not easy to follow – but rather charming, for all it’s about the hunt for a serial killer. Meyer gets a lot of affectionate comic mileage from Wells – the quintessential gentle Englishman, timid but determined when riled – working out the social rules of the 1970s. From crossing the road, to hailing a taxi, from consuming a McDonalds (“Fries are pomme frites!” – some silver presumably crossed Meyer’s hands to show the novelist chomping down thrilled on the fast food chain’s merchandise) to working out the rate of exchange for his fifteen Victorian pounds doesn’t translate to many dollars, it’s got a fish-out-of-water delight and a shrewd comic energy.

It’s helped a great deal by McDowell’s gentle, playful and thoroughly engaging performance – Time After Time leaves you sad he doesn’t get to play more roles like this. Wells is optimistic, polite, gentlemanly and admirably brave: even more so, because he’s so hesitant about risk. He travels around the 1970s with a wide-eyed wonder and has a humanitarian streak a mile wide. He’s one of the nicest guys you could meet.

No wonder Amy falls for him so swiftly. There is an electric chemistry between Mary Steenburgen – full of Southern sweetness but with a very modern (but never grating) feminism – and McDowell (and clearly off screen as well, as they married almost immediately after). Meyer plays this romance like a classic rom-com, with meet-cutes at the bank and McDowell’s playing of this shy Victorian gentleman’s courtly manners (he touchingly stops a kiss to make absolutely sure he has full consent – which Amy makes clear he more than does!) works like a charm.

The jokes are genuinely well-thought out and keep the film brisk. I love the alias Well’s plucks out of the air when pretending to the police to be a Scotland Yard detective: he seizes upon what he guesses will be a long forgotten popular fiction character of his day and calls himself Sherlock Holmes. McDowell and Steenburgen have an affinity for physical comedy – watch McDowell hail a taxi with a jaunty wave or Steenburgen sitting frustratedly on a sofa waiting for Wells to make a move. The fish-out-of-water elements work a treat (you can see the clear groundwork for gags Meyer would take even further in his next time-travel hit Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).

Time After Time sits this comedy next to a genuine Ripper-flick. The film opens with a long POV shot as the Ripper strikes in the streets of London. David Warner gives a very good performance as a world-weary psychopathic, who can hide his depravity but not control his urges. Unlike Wells, the Ripper adjusts very naturally to the modern world – probably because he’s more used to pretence than the honest Wells – dressing in progressively more relaxed 70s garb. His murders are shot with discretion – mostly off screen with the inevitable splash of scarlet on a surface or face from off camera. The actual historical elements of the Ripper are bunkum, but the handling is well done.

The time travel elements are rather laboriously explained, with much talk of keys, return-prevention locks and stabilisers. Wells points out the various features of the machine with a bluntness that all but has Meyer tapping you on the shoulder and saying “remember that it will be important later” – you can utterly (correctly) guess the eventual ending purely from this lecture. But the time travel effects use a mixture of 2001-ish camera tricks rather effectively and the film plays a little bit with paradox and timeline tweaking (although without any depth).

Meyer’s film is an enjoyable ride, even if some plot developments gear shift swiftly (the Ripper seems to have had a sudden emotional breakdown at some point between his penultimate and final scene and the reasons for the time machines physical shift to San Francisco are barely explained) and it at times loses its drive (the Ripper is all-too-obviously presumed dead at one point and his determination to grab a key that controls the time machine oscillates with urgency from act to act). But as a debut, it’s an enjoyable piece of pulp. And it’s got a hugely likeable performance from McDowell and very assured support from Steenburgen and Warner. It’s a very enjoyable romp.

The Happy Prince (2018)

Rupert Everett excels as Oscar Wilde in his passion project The Happy Prince

Director: Rupert Everett

Cast: Rupert Everett (Oscar Wilde), Colin Firth (Reggie Turner), Colin Morgan (Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas), Emily Watson (Constance Lloyd), Tom Wilkinson (Father Dunne), Anna Chancellor (Mrs Arbuthnot), Edwin Thomas (Robbie Ross), Beatrice Dalle (Café manager), Julian Wadham (Mr Arbuthnot), John Standing (Dr Tucker)

Rupert Everett has long felt an affinity for Oscar Wilde. He saw Wilde as one of the first great martyrs of the gay community, sacrificed early to the hypocrisy of conventional society (who loved everything about this flamboyantly camp, witty man right up until they found out what he got up to in bed). He spent ten years trying to find the money to film his script about Wilde’s final days in exile in Europe. (Everett eventually recounted all this in a book, To the Ends of the Earth).

The final end result is a well-made, interesting, decent film that doesn’t reinvent the wheel or radically change our perceptions or knowledge of Wilde – but does plenty of credit to Everett. He directs with an assurance and a surprising amount of visual flair. The film is attractive and uses urgent, hand-held camerawork with a great deal of skill, giving even the most basic scenes a real spark of life. There are some intelligent and intriguing visual cuts and transitions and he gets good work from the cast (Firth, an old friend, loyally did the film for nothing to help it get made). There is enough here to make you keen to see Everett have a go at another film (although I suspect, from reading the book, that’s highly unlikely to happen).

Everett also plays the lead role, and that’s the film’s main interest. He honed his performance as Wilde after the best part of a year on stage (to huge acclaim) in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss. Not to mention Everett has a natural affinity for Wildean dialogue, having proven on several occasions that maybe no actor alive better captures Wilde’s wit and pathos. His Wilde is a shattered husk, slowly realising over the course of the film that his life is effectively over. This happens not so much as a raging against the light, but the slow deflation of a man who died at a very early age (barely mid 40s), collapsing into depression, alcoholism and repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

The most prominent of those mistakes being taking up again with his lover (and root cause of his disgrace the first time) Bosie, played here with preening, incandescent selfishness by Colin Morgan. During a long sojourn in Naples, these two flirt, fight and fuck until the money runs out – like an appalling unfunny screwball comedy couple who keep being dragged back together because fighting each other is better than talking to anyone else. Bosie then turns up in floods of tears at Wilde’s grave – having cut all ties with him or face disinheritance, fobbing him off with a few hundred quid of “thank but piss off” money.

Wilde’s loyal friends stick by him – but in that typical blinkered way we sometimes behave when we are in love, Wilde oscillates between being sickeningly dependent and dismissive of them. Everett isn’t afraid to make Wilde often preening, sponging, selfish and deluded or to stress how easily his wit and intelligence could be turned cruel. Edwin Thomas is heart-breakingly earnest as Wilde’s devoted friend Robbie Ross while Firth gives sterling support as the equally loyal Reggie Turner.

The film follows Wilde into some pretty dark places and plays some quite daring cards when exploring Wilde’s psyche. Everett plainly shows Wilde deeply regretted the end of his relationship with his children, and the damage he caused them. But he isn’t afraid to show him taking on potential substitutes for them in a teenage boy and his prepubescent brother – while still paying for sex with the older brother (eagerly pimped by his street-smart younger brother). Despite this there’s something very sad about Wilde settling down to tell these kids the same stories he told his own. Or his gentle longing for the family he left behind that we hear in his voice when he sees them.

Where the film is strongest is in showing the prejudice and rage Wilde met and the suffering he endured. Wilde is spat at, chased through the street by drunken poshboys on tour (finally physically confronting them in a church with a foul-mouthed fury), threatened and generally treated like dirt by nearly everyone of any social standing. Scenes of him at his pomp show the same traits now treated as disgusting signs of his sexual preference, were celebrated as evidence of his charm. The Happy Prince has an angry and rage to it that I almost wish Everett had committed to more.

Saying that, it’s shot and edited with such pace and urgency that the film still works. If at the end it never quite coalesces into a clear message, it’s still a fine tribute to Everett’s efforts to bring it to the screen. And his own performance is a marvel – beautifully judged, empathetic but not hagiographic, critical but sympathetic, funny and also moving, angry but gentle. Its best legacy is the opportunity Everett the actor is given by Everett the director (as he confesses in the book one of his principle reasons for writing the script in the first place) and if the film is a little too much of a one-man showcase, it still has plenty of interest to it.

Julia (1977)

Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave play friends separated by time in Fred Zinnemann’s award-bait Julia

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Cast: Jane Fonda (Lilian Hellman), Vanessa Redgrave (Julia), Jason Robards (Dashiell Hammett), Maximilian Schell (Mr Johann), Hal Holbrook (Alan), Rosemary Murphy (Dorothy Parker), Dora Dull (Woman passenger), Elizabeth Mortensen (Girl passenger), Meryl Streep (Anne Marie), John Glover (Sammy)

Playwright Lilian Hellman (Jane Fonda) remembers her close childhood friendship with Julia (Vanessa Redgrave), the daughter of wealthy Jewish parents being bought up by her grandparents. As young women, their lives take dramatically different routes: Lilian finds eventual success with The Children’s Hour, with the support of her mentor and lover Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards); Julia travels to Vienna and then Germany where she becomes involved in anti-Nazi activity. Eventually, the need for money leads to Julia asking Lilian to smuggle funds over the German border.

That’s the meat of Fred Zinnemann’s old-fashioned, highly-genteel memory piece that also manages to make it sound far more exciting and interesting than the dry, worthy, middle-brow story that actually ends up on screen. What’s missing from the film almost completely is passion. This is a story that required fire: a sympathy for radicalism, or anger at the targeted cruelty and injustice of fascism. It gets none of this, instead offering a handsome reconstruction of period details, all filmed with a Golden Age glow, and a narrative focus that feels like it’s aimed at the wrong character.

It’s part of why this awards-bait drama hasn’t lasted in the public perception (it’s very hard to find a copy to watch – really striking for a film nominated for 11 Oscars and winning three, including two acting Oscars). There is very little really rewarding either emotionally or narratively here. The film lacks a real sense of danger or foreboding – even a scene showing fascist thugs throwing Jewish students off a balcony in Vienna is shot with a striking lack of edge or horror. And it unbalances itself by giving more time and priority to Hellman’s struggles to come up with a play “worthy of her” than it does to the title character and the real drama of her struggles. Redgrave is on screen for about 14 minutes. It’s effectively like watching The Pianist but entirely from the perspective of Emilia Fox’s character rather than Adrien Brody’s.

What we end up with is a film that feels old-fashioned, dry and respectable. It offers everything that will impress you, and reassure you that it is important film-making: a big subject, famous names, actors giving emotional performances, period detail, a tragic ending. But it lines these factors up in a way that never ever comes to life dramatically. There is a story buried in here about friendship – and Fonda and Redgrave are very good at selling a strong personal bond, especially considering their limited time on screen together – but what should be the heart of the story gets lost in a biography of Hellman, a digression into her relationship with Dashiell Hammett, and the lack of insight the film seems to have into the fate of Jews and outsiders in an increasingly fascist Europe.

The film’s only real sequence of interest is Hellman’s dash with money across the border and illicit meeting with Julia, a sequence involving coded messages, switching of hats and double-meaning conversation which fits with a spy novel. Zinnemann films this with a fine air of tension and intrigue – but it’s the only time the film stumbles to life.

I think Zinnemann struggled to find what really compelled him to tell this story. Which is a shame as a Julia-focused story – a woman struggling against a system – would have been meat and drink to the director of High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man For All Seasons. Instead, his skill from those films of empathising with characters trapped in a desperate situation and forced to take a stand on principle, is lost. In the end he and the film find little to interest them in Hellman, the successful novelist who feels a middle-class intellectual’s guilt at not doing more to help, who is fundamentally a footnote in a far larger story of rising Nazi terror in Europe.

The film has also perhaps faded from public attention because subsequent controversy revealed that a large part of this true story was almost certainly self-aggrandising bull-shit by Hellman. A New York psychiatrist, Muriel Gardiner, claimed in 1983 that Julia’s story was her story and that she had never met Hellman (but they did share a lawyer). No trace of a “Julia” has been found in Hellman’s life, and no evidence at all that she ever undertook this dangerous dash into Germany. Zinnemann also fell out with Hellman, privately coming to believe she was “an extremely talented, brilliant woman, but she was a phony character” and said his “relations with her were very guarded and ended in pure hatred”. Knowing that, it’s hard not to see the same distance on the screen.

Saying that, Jane Fonda is very good in the film, surprisingly fragile, uncertain and scared, and plagued with guilt that she cannot do enough to help her friend. Redgrave won an Oscar for her committed and passionate performance, which tapped into her radicalism and gives a slight character a great deal of depth (in her speech, the pro-Palestinian Redgrave made a famously controversial political speech denouncing “Zionist hoodlums”). Robards won the film’s other acting Oscar, for a professional turn as Hammett. In a very weak year for American film, Schell also landed an Oscar nomination for a brief cameo as a go-between Hellman meets in a Parisian park.

The performances are fine and the style and manner of the film is reassuringly middle-of-the-road. There is everything here to convince you this is an important film, apart from drama, purpose or conviction. Perhaps it’s so hard to find, because so few people have looked for it since 1977?

Topsy-Turvy (1999)

Allan Corduner and Jim Broadbent excel as the Gilbert and Sullivan’s in Mike Leigh’s superb Topsy-Turvy

Director: Mike Leigh

Cast: Jim Broadbent (WS Gilbert), Allan Corduner (Sir Arthur Sullivan), Lesley Manville (Lucy “Kitty” Gilbert), Ron Cook (Richard D’Oyly Carte), Eleanor David (Fanny Ronalds), Wendy Nottingham (Helen Lenoir), Timothy Spall (Richard Temple), Vincent Franklin (Rutland Barrington), Martin Savage (George Grossmith), Dorothy Atkinson (Jessie Bond), Shirley Henderson (Leonara Braham), Kevin McKidd (Durward Lely), Louise Gold (Rosina Brandham), Andy Serkis (John D’Auborn), Dexter Fletcher (Louis), Sam Kelly (Richard Barker)

It seems an odd-fit: Mike Leigh, auteur of working class drama, prestige period films and the music of the middle-class in Gilbert and Sullivan. But that’s to forget Gilbert and Sullivan were among the masters of theatre – and Leigh himself is a theatrical great. Topsy-Turvy, from seeing the most uncharacteristic of the director’s works, in fact perhaps an examination of the creative process Leigh has made his life. It’s a wonderfully made, superbly executed tribute to the struggles and rewards of artistic creation. A celebration of how disparate personalities come together to create something bigger than themselves. Affectionate, heartfelt, at times quietly moving, Topsy-Turvy is both one of Leigh’s most enjoyable films and one of his most tender.

It’s 1884 and the creative partnership between WS Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) and Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner) is at a turning point. With their latest, Princess Ida, hardly setting the box-office alight. Sullivan feels the partnership has gone stale – and also feels under pressure to turn his attention towards more ‘serious’ composing. Gilbert refuses to change his next libretto, which Sullivan feels is effectively more of the same. Things change though when Gilbert is intrigued by an exhibition of Japanese arts and crafts, quickly creating a new libretto: The Mikado. The two geniuses, finally in unison, work together to bring the production to the stage.

Topsy-Turvy is probably Leigh’s most purely entertaining film. For anyone who has ever been involved in theatre or the arts, you’ll certainly recognise more than a few moments in this film, which is practically Leigh’s love letter to the arts. Leigh’s aim was to pay tribute to the difficulties of creativity and the demand of having to constantly refresh and reinvent your work to stay relevant and fulfilled. He succeeded: few films have so beautifully captured the struggle, pain, satisfaction and joy of creation or the strange anti-climax artistic success can bring.

Most of the second half of the film is a fascinating look at every step required to bring a production to life. From casting and contract negotiations, to costume fittings, staging and work in the rehearsal room. We get a fascinating insight into the complex backstage politics and squabbles in this small world. From actors bitching about the management (always incompetent, regardless of the situation) to the delight and playfulness of rehearsals as different opportunities are explored, it’s a wonderfully true insight into the theatre. Matched with the intricate and extraordinary detail of the reconstruction of the original production – and you have an enthralling insight into theatre. It also very appropriate for Leigh, whose organic methods of creating a film through copious rehearsal and improvisation remains very similar to theatre.

Alongside this though, the film has plenty of sympathy for the cost of creative exertion. Many of the actors lead sad and even lonely lives. Shirley Henderson’s Leonara Braham struggles with drink, Martin Savage’s George Grossmith is a drug addict (the company is too polite to mention it, but he’s clearly struggling with withdrawal at the dress rehearsal), Dorothy Atkinson’s Jessie Bond has constant pains from an unhealed ulcer. WS Gilbert and his wife lead a chaste life, he as terrified of intimacy and connection as he is of watching first nights. Sullivan juggles health problems and a long-running, regular-abortion marked, affair with Fanny Ronalds with a lingering sense of shame at not having exploited his talents more fully. These are lives that come to life when doused with creation, for all the off-stage world reveals trouble and strife.

Much of the first half is a wonderfully judged contrast between the extraverted Sullivan, keen to stretch himself but lacking the application and drive, and the repressed Gilbert, doggedly ploughing on with his (stale-sounding) original idea and unable to comprehend Sullivan’s reluctance. Leigh’s film could easily have manifested itself as a clash between two mis-matched partners. However, while the film expertly draws the parallels between the two, it also shows how much their energy comes from mutual respect. Sullivan is, after all, right that Gilbert’s first idea is a limp retread. But Gilbert’s Mikado idea is so good we don’t need a scene showing Sullivan change his mind – the simple contrast of Sullivan’s chuckles and animated striding while Gilbert reads him The Mikado’s libretto with his boredom and constant questions to the abandoned libretto speaks volumes.

Jim Broadbent is outstanding as Gilbert. He has the repressed distance, the grumpy-old-man bluntness but he mixes it with small flashes of excitement and rapture that speak volumes. His fascinated glances at the Japanese exhibition – soaking up inspiration – are beautifully judged, while his later excited larking around with a samurai sword (the very next scene sees him with a first draft) is perfect. Broadbent is both supremely funny, with several perfectly judged mon-bots, and also heartbreakingly, unknowingly lonely in his distance and fear of emotional contact. Allan Corduner makes a perfect contrast as the brash Sullivan, enjoying fame in a way Gilbert never can, but sharing with him a tortured sense of his need to fulfil his artistic potential.

The rest of the cast – a delightful mix of Leigh regulars and familiar faces – are also fabulous. Lesley Manville is wonderful as Gilbert’s wife, a gentle, eager-to-please woman who we discover has carefully buried deep regret about her emotionally repressed marriage and lack of children (Gilbert’s own difficult relationships with his parents have had a long reach on his life). Timothy Spall is wonderfully entertaining as bitchy leading actor who reacts with quiet despair when his big number is cut. Shirley Henderson’s fragility is perfect for a woman whose stage presence masks her emotional vulnerability and drink dependence. Dorothy Atkinson and Martin Savage are marvellous as two actors whose willingness to carry on under all conditions is skilfully contrasted.

Leigh’s film is also a brilliant reconstruction of time and era (rarely can a researcher be so highly billed on a film’s credits). There is a delight taken in showing how the characters react to new inventions, from Gilbert’s bellowing phone calls (“I am hanging up the phone now!”) to Sullivan’s wonder at a fountain pen (“What will they think of next?”). The design from Eve Stewart, the glorious photography of Dick Pope and the Oscar-winning costumes Lindy Hemming all are perfectly judged. The film though never becomes buried in “prestige costume drama” trappings: it’s eye for history is to acute. From alcoholism to drug addiction, broken families to the seamier streets of London, this is a film that never succumbs to easy nostalgia.

What it remains is a loving tribute to the strange families the build up around theatre. When Temple’s song is cut from the play, the chorus come together humbly but selflessly to beg for the song to be retained, because of their affection and regard for Temple. There may be disagreements, but everyone pulls together to stage the show when the time comes. Leigh’s film is full of wit, affection and a deep, loving regard for those who have chosen a life of creativity. While the film can show the cost of such a life – and the contrasting emptiness and regret away from the stage, in a life which can doesn’t always provide satisfaction – it also celebrates art in a way few other films can. One of the greatest films about the theatre ever made.

The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

Oscar-winning biopic that laid down many of the conventions we expect

Director: William Dieterle

Cast: Paul Muni (Emile Zola), Gloria Holden (Alexandrine Zola), Gale Sondergaard (Lucie Dreyfus), Joseph Schildkraut (Captain Alfred Dreyfus), Donald Crisp (Maitre Labori), Erin O’Brien-Moore (Nana), John Litel (Charpentier), Henry O’Neill (Colonel Picquart), Morris Carnovsky (Anatole France), Louis Calhern (Major Dort), Ralph Morgan (Commander of Paris), Harry Davenport (Chief of Staff), Vladimir Sokoloff (Paul Cezanne)

One of the lesser-known Best Picture winners, The Life of Emile Zola is a prime example of the 1930s trend for “Great Man” pictures, setting the template for a whole genre of biographical movies. A whistle-stop tour of how the Great Man came to be, before a tight focus on what made him great – ideally ending in either triumph or disaster (or, as is the case here, with both). It’s from a time when the viewing public didn’t expect a rigid adherence to the fact – and when films were very open with their flexibility with the truth (the film opens with an on-screen caption which happily states most of what happens in it is made up.) Actually, I think being told from the start you are watching a heavily fictionalised version of the truth covers a multitude of sins: and that The Life of Emile Zola is pretty entertaining when you get past that.

Emile Zole (Paul Muni) is of course one of the most famous French authors. But he was also at least as famous for his campaigning and presence as he was for his volumes and volumes of best sellers. The film follows Zola, for its first forty minutes or so, from poverty-stricken writer, struggling to make ends meet in the draughty hovel he shares with similar future-genius Cezanne, to success (although in real life by the time he wrote Nana, the book that makes him a sensation here, he was already hugely famous). Zola becomes increasingly aimless. What worlds are there left to be conquered? That all changes when Lucie (Gale Sondergaard) the wife of army officer Alfred Dreyfus (Joseph Schildkraut) asks for his help to save his life from unjust imprisonment and exile on Devil’s Island. Because the army are convinced Dreyfus is a spy – and won’t let inconvenient things like evidence that someone else did it get in the way.

The film is called The Life of Emile Zola but really it might as well have been called The Dreyfus Affair. This infamous miscarriage of justice drives the entire second half of the movie – with Zola himself disappearing from focus for stretches as the film covers the conspiracies that led to Dreyfuss spending the best part of a decade imprisoned for something he didn’t do. What seems strange today is that the film makes no mention of the most famous angle of the case: Dreyfus was almost solely suspected because he was Jewish, and the case became one of the most infamous antisemitic persecutions in history. But the studio heads – Jewish themselves and nervous of being accused of making a film that criticised Nazi Germany – removed all reference to Dreyfus’ Jewishness from the script. It’s a curious omission, but by and large doesn’t affect the film’s final impact.

Dieterle’s movie is also one of the first courtroom dramas. A large chunk of the final third is given over to Zola’s trial for libel (after his famous J’Accuse article, denouncing the army’s persecution of Dreyfus). In a crowded courtroom, the film carefully follows the intricacies of the court case, from calling to witnesses to final speeches (all fairly accurate, even if Zola is given a larger role with a final speech). As in the trial itself, the blatant unfairness (witnesses shouted down, defence questions vetoed, evidence withheld and even invented) is hammered home with shocking regularity. Donald Crisp does fine work as the liberal lawyer, hamstrung by a crooked system.

The Dreyfus affair element is really what makes the film come to life. The French army officers are almost to a man a group of corrupt bullies, who have pre-decided the outcome of their investigation and are determined that every single element of it should support that decision. By contrast Joseph Schildkraut (winning an Oscar that feels more for Dreyfus than him, delivering an effective if rather one-note performance) is the soul of decency and nobility as a Dreyfus who is at first bewildered then fighting a manful struggle against despair. Even better is Gale Sondergaard, who gets an ahistorical impassioned speech to win Zola to the cause and carries a core of quiet anger under her shock.

The Dreyfus Affair was the struggle of Zola’s life, the crusade that would win him a place in history, perhaps even more than his books. It’s also the sort of campaigning material that gives rich rewards to actors. Paul Muni seizes the opportunity. The film was shot in reverse so Muni would need to spend less and less time in make-up as shooting went on: the old-age make-up and wigs are very effective, matched by Muni’s physicality and voice which subtly changes as the character ages.

Muni is an actor who seized any chance for a bit of grandstanding. The film gives him its best one with a five-minute monologue closing the trial, during which Zola argues with passionate but quiet reasonableness that Dreyfus is an innocent victim. It’s even more effective since Dieterle has kept Muni silently off-centre for much of the court case. Muni sometimes carries the whiff of stagey ham, but in several moments he brings both a charming cheek and strong morality to Zola. It’s a very strong performance from one of the leading actors of the 1930s.

The film itself is also a good mixture of the twee and the compelling. Most of the Dreyfuss material falls into the latter category. It’s the early days of Zola that falls into twee: Zola scrippling ideas, bantering with Cezanne on the purpose of art, playfully mining prostitute Nana for the material he will make into a hit book. There is a nice foreshadowing through the film with Zola’s obsession with blocking draughts – an obsession that will later cost him his life to a misfunctioning heater.

It’s a well directed film. Dieterle mixes in nice touches of humour (a husband and wife using subterfuge to disguise from each other that they are both buying Nana) and also effective details that speak of Dreyfus’ isolation (the letter that has been redacated into nothingness, the effective transition of several years at Devil’s Island that stresses how little has changed, Dreyfus’ giddy joy when finally allowed to walk unheeded in and out of his prison cell).

The Life of Emile Zola looks today like a surprising winner of Best Picture. But the patterns for both courtroom drama and many biographical dramas were laid down here. By the end, as the survivors pay tribute to Zola with high-blown speeches, the audience should be convinced that this was a man deserving of being honoured by a whole movie. It’s setting of a template copied many times over can make it look a little twee today, but its’ still well done, with some powerful flashes of effective film-making and great acting.

Vita and Virginia (2018)

Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki struggle to bring a love story to life in Vita and Virginia

Director: Chanya Button

Cast: Gemma Arterton (Vita Sackville-West), Elizabeth Debicki (Virginia Woolf), Isabella Rossellini (Lady Sackville), Rupert Penry-Jones (Harold Nicholson), Peter Ferdinando (Leonard Woolf), Gethin Anthony (Clive Bell), Emerald Fennell (Vanessa Bell), Adam Gillen (Duncan Grant), Karla Crome (Dorothy Wellesley)

The love affair between Bloomsbury group writers Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) and Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki) inspired a successful epistolatory play by Eileen Atkins. It’s got all the elements you need for a love story: sadly none of those make their way into this limp, lethargic, languid film which drains any trace of passion from its material.

Where did it all go so wrong? The film expands the plays concept (two actors performing the various letters between the two lovers) into a series of conversations and throws in as characters the other members of the Bloomsbury circle. Sadly, what it fails to do is convey a sense of joi d’vive to any of this. The Bloomsbury crowd not only come across as pompous bores, but they never even really seem to be enjoying themselves. They certainly find it hard to get passionately worked up about any of these marvellous artistic ideas we keep being told they are having. The only thing we really see them talk about is sex, probably because it’s easier to put that on screen than writing.

The failure of the film is increased by the sadly misjudged performances by the two actors at its heart. It’s already a struggle to get any sense of chemistry between these two – I can’t put my finger on why this is, but there isn’t the undefinable ‘spark’ between them. Perhaps it’s partly because they both choose such wildly diverse acting styles, that their scenes never quite click together.

Debicki goes for a stately fragility, mixed with an emo waviness and seems to be playing every scene as if she subconsciously stating “my character committed suicide you know”. Arterton seems to try and compensate for Debicki’s overstated lip wobbling, by going for a jolly hockey-sticks brashness. Neither performance compliments the other and the effect is feeling like two very good actresses feeling constrained in different ways by the material.

It’s not helped by the flatness of much of the filming. I’ve seen Chanya Button’s work elsewhere (notably on television with some great work on WW2 drama World on Fire), but here she seems uncertain how to bring visual interest to this story. Too many scenes are shot with a murky lack of visual interest. Moments of letter reading are presented as the actors addressing the camera. Stylistic flourishes – such as Virginia’s visions of swiftly growing vines at moments of emotion – seem to come out of nowhere and jar with much of the rest of the traditionalism of the rest of the filming.

So instead, two fascinating intellectuals end up coming across as slightly self-absorbed bores in a relationship that never catches fire. Most of the rest of the cast fail to make an impact: Rupert Penry-Jones gets closest as Vita’s husband who oscillates between embracing their open marriage and demanding a wife who will fulfil a more traditional role. But for the rest, it’s hard to get any sense of their personalities with some performances – especially Adam Gillen – tipping too far into gurning comedy.

The general lifelessness of the film is made somehow even worse by the bizarrely left-field score. It’s a strikingly anachronistic slow-paced drum-and-base inspired sound that wouldn’t seem out of place in the late hours of a nightclub. Here it not only feels horrendously out of place – not least because it’s the only anachronistic touch either in the film-making of the performances, which are otherwise scrupulously correct – but it’s incessant throbbing beat actually helps make the film even slower, as if you were watching it in a slightly intoxicated haze.

Vita and Virginia should really have crackled with the vibrancy of the real-life characters and the passion of their love for each other and their shared ideas. Instead it’s a tedious bore that never sparks into life.

The Invisible Woman (2013)

Ralph Fiennes and Felicity Jones excel in the thoughtful and well handled The Invisible Woman

Director: Ralph Fiennes

Cast: Ralph Fiennes (Charles Dickens), Felicity Jones (Nelly Ternan), Kristin Scott Thomas (Mrs Ternan), Tom Hollander (Wilkie Collins), Joanna Scanlan (Catherine Dickens), Michelle Fairley (Caroline Graves), Tom Burke (George Wharton Robinson), Perdita Weeks (Maria Ternan), John Kavanagh (Reverend Benham), Amanda Hale (Fanny Ternan)

In 1865 Charles Dickens was involved in a train accident. While he worked tirelessly, tending to those caught up in the accident, he was also extremely careful to hide the fact he was travelling with a young actress called Nelly Ternan. Ms Ternan was his lover, had been for several years, and the couple were returning from Paris. Dickens managed to avoid the inquest and preserve the secret of his affair. Because, while he was happy to publicly announce his separation from his wife, the idea of the public hearing that he had an affair with someone 27 years younger than him was unthinkable.

The affair is deduced from careful deduction and the small remaining correspondence (both parties destroyed large numbers of letters) by the biographer Claire Tomlin. Her book forms the basis of Fiennes’ thoughtful, careful and intelligent film, with the director playing Dickens and Felicity Jones as Nelly Ternan. The Invisible Woman is restrained and unjudgmental film-making, that largely avoids obvious moral calls and weaves a beautifully constructed tale of two people who make themselves both happy and miserable.

And that misery is partly due to the times they live in. It’s an era of Victorian morals, where all that matters is the surface appearance and any real emotions underneath can go hang. But it’s also a world where very different rules apply to men and women. Dickens can leave his wife (in a press announcement) – but of course a woman could never do the same. It’s a world of strictly defined rules, with clear roles for both genders that cannot be deviated from. And it forces Nelly Ternan to travel to Paris, because the public shame that would come with her pregnancy by Dickens would destroy her. It’s why, years after Dicken’s death, she is lying about how well she knew the man (even changing her name and age to further distance herself) so that she can conform with the expectations of being a school-master’s wife (and ensure she will not be thrown out to the streets).

The rules are so strong that both Dickens and Ternan are as much in thrall to them as anyone else. Dickens is willing to bend the rules – but only so far. He would clearly never dream of living openly with his unmarried partner and their child as his friend Wilkie Collins (a perfectly cast Tom Hollander) would do. And Nelly Ternan is as outraged at this liaison – and as desperately uncomfortable in their home – as any prim housewife would be. In fact, in many ways, Nelly is even more conservative than Dickens.

But then she has to be. After all, he would be a rogue, she would be a whore. Choices aren’t great for women – and in her chosen career of actress, Nelly is clearly far more enthusiastic than she is talented. It’s worries about the career that leads to her mother – an excellent performance of motherly love mixed with a quiet understanding of the world from Kristin Scott Thomas – all but encouraging Dickens to seduce her daughter. Because, for an independently minded woman passionate about the art, if you can’t be an actress your other option is to be a muse.

Even Dickens seems quietly ashamed at his seduction of this woman, while she half-persuades herself it isn’t happening until it is. So, what draws them together? Refreshingly this isn’t a question of an older man excited by a younger woman – or a naïve woman swept up by a powerful man. Instead, these are kindred spirits. Both of them are passionate, intelligent and questioning. They both express an emotional honesty and openness. They have shared passions for literature, theatre and stories. It’s a romance that slowly blossoms and is based on a shared feeling. It would have been easier to tell a story of seduction and abuse – but this is a more intelligent film than that. At that fatal train accident, its Dickens who yearns to stay with Nelly and its Nelly that urges him to leave to preserve his secrets.

As these two, we have two actors with beautiful chemistry. Felicity Jones is inspired as Nelly Ternan. She both idolises Dickens, but is also drawn towards him on a very human level. She is astute, but conservative and at times even remote. Her older self, over a decade later, is both prickly and defensive – and those are qualities you can trace in her younger self, and not just because of her fear of disgrace. It’s a beautifully judged performance, both older than her time and also with a vibrancy and energy that entrances.

Fiennes, a more reserved actor, seems like an odd choice for the bon vivant Dickens – but he brilliantly excels in the role, full of energy and room-filling dominance. He marvellously conveys the charm and passion of Dickens, but also his thoughtlessness. This is after all a man who drops his wife by newspaper announcement and builds a barrier between their bedrooms. Who loves Nelly, but not enough to make her anything but a secret. Who is passionate and excited about his work, but can be turn distant and cool in his personal life. It’s a fabulous performance.

And the two leads are centred in a low-key, poetic film. You get the sense that there is a danger in getting to close to genius. Dicken’s wife Catherine – a beautifully sad and lonely performance from Joanna Scanlan – even warns Nelly about it (while delivering a gift from her husband, sent to her by mistake). It’s a danger that shapes Nelly’s whole life – but also her life is enriched by having Dickens in it. It’s a film that avoids obvious moral judgments – and while there are things done which cause pain, everyone is living in an imperfect society. Fiennes direction and use of visual language is wonderful and this is an impressive film.

Colette (2018)

Keira Knightley tries her best in this light but safe biography Colette

Director: Wash Westmoreland

Cast: Keira Knightley (Gabrielle Colette), Dominic West (Henry Gauthier-Villars/Willy), Eleanor Tomlinson (Georgie Raoul-Duval), Aiysha Hart (Polaire), Fiona Shaw (Sido), Denise Gough (Missy), Robert Pugh (Jules), Rebecca Root (Rachilde), Julian Wadham (Ollendorff)

In the era of #metoo what could make for a more relevant storyline today than this biography of Gabrielle Colette (Kiera Knightley), a young woman who marries literary playboy Henry Gauthier-Villars (Dominic West) aka Willy. Henry brings her back to Paris, and reveals the secrets of his success – he is the front man for a host of ghostwriters, producing articles and even novels for the public. Colette writes a novel for the “factory”, based on her own childhood – Claudine àl’école – which Willy initially rejects but later publishes under his own name (after he has suggested revisions to improve its plot and general raunchiness). The book is a smash – and Willy is a sensation – as are the sequels, but the growing frustration Colette feels at her lack of recognition, combined with the growing sense of freedom she finds in their open marriage, starts to lead her to question what she wants from her own life.

Colette is a decent, rather middle-of-the-road and middlebrow literary biography, that dabbles with controversy and racy content, but essentially follows a fairly traditional structure of our hero finding her own voice. The most interesting thing about it, despite the obvious surface message of the woman exploited by a man, is to suggest that while Willy certainly profited from Colette’s work, he was also the primary driver in her development as a writer and that the two of them maintained a stable working partnership for years until events led to their collapse.

Much has been made in particular of a scene where Willy locks Colette into a room to write – and there isn’t a single review that hasn’t mentioned it – but, in the context, it’s Colette who has failed to focus on the writing (which the pair have already been paid for), or wdo the work she has committed to do, much to Willy’s disappointment when he returns to the country home that the advance for the book has paid for. While her objections are at first furious she swiftly settles into writing in the room (and there is no suggestion that this event is any more than a single one-off, a shock tactic from Willy to get Colette creating again). This isn’t to say the film is suggesting that Colette shouldn’t have received all the credit and freedom from the start, but it does raise more interesting questions: yes Willy was taking advantage of her, but yes he also pushed her to achieve things she would never have done herself.

It’s all part of Dominic West’s superb performance as Willy, skilfully balancing a man who (until the final act of the film) is neither flat-out villain or misunderstood hero, but a man of shades of grey: flawed, selfish, lazy, thoughtless but also encouraging of his wife’s exploration of her own sexuality and creativity, supportive and capable of acts of charming sweetness and kindness. Westmoreland makes clear that for much of the marriage their relationship was functional and a good match, for all it was founded on the false sands of Colette being denied the public credit for her own work. Sure he spunks their money up the wall continuously, but he also helps her become an artist.

For all the film’s workmanlike structure and obvious telling, this does make for a far more interesting version of the story than the straight “ogre-victim” story you might expect, even if it does start to get a bit bogged down in sexual shenanigans. The mostly focus around bisexual American socialite Georgie (Eleanor Tomlinson with a soapy Southern accent), who becomes the lover of both Colette and Willy. It’s part of the sense of Colette questing for an identity, but the idea of what this is and what the journey is never quite solidifies into something really incoherent. Though I suppose you could argue the journey is Colette realising she doesn’t need Willy, and that shorn of him she can survive far better on her own than he can without her.

Part of this is connected to Keira Knightley’s solid, but not quite deep enough, performance as Colette. As is often the way with her best work, Knightley works her socks off here and is clearly completely committed to the role and the film – but she just isn’t quite capable of elevating the depths of her skill to meet the full demands of the film. She doesn’t disgrace herself at all, but it’s a performance that never had enough fire and life to really become compelling.

It means you don’t quite get the powerful feminist message the film is aiming for. Knightley’s performance isn’t quite strong enough to counter-balance West, and the film’s failure to put together a compelling story line around what Colette actually wants – the film eventually settles for a rather ill-thought out phrase about wanting to lead her own life – means it peters out without much impact. There is a powerful story in here around women being denied recognition for their own talents and skills, but it never quite coalesces as it should.