The Holdovers (2024)

Written for RAF News January 2024

A lonely and vindictive tutor at New England boarding school draws the short straw in looking after the students who will remain on campus over Christmas – as if this wasn’t punishment enough.

Set in 1970,  Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers – the nickname for the children who will stay at school over the break – is a film from another time. The look, pace and even the trailer all lend itself to a cinematic feeling of the 70s. It is cosy filmmaking, that is warm and inviting but also very funny and with a lot of heart.

Paul Giamatti plays Mr Hunham, or ‘Wall-eye’ as he is nicknamed on account of his lazy eye. A disciplinarian who  lives on campus by himself and delights in the torment of his students. The boys in his care are a rag tag bunch of kids left behind, if they didn’t have abandonment issues before, they will now as cantankerous Mr Hunham intends on keeping the regular school schedule throughout the holidays.

Angus (Dominic Sessa) is at the centre of the film, a bright but cocky young man who is shouldering a complex depression, and that’s before he lands in the crooked crosshair of Wall-eye. Offsetting the tension among this makeshift family, is Miss Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) the school’s cook who will make meals for everyone out of whatever ingredients have been leftover. Reeling from the loss of her son serving in Vietnam, she does not give much away, but provides a vital maternal balance.

Stuck together in the confines of an empty school, these warring personalities find their own harmony, not without great resistance, and make The Holdovers a delightfully enjoyable film, tinged with sadness, that should be played for many Christmases to come.

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Poor Things (2024)

Written for RAF News January 2024

Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is a young woman revived and reborn in Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest weird and wickedly funny flight of fancy. 5 years since their last collaboration on The Favourite, the darkly comic historical film that earned Olivia Coleman an Oscar, comes another plunge into black comedy, but this time in the suitably wonky realm of fantasy.

Willem Dafoe plays Dr Godwin Baxter, a monstrous genius both feared and admired by his peers. Godwin is guardian to Bella, a woman who has ostensibly become a child again and will have to relearn the ways of life. Desperately wanting to protect the product of his experimentation but knowing that she needs to explore for herself, ‘God’ (a playfully direct nickname) allows for her to be married away to a young assistant. Just as the arrangements are being made, Bella is swooped up and stolen away by lustful opportunist Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo).

Taken travelling around Europe, imagined here in a kaleidoscopic series of sets with gorgeous production design often captured with fish-eye distortion, this is a bizarre coming of age story that becomes a perverted reflection of recent blockbuster Barbie. Childlike at first, Bella moves with a toddlers gait and speaks in simple form, before learning of life’s pleasures and toddling headlong toward them. Delighted to be her hedonistic guide, Duncan is devious but never enough to quash Bella’s hunger to learn and experience more. Ruffalo is hilarious, his slightly off English accent only adding to his preposterousness, where Stone’s alien bluntness is able to cut through social niceties, right to the bone. 

Left to play in a genre where surrealism can stretch out quite comfortably, Lanthimos creates a raucous fairytale filled with sex, violence and mad science.

Some additional notes…

Playthings

When I first saw Poor Things I had thought that it was an interesting inversion of Barbie. Have seen a lot of throwaway comparisons made since but feel there’s a bit more to it.

Both protags are reborn, given a new life, uncorrupt and naive. The darker forces of the world are imposed on them, which they resist along with dominating suitors, building resilience and strength of character until they confront their creator – Barbie with the maternal godlike figure of Ruth Handler, Poor Things presents two fathers in the end, one a parody of the mad scientist ‘God’ and the other a sadistic general. 

The ending of both films hinges on their female lead gaining agency over their lives, symbolised by taking ownership of their genitalia – Bella Baxter defending against the threat of mutilation, and slightly more curious is Barbie’s installation of a vagina (is this what happened?? It seemed like it to me..)

Sexy Baby

Loved the reframing and examination of the infantilised romantic interest, like Leeloo from The Fifth Element (or any Besson girls really). Duncan Wedderbern has a notable disinterest when Bella begins to learn more and her language develops, saying out right that she’s losing the adorable way that she speaks. A paedophilic gesture that implies he misses his status and domain over her. Fucking brilliant.

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Priscilla (2024)

Written for RAF News December 2023

Based on Priscilla Presley’s memoir, Sofia Coppola looks at the young wife of the ‘King of Rock’ in this beautifully languid biopic.

Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) is just a child when she meets Elvis (Jacob Elordi): she is 14, he is 24. They are in West Germany where Priscilla’s father is stationed as a United States Air Force officer, and where Elvis has been drafted to serve. Finding out that she is from Texas, he enquires after her, wanting the company of someone who reminds him of home.

This is 1959 and so Priscilla is already a fan, along with everyone else. Elvis doesn’t appear predatory, rather he is nervous, bouncing his leg uncontrollably and unable to hold eye contact. When the two become involved, it is not sexual to begin with, but it is abundantly clear that she is a child, a china-doll to dress up, and in fact ‘little girl’ becomes her affectionately ascribed moniker. Pulled into a world of rock and roll and hi-jinx with the icon of desire, the excitement is unlike any other. Back to her regular life as a school girl, the classroom is colourless by comparison. We see the indelible and rapturous effect that this relationship has had, and will continue to have.

Spaeny is perfect casting for the titular role. She manages to portray a childlike wonder alongside trepidation for things serious and adult, into which she is quickly slipping. Though their early exchanges are charged with a classical romance (the soundtrack borrowing from the period and contemporary music with great affect), the clear difference in size and frame keep you in mind of the gap between them. Jacob Elordi offers a charismatic Elvis with more subdued affectations, it is an intriguing performance that makes you lean in. As the story progresses, and their relationship intensifies, a darker side will be brought out by his affections for other women and pills.

Coppola is perfectly suited for this tale of young romance, and captures it with exquisite design. Dramatically, it feels restrained, and can quickly fizzle out. A true confectionery treat that is delicious but fleeting.

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Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Written for RAF News November 2023

A fraught and complex marriage is put on trial when a man is found dead in front of his chalet having fallen from the attic. Discovered with a fatal head injury, it may have resulted from a knock during the fall; or maybe just before.

Although we see the moments around his death, we do not yet have the context. This will be drawn out in the courtroom, where the film spends most of its runtime. Sandra (Sandra Hüller) is a successful German novelist living in France with her partially-blind son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), family dog Snoop, and until now, with her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) – but the relationship certainly had issues, as the prosecution will make evident. 

Sandra is suspected of killing Samuel for various reasons: the circumstances around the incident itself, their history of violent exchanges, and going as deep as the resentments that they harboured for one another. The courtroom scenes are less stagey than is common in films. By comparison this feels conversational, almost intimate, but nonetheless pointed and combative. Witnesses are brought to the stand and cross-examined, but when evidence is presented, or an anecdote described, we see the moments play out. One particular fight is viewed almost in its entirety, and it feels painfully lived in. 

The performances of the central cast are phenomenal. Samuel is only seen briefly in flashbacks, as someone struggling severely with work-life demands, whether he is suicidal or not will be debated. Daniel is 10 years old and witnesses the entire trial, every revelation fracturing the idea of his family. Sandra is the one in the spotlight, under scrutiny, her resilience almost working against her. The centre of the film, she enriches the text deeply though we cannot be sure if she is telling the truth.

Anatomy of a Fall is a riveting courtroom drama, expertly played.

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