Category: 2020s

Joanna Hogg | 1hr 46min

It isn’t long after Anthony’s death that Joanna Hogg picks Julie’s story back up in The Souvenir Part II. If its precursor was an examination of her first love, then this counterpoints that with a thoughtful study of her first major loss, and with a significantly larger emphasis on the young director’s professional life, the parallels between both women are closer than ever. We see the comparison in Julie’s efforts to make a film inspired by her troubled relationship with Anthony, but we also witness it in her increased confidence and emotional insight. Perhaps this mental shift is a result of Anthony’s influence beyond death, but it may just as well be her own messy, existentialist grief that gives way to such rich character development. Like the flowers we open on and frequently cut away to in her mother’s garden, she is still learning and maturing, gradually becoming the person that Hogg is today.

It is harder to parse The Souvenir Part II out from its predecessor in terms of style though, as Hogg remains remarkably consistent in her use of static wide shots dramatically narrowed by interior corridors and doorways to build oppressive frames around her characters. Perhaps the greatest visual shift here though is in location – there is no feasible way Julie can continue living in that apartment that is so full of Anthony’s overbearing presence. When she first returns to it, idly touching its walls and furniture, the space feels like a foreign world she no longer belongs to. It is her parents’ large home in the countryside to which she escapes, and its nourishing green gardens where we see her at her calmest.

The organic rapport between Honor Swinton Byrne and her real-life mother, Tilda Swinton, is even more present in Part II with the increased time they spend simply talking through their heartache. The latter gets a particular affecting scene in which she speaks of experiencing love and pain through her daughter, offering a soothing presence to an ensemble that is otherwise full of hyper-critical film students and professors. Richard Ayoade is back once again and is thankfully given even more screen time than the first film as Patrick, a delightfully hipster filmmaker whose response to Julie’s positive feedback to his direction is a flippant “That’s marvellously generic.”

Though the challenges of film school are still present, there is a distinct contrast between the way Julie pursues her creative ideas between both films, and it is especially notable in her discussions with university mentors. While they savagely pick at her script for its messy presentation and threaten to withdraw the school’s support, she speaks with a more direct passion than we have seen before. Perhaps the lack of precision they accuse her of is a result of her own chaotic state of mind following on from Anthony’s death, but even then, there is still a fresh self-assuredness to Swinton Byrne’s line deliveries.

On set, Julie aggravates crew members by deciding in the last second to change the camera’s placement, offends old collaborators in choosing not to cast them in her project, and patiently weathers complaints that she doesn’t know what she is doing. Hogg’s dialogue is entirely true to the realism of the piece in these scenes, overlapping characters trying to be heard in the heat of arguments and delivering the sort of amusingly ego-driven conflicts recognisable to anyone who has been on a film set.

As troubled as Julie’s film production is, it also acts as a healing process, helping her work through her memories of Anthony and questions of how much a problematic person should be venerated after their death. In basing a character directly off him though, Julie runs up against the difficulty of giving his actor an idea of who he really was, rather than her concept of him. Perhaps to address this tension between fiction and reality, Hogg denies showing us the products of Julie’s efforts on the night of her film’s premier. Instead, she digs deep into the fantasy and plays out the purest representation of her mind that she could not bring to the screen – a surreal collage of dreamlike settings, costumes, and symbols that she runs through, while Anthony’s words echo in voiceover. Within this break from the film’s reality where hallways of mirrors lead her through a dark funhouse, Hogg hits on cinematic gold, deconstructing her own artistic and grieving processes by merging them into a singular representation and naming it The Souvenir.

Up until the very last scene of Part II, there is still the question of whether Hogg would consider building on Julie’s story further with another sequel. If we were to compare the final seconds of both parts though, it is evident that there is far more closure here. Not necessarily because of the characters or narrative, which could theoretically keep spinning out beyond Julie’s university years, but because of Hogg’s pointed decision to move her camera beyond the walls of the soundstage upon which it is shot. This Brechtian swing at the fourth wall is far removed from anything we saw in the first film, and yet in Part II’s meditations on cinema as a filter through which reality is processed, it feels like a strangely natural conclusion. That the actual painting The Souvenir only makes a brief appearance here is negligible – the actual “souvenir” in question emerges from the memories we wish to hold onto, and the loving mementos that are crafted from their remnants.

The Souvenir Part II is currently playing in theatres.

Mia Hansen-Løve | 1hr 53min

The rocky isle of Fårö is laden with the cultural weight of renowned Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, and for those artists who come to the island looking to follow in his footsteps and the residents who can barely go a day without hearing his name, his impact is inescapable. It is evident in Bergman Island that director Mia Hansen-Løve is no exception, and neither are Chris and Tony, the foreign filmmaking couple at its centre. Their pilgrimage to Fårö may be motivated by Bergman, of whom they are both admirers, though for Chris it also possesses a light beauty which is not always present in his dark, psychological examinations of humanity.

The local populace here has at least capitalised well on their claim to fame, with Bergman Safaris whisking tourists around the island and historical shooting locations being turned into guesthouses. As Chris and Tony settle into the famous bedroom from Scenes From a Marriage, complete with an identical gold-and-white queen bed, they share a half-joking acknowledgement that staying there may not be healthy for their own relationship. And indeed, troubles do emerge along the way when Tony neglects to assist in Chris’ writing and she stands him up for a scheduled tour, though this does not motivate some magnificent artistic epiphany for her as it did for Bergman. Instead, Hansen-Løve uses this relationship to sketch out a divide in filmmaking methodologies between the tortured artist and the hopeful creator, both of whom struggle to understand the other.

It is when Bergman Island takes a dive into the film imagined by Chris during this retreat at the one-hour mark that it steps up to a new level, not necessarily for the pure power of its narrative, but rather for its formal interaction with the main storyline. As she narrates her ideas to a disinterested Tony, Hansen-Løve cuts straight to the imagined film in her mind, where two Americans, Amy and Joseph, travel to Fårö for a wedding and incidentally rekindle an old romance. Though this starts as a diversion from the main story, it eventually grows into a full act on its own, dominating a good forty minutes of this two-hour film, until Hansen-Løve begins to lightly toggle between both realities at once.

This may be the most Bergmanesque aspect of a film that is otherwise questioning how any Fårö-inspired piece of art could possibly escape from beneath the shadow of a director whose legacy has taken over the entire island. Objects and costumes begin to crossover between Chris and Amy’s respective worlds, until a collision of sorts unites them both into one, blurring boundaries in such a way that feels distinctly evocative of the Swedish auteur, though not entirely imitative. To point out those places where Hansen-Løve falls short of reaching the same stylistic or formal heights as Bergman is to neglect her statement about true originality in art, but regardless – one must wonder whether this might have been a little more even had its alternating structure been set up earlier on.

The history of art weighs heavy on Bergman Island, and it is evident that even in trying to defiantly escape its shadow, Hansen-Løve’s admiration and distaste for the European director is built into her artistic DNA. By endeavouring to peer past his creations and find that which inspired him in the first place though, fresh perspectives begin to emerge. In the lilting harps, bagpipes, and pan flutes that permeate the film, she also imbues this stony, Baltic island and its Nordic architecture with an expressive texture, building on her search for a new kind of sensitive appreciation. Where Bergman saw severe austerity in the landscapes of Fårö, Hansen-Løve discovers optimism and fantasy, and once Bergman Island hits its stride in its second half, she effectively weaves it deep into the layers of its storytelling.

Bergman Island is currently playing in theatres.

Paolo Sorrentino | 2hr 10min

There is a Christian sort of mysticism woven very lightly into this coming-of-age memory piece, rising above the nostalgic realism which is often more present in other films of this kind. Roma had its fair share of transcendent scenes, and Belfast found wondrous flashes of colour bursting through its monochrome photography, but within Paolo Sorrentino’s gentle reflections on his adolescence in The Hand of God, fate and folklore are both just as real as anything in Italy’s rich, tangible culture. Fabio is our stand-in for the young director here, passing time in 1980s Naples listening to music, cheering for soccer player Diego Maradona, and dreaming of one day working in the film industry. Perhaps the clearest shared trait between the director and character though is their equal reverence for Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, evident in Sorrentino’s exquisite compositions that add touches of spiritual surrealism to the boy’s otherwise ordinary life. The Hand of God is patient, joyful, and tragic, threading a theological sense of destiny through the vignettes that lead Fabio to adulthood.

We are initially introduced to Fabio via his family, but even before then Sorrentino sets the scene with a magnificent helicopter shot flying us along the gorgeous coastline of Naples in an unbroken three-minute take. Aunt Patrizia is the first character we meet, and right away she is whisked away from a street corner by a mysterious chauffeur claiming to be San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples, to a grand palazzo where a magnificent, shining chandelier lays on the floor. Here, San Gennaro introduces her to the Little Monk, a sprite in Neapolitan mythology who may either bless or curse those who encounter it. When Patrizia returns home recounting her experience and claiming it has granted her a child, the rest of her family brushes her off as crazy, save for young Fabio.

Within this boisterous Italian family, Fabio is the only one who still holds onto some empathy for Patrizia, who among the others is consider an outcast for her erratic behaviour. Surrounding them is a huge ensemble of amusingly provocative relatives, many of whom don’t hold back in their vindictive judgements and taunts. They will happily call their overweight sister a “whale”, and merely hours after meeting someone’s disabled fiancé, they cruelly toss the battery of the electrolarynx device he uses to talk into the ocean. There is also an implied acceptance of each other’s iniquities though, as in sweet moments of fondness they all share lunch together along a table in the beautiful countryside, and idiosyncratically whistle to each other in an affectionate call-and-response.

Fabio himself is an image of idealistic youth, quieter and more observant than most of his family, and constantly wearing tiny headphones around his neck. The actor who plays him, Filippo Scotti, even bears a slight resemblance to Timothée Chalamet, and through this lens it is hard not to draw comparisons with Call Me By Your Name, which similarly follows a laidback coming-of-age narrative in 1980s Italy. Like Chalamet’s Elio, Fabio even has sex for the first time with someone many years his senior, experimenting sexually before being left to move on. But where Elio pursues music and academia as his primary interests, Fabio actively attends movie auditions and worships at the altar of soccer player Diego Maradona.

It is from Maradona’s legendary goal at the 1986 World Cup quarter final that The Hand of God takes its name, the scoring itself being an unpenalised handling foul. With seemingly all of Naples behind him, this goal sends Fabio’s entire neighbourhood of apartment blocks into a joyous uproar, every family pouring out onto their balconies to celebrate in unison. It will go on to be an unforgettable day for many Italians, but for Fabio, the “hand of god” also comes to represent what might as well be divine intervention. While he watches the game with his extended family, his parents fall asleep on their couch, unknowingly succumbing to a gas leak that will soon prove lethal to them both, and which might have killed him too had he been home. Sorrentino half-jokes in interviews now that when this happened to him in real life, Maradona was the one who saved his life. To Fabio though, his survival was no accident.

As we witnessed in the first scene, Christian mysticism isn’t entirely out of the question for these characters. It is present in both the narrative and Sorrentino’s transcendent visual artistry, especially in his tracking shots that move with quiet deliberation, like an invisible entity wandering alongside Fabio in his journey. Even more stylistically impressive though is Sorrentino’s ability to capture picturesque beauty across such a wide variety of Italian geography and culture, from its open coastal landscapes to the Mediterranean architecture and period-specific décor of 1980s interiors. He also stages his actors in quietly powerful formations in these spaces, using one such composition to mark the film’s tragic midpoint when Fabio breaks down at the hospital and is caught by the camera within the narrowed gap of a doorway.

Given how much spirituality seeps into the small crevices of this film, we shouldn’t be surprised by the eventual return of the Little Monk at the end. It effectively bookends this narrative with two blessings, sending Fabio on his way to adulthood at the same point in time that Maradona’s team wins the World Cup, once again marking his journey with a parallel to the soccer champion. The surreal mysticism that subtly underlies The Hand of God is not just a private, spiritual treaty for Sorrentino, but a shared experience of community driven by the stories people share, whether those be historical sporting events, culture-defining films, or ancient Italian legends.

The Hand of God is currently streaming on Netflix.

Matt Reeves | 2hr 56min

The line drawn between the identities of Bruce Wayne and Batman has rarely been hazier. There is an inherent dissonance built into the character between the rich, orphaned billionaire and the justice-seeking street vigilante, and although Matt Reeves certainly takes the time to explore this aspect in The Batman, there is often the sense that between the two, it is the quiet, floppy-haired recluse living up in Wayne Tower who feels more uncomfortable in his own skin. Robert Pattinson barely even changes his voice when slipping into his crime-fighting persona, as with this rendition of Batman comes a brutal explosion of fury that is only barely contained beneath Wayne’s angsty demeanour. Forget about quippy, tension-diffusing one-liners – Reeves’ vision of The Batman is one of the darkest comic book movies in years, both thematically and visually, landing with the sort of psychological weight we haven’t seen since Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.

But where Nolan took Michael Mann’s sprawling urban crime dramas as his source of inspiration, capturing epic establishing shots of Gotham and crowds of extras with crisp IMAX photography, Reeves opts for a far more oppressive, grimier vision of the city, illuminating it with the dim, yellow glow of street lamps and headlights. David Fincher is the major influence here in both narrative and lighting, and cinematographer Greig Fraser deserves a good amount of the credit as well for capturing that noir-tinted visual flair which similarly defines the dingy aesthetic of such crime procedurals as Seven and Zodiac. It is through that angle which Reeves thrillingly teases out the mystery-solving detective side of Batman, leading him along a nocturnal trail of puzzles and ciphers left behind at grisly murder scenes by the enigmatic serial killer, the Riddler.

It is with these mysteries in mind that Reeves and Fraser resolve to obscure our view of this city even further, letting backgrounds and sometimes even entire scenes disappear from the camera’s focus. With an incredibly shallow depth of field, our vision often only extends so far as to make out the vague, hazy outline of silhouettes and objects in the background, at times even moving them across layers of the frame to come into view or alternately fade away. This effect gives the same impression as those shots that Reeves masterfully captures through dirty, rain-glazed windows, obfuscating our perspective with a gritty filter that keeps the answers we seek just slightly beyond our grasp. Even when the camera does pull back to reveal massive set pieces or the Gotham cityscape, there is still a sense of claustrophobia or intimacy between smaller ensembles. Perhaps this is just the impact of filming during a pandemic, but the impact is still tangible – The Batman is contained and surprisingly patient for an action film, taking the time to investigate each new mystery and examine the internal lives of its clandestine characters.

On this level, Reeves’ interpretation often nods in the direction of Martin Scorsese thrillers like Taxi Driver, giving Wayne a voiceover and numerous point-of-view shots that turn him into an uneasy, Travis Bickle-like icon. One of his foes, bigwig mobster The Penguin, even bears striking similarities to Jake LaMotta from Raging Bull, with an unrecognisable Colin Farrell plastered in lumpy, scarred prosthetics drawing heavily from Robert de Niro’s loud, boisterous performance.

Though he remains behind a mask for much of the film delivering unhinged monologues over online videos, Paul Dano’s wild envisioning of the traditionally camp Riddler takes a drastic turn into toxic internet culture, and as the film progresses a unique three-way relationship between him, Wayne, and Batman emerges. We have frequently heard other villains wax lyrical about that inextricable bond between them and Batman, but in the Riddler’s disturbing methods of exposing the corruption in Gotham’s wealthy elites, a compelling contrast is set between the two vigilantes, equally steadfast in their vengeful convictions.

Because as terrifying as the Riddler is at times, Reeves doesn’t hold back on setting up Batman as an equally frightening figure, lurking in shadows like a horror monster. Michael Giacchino contributes to this with one of the greatest superhero movie scores in years, driving home a minimalistic, four-note theme for Batman that pounds each beat with ominous force as he furiously advances towards his targets. He is relentless in his pursuits, particularly thriving in the darkness of one thrilling, pitch-black fight lit only by the blast of his enemies’ point-blank gunfire. At his most menacing, Reeves goes on to flip the camera and gaze fearfully upon Batman’s upside-down silhouette closing in on his trapped prey, backlit by a bright, yellow blaze.

There is something far creepier, or perhaps even spiritual about the Riddler’s justice-seeking ideals in comparison to Batman’s, rooted in his childhood at a rundown orphanage. Giacchino attaches the operatic ‘Ave Maria’ to this narrative thread, playing it diegetically a few times before weaving it into his score with subtle, minor variations, often in eerie anticipation of the Riddler’s murders. In these two primary musical motifs, he effectively captures two sides of violent retribution driven by deep-rooted beliefs, both of which form the basis of Reeves’ primary thematic concerns. And it is ultimately in those thoughtful examinations drawn out in a magnificently gloomy visual style and gripping narrative that The Batman emerges not just as a cinematic landmark of its franchise, but of the superhero genre in its entirety.

The Batman is currently playing in theatres.

Michael Sarnoski | 1hr 32min

Pig makes for a thoughtful, delectable debut for director Michael Sarnoski, but it would be wrong to not attribute a good portion of its success to Nicolas Cage’s patient, deadly serious performance of a man on a quest to recover his stolen truffle-hunting pig. For all of the jokes made about his overwrought line deliveries over his long career, it would be hard for anyone to pin down the standard “Nicolas Cage” character, but even with that in mind it is surprising that his portrayal of reclusive ex-chef Rob is so remarkably contained. When he speaks, his voice comes out in a soft, growling timbre, though all it really takes is his imposing screen presence and the disillusionment in his weary eyes to make visible the quiet pain of the character.

Rob’s relationship with his pig is less that of an owner and their pet, and more of a symbiotic companionship. We spend time getting used to their routine of sniffing out truffles, selling them off, and cooking up meals, and while Sarnoski relishes the wholesome beauty of it all through this largely dialogue-free opening, there is also a sadness hanging in the air. It is when Rob ventures back into the folds of Portland’s foodie culture which he dominated over a decade ago that, bit by bit, we discover more about his past, and any sense that this might be a John Wick-style quest for vengeance goes out the window. What Sarnoski delivers instead is a journey of grief, bargaining, and acceptance, in which his lost pig signifies something far more delicately personal than we might have assumed.
 
It is this deep sensitivity that Rob pours into his cooking, and it is through gentle montages that Sarnoski soaks in the artistry of the act. If John Wick’s superpower is his skill with weaponry and hand-to-hand combat, then Rob’s is the ability to evoke memories and emotions so powerful that he can move hearts with a single dish. This may seem an overly sentimental premise, but both Sarnoski and Cage’s dedication to the absolute honesty of the piece sells every tender minute of it.

The purity of Rob’s craft is felt even more deeply by its contrast to the foodie culture we witness elsewhere, in which high-end fine dining restaurants are stripped of their authenticity, and are founded on the corrupt exploits of dimly lit, underground crime rings. Sarnoski is just as in love with the sensual details of this world as he is in the emotional growth of his characters, and it his through his patience in building both from the ground up that Pig becomes a powerfully moving ode to the healing act of creation itself.

Pig is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Joachim Trier | 2hr 8min

There is something novelistic about the way Joachim Trier lays The Worst Person in the World out in a series of chapters around our young protagonist, Julie, each one unfolding a different vignette of her wandering life. Almost like a contents page, we are informed right at the start that there will be twelve of these collectively bookended by a prologue and epilogue, the intent being that this structure will help us sort through her messy mistakes, ambitions, and relationships. As she tentatively navigates a modern world, moving from medicine, to psychology, to photography, and teasing out the possibility of motherhood on top of it all, Trier guides us through with an omniscient narrator that turns her into a sort of literary protagonist. The result is a playfully formal character study of uncertainty, thoughtfully building out what might as well be a coming-of-age film for those approaching their 30s.

The chapters that attempt to give Julie’s life some semblance of order vary in length and significance, though their titles always offer some sort of prism through which we can interpret each new stage of her development. “The Others” is the first, following a difficult weekend away her with her boyfriend’s family, and is succeeded by “Cheating” where Julie pushes the limits of her relationship after encountering a handsome stranger, Eivind, at party she spontaneously decides to crash. Trier lightly flits through their bizarrely intimate night together like an escape from ordinary life, blowing smoke into each other’s mouths, watching each other use the toilet, and discussing the most personal parts of their lives, treading dangerously close to infidelity.

Later in the film, Trier dedicates a short chapter to Eivind’s own history with his girlfriend, briefly coming at the complicated situation from an alternate angle. This is the sort of narrative freedom we are granted in his third person perspective, especially given the past-tense narration which comes at these characters’ unsettled minds and stories with a sense of comforting resolution, implicitly assuring us that everything will eventually be ok. It is in this voice that Trier’s storytelling is layered with compassionate contemplations of Julie’s journey, accepting the “impossibility” of such paradoxical statements as “I do love you. And I don’t love you.” It is evident in this empathetic voiceover and Renate Reinsve’s enchanting performance that such indecisiveness comes not from apathy, but rather a great amount of passion spread so far across conflicting interests.

It also when Trier’s deft screenplay takes a step back to let silent sequences of magical realism take over that the depth of Julie’s love and fear emerges in full force. Her daydream of leaving Aksel for Eivind might flash by in the space of a second in reality, but Trier delights in immersing us in this fantasy across an entire day. At the moment that she realises what must be done, the world around her comes to a halt, and she takes off running down streets of frozen people and vehicles to search out the only other man not affected by this shift in time. As their imagined date inside this utopian bubble comes to an end, she runs back home with a smile stretched across her face, and we come to realise the significance of such a dream where life-changing decisions do not rub up against the pressures or frictions of a complicated, ever-changing world.

Had Trier indulged in a few more formal flourishes such as these, The Worst Person in the World might be considered a more ambitious piece of cinema, though there is certainly no shame in the admirable accomplishment of writing and structure that he presents us with instead. We don’t always trust Julie to make the best choices, but that feeling of messing up and feeling a crushing amount of shame is fully recognisable, not just in Reinsve’s performance but similarly in those other young actors around her. The empathy that bleeds through this screenplay is huge, though it is most clearly in Trier’s Brechtian distancing that he lets us consider Julie not as the centre of a world she is prone to destroying, but rather as a single, flawed adult living in a society that is full of them.

The Worst Person in the World is not currently available to stream in Australia.

Joe Wright | 2hr 3min

The tale of Cyrano de Bergerac, the 17^th century French cadet, duellist, and writer, is one that is rooted deeply in theatre tradition, with adaptations spanning back to the original staged dramatisation of his life in 1897. There is a classical power to its pure simplicity, telling a fable of unrequited love between the disfigured man and his distant cousin, Roxanne, who longs for Christian, a handsome soldier, while also being sought after by the cruel Duke De Guiche. But Joe Wright has also proven previously that it is in these adaptations of period pieces where his elegant style flourishes, using their archetypal narratives as a canvas for his sumptuous production design and fluid camerawork, calling back to Max Ophül’s swooning mid-century romances.

The differences in this interpretation are strikingly evident from the start, particularly in the casting of Peter Dinklage whose dwarfism replaces Cyrano’s traditionally long nose, and the anachronistic, folk rock musical numbers composed by American band The National. Where Wright’s version falters is in its clumsy attempts to reconcile these songs with its narrative pace, occasionally hitting on pieces of contrived sentiment. Rather than building scenes towards an organic emotional outpouring, many of the songs here rather land in the middle of ordinary conversations and end with awkward deflations, jarringly returning to plain dialogue almost immediately. It isn’t easy handling some of this material without letting it come off a little forced, and it takes everything in Peter Dinklage’s power to smooth over these bumps. His co-stars Haley Bennett and Kelvin Harrison Jr. don’t always fare so well, who in comparison to his weighty screen presence float by without making as much of an impact.

From a literary perspective, direct comparisons can be made between Cyrano’s traditional narrative and that of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, both being rooted in French history and strikingly similar archetypes between its four leads. Perhaps the most significant difference though is in Cyrano’s assistance of Christian, helping him win over Roxanne with his romantic poetry. Much like his Hunchback counterpart Phoebus, Christian is a handsome simpleton, though he uniquely possesses his own insecurities in seeing how Roxanne falls for Cyrano’s words, all the while claiming them as his own. While we wonder whether it is Christian’s looks or Cyrano’s words that Roxanne loves, both continue clinging to her affections, realising that without each other they cannot be the full person she desires.

The exquisite style that Wright brings to such a delicate tale of longing very deliberately recalls the graceful long takes he used in Pride and Prejudice, though in his staging of gorgeous dance numbers and even one thrilling piece of fight choreography, there is an added complexity to its movement. As it manoeuvres between rows of duellists fighting in synchronicity to the music and lifts above crowds in sweeping crane shots, Wright plays into his greatest strengths as a filmmaker, exploring this splendidly detailed piece of history with his restlessly intrigued camera.

As for the period décor, costuming, and lighting which it studies with such fascination, Wright captures a rare sort of Baroque beauty in evoking the painterly mise-en-scène of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. The natural lighting of candles spreads through theatres, manors, and hovels with a warm, dim glow, but there is also a striking allure in the way he diffuses sunlight across a cavernous fort of sandstone walls and scaffolding in the last scene too, lending a holy aura to Cyrano and Roxanne’s final interaction. Perhaps the most outstanding visual highlight to be found here comes as our three leads musically swoon and ruminate over Cyrano’s poetry, and Wright sends his letters fluttering down across Roxanne’s bedroom and Parisian streets in a display of aesthetic brilliance.

The film’s sudden shift to the frontlines of war where Cyrano and Christian both serve within the French military is as harsh as it is devastatingly awe-inspiring, hitting us right away with a gorgeous snowy landscape pierced by dark, rocky outcrops and French camps. Without the delicate splendour of 17^th century Paris at his disposal to dazzle us, wintery mountain ranges become the foundational beauty of these war scenes, pushing our male leads to the brink of physical and emotional exhaustion. It is also in these severe conditions though that we can feel the sweetness of Cyrano’s love for Roxanne persist even beyond Christian’s, his affection taking on an air of tragic fatefulness in the number Wherever I Fall where we watch the army’s dark silhouettes march from view into the thick, white mist. It is somewhat disappointing given its jaw-dropping style that Cyrano so often falls into forced sentiments, but Wright still at least proves his stylistic flair for handsome period pieces in his ingenious cinematography, using its visual majesty to engage with classical questions of poetry, war, and love.

Cyrano is currently playing in theatres.

Paul Verhoeven | 2hr 11min

According to the 17th-century Catholic Church, it was demonic possession that drove Italian nun, Benedetta Carlini, to lesbianism and unearthly miracles. This is not the version of history that Paul Verhoeven is interested in though, as his demystification of her legacy instead strives to pick apart the shrewd, disturbed mind of a woman who effortlessly disguised her cons behind a façade of piety. Perhaps in the hands of a director with a more sensitive touch, Benedetta might have positioned her as a wronged woman acting out in righteous vengeance, but Verhoeven is not one to glamourise the complexities of history. This is far more akin to Game of Thrones or Luis Buñuel’s surrealist critiques of religion than any traditional historical romance, foregrounding sex, violence, and power plays as the keys to navigating a culture of deep-rooted hypocrisy.

For quite a while in Benedetta, we too are led on by the strange visions and coincidences that seem to hold deeper spiritual significance to the young Catholic novice. When she is confronted by a group of men on the roads of Tuscany as an eight-year-old girl, a bird flying overhead unexpectedly lets its droppings fall in one of their eyes. While admiring a statue of the Mother Mary at the convent she has joined, it appears to dislodge of its own accord and land on top of her without leaving so much as a scratch. Perhaps such incidents would be meaningless to anyone else, but for a young Benedetta, they signify blessings from God. When she is older, dreams begin to plague her through days and nights, most of them depicting Jesus rescuing her from danger, beckoning her towards him, or kissing her, and thus begins the start of what she believes is her romantic marriage to Christ.

When another young woman, Bartolomea, arrives at the convent begging to be taken in to escape her cruel father, Benedetta slowly finds herself drawn into her playful flirtations. Soon enough, her spiritual and sexual awakening begin to feed off each other, individually intensifying until both explode in full force. Not long after Benedetta begins to bleed from the hands, feet, and sides in a holy display of stigmata, she submits to her lustful longings, revelling in two separate relationships she views as being roughly analogous, to the point of calling Bartolomea “my sweet Jesus” after having sex.

It is only natural for a provocateur as uncompromising as Verhoeven to take this narrative in such a transgressive direction, following in the footsteps of Buñuel with the use of sex and religion to interrogate the human pursuit of transcendence. Perhaps this is most tangibly captured in one wooden figure of the Virgin Mary, the bottom half of which Bartolomea carves into a dildo, thereby creating a sacrilegious symbol of two conflicting human desires reconciled as one. This item might as well be a stand-in for Benedetta herself, whose embrace of both her lust and faith becomes a destructive confusion rather than a harmonious union.

Accompanying Verhoeven’s shocking narrative is a thorough absorption in the natural lighting of its setting, basking in the golden sunrays filtering through church windows, as well as the dim glow of candles, lamps, and torches illuminating the dark rooms of the convent. It isn’t until the red blaze of a comet passing overhead casts its demonic light upon the town of Pescia that his stylistic visuals catch up with his characters, transforming this holy site into an unnatural, apocalyptic landscape. While religious figures point to it as an ill omen, Benedetta takes it as an opportunity to assert her prophetic ability, claiming it as a sign that Pescia will be spared from the plague spreading through Italy.

Benedetta goes to some truly wild places from here, and Virginie Efira proves to be more than up to the challenge of capturing every contradictory facet of the nun’s elusive identity. Each time her exposure or defeat seems imminent, it is her guile and charisma that can flip the power dynamic in an instant, often adopting a deep, harsh voice that claims to speak directly from Jesus. Even as we begin to see through her pretence, we still can’t help but side with her in many scenes that expose the equal hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, defined by its own dissonance between vicious brutality and self-important incompetence. It is in this war between two forms of religious corruption that Verhoeven’s irreverent provocations lend themselves perfectly to a compelling piece of Italian history, each one gradually building Benedetta towards an outburst of wrathful vengeance, and violently bringing the church to its knees.

Benedetta is currently playing in theatres.