Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 91: November/December 2021 i Little White Lies

Over the course of two interviews with the 62-year-old French actor Vincent Lindon – one on Zoom and one in person – I have gone from admiring his work to adoring his presence. On screen he embodies masculine gruffness, albeit with tenderness inside, and seems as if he could be a serious man to interview, perhaps inclined to curt answers. In reality he has a great deal to say, and extra lights come on and extra warmth emerges when he sees that you are engaged. The more you are turned on, the more he turns it up, creating a charismatic tension that explains why he is France’s answer to Tom Cruise. In Titane, he plays Vincent Legrand, a head fireman addicted to steroids whose young son, Adrien went missing over…

Directed by RYÛSUKE HAMAGUCHI Starring HIDETOSHI NISHIJIMA, TÔKO MIURA, REIKA KIRISHIMA Released 19 NOVEMBER Japanese writer/director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi confirms his status as a world-class talent with this scintillating, intuitive and radical adaptation of emo godhead Haruki Murakami’s melancholic short story ‘Drive My Car’, which featured in the 2014 collection, ‘Men Without Women’. What Hamaguchi and co-writer Takamasa Oe do with this film is threefold: they dutifully haul Murakami’s core text to the screen; they reform it, spin out sections and recalibrate the weight given to certain characters; and, finally, they seamlessly usher in Hamaguchi’s own abiding fascinations with the ways performance permeates our everyday lives, the cathartic qualities of confession, and the inability to truly know even basic truths about our friends, lovers and acquaintances. The opening credits drop in at around the…

Directed by REBECCA HALL Starring TESSA THOMPSON, RUTH NEGGA, ANDRÉ HOLLAND Released 29 OCTOBER The 1929 novel ‘Passing’ by Nella Larsen tells of two Black female acquaintances who, due to the light palour of their skin, are able to “pass” as white at the height of the Jim Crow era. Its story unfurls in the marginally progressive environs of New York, where racism has become something of a game, albeit one that is still able to evoke great anger and violence. This is not really a story about subterfuge or trickery – the idea that certain Black people have a way of getting one over their white oppressors simply by praying on blindness and ignorance. It’s more about options for survival and what it means for a Black person to enter into what…

Directed by RADU JUDE Starring KATIA PASCARIU, CLAUDIA IEREMIA, OLIMPIA MALAI Released 26 NOVEMBER Filmed at the height of the pandemic, this new film from prodigious Romanian satiricist Radu Jude follows a school teacher facing scandal after a sex tape appears online starring herself and her husband. The video’s appearance raises a number of questions: Where lies the line between public and private, and what issues arise when the distinction is shown to be unclear? What is to be defined as obscene or immoral and who gets to dictate this? Are there situations in which censorship is justifiable, or is it a slippery slope to greater suppressions? With a narrative split into three sections, Jude doesn’t attempt to resolve any of these questions, instead it prods and pokes at each, opening up further…

Directed by JUSTIN CHON Starring JUSTIN CHON, ALICIA VIKANDER, MARK O'BRIEN Released 3 DECEMBER There’s no doubt that the subject matter at the heart of Justin Chon’s Blue Bayou is compelling and prescient – it focuses on the injustice of foreign-born adoptees in the United States being deported due to a legal loophole as a result of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. Despite having spent the majority of their lives in America with no family or life in their native country (and potentially having endured abuse at the hands of their adoptive families) these people are forced to endure lengthy and expensive legal battles, else accept deportation. For Antonio LeBlanc (played by Chon) this means leaving behind his pregnant wife Kathy (Alicia Vikander), adoptive daughter Jessie (Sydney Kowalske) and his job as…

Directed by MIKE MILLS Starring JOAQUIN PHOENIX, WOODY NORMAN, GABY HOFFMANN Released 19 NOVEMBER Kids can be safely relied on to say the darnedest things, and in Mike Mills’ latest feature, indeed they do. But they also say everything else – the funniest things, the saddest things, the strangest things, the most wondrous things. Precocious little Jesse (cherubic Woody Norman) often manages all of this at the same time, his youthful lack of filter combining with his born sensitivity in such remarks as when he informs uncle Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) that the man’s not very good at expressing his emotions. The deceptive maturity of children, when played against the limits of how much an adult can fairly expect on that front, makes for gentle drama in Mills’ study of a hurting family’s unconventional…

Directed by CÉLINE SCIAMMA Starring JOSÉPHINE SANZ, GABRIELLE SANZ, NINA MEURISSE Released 19 NOVEMBER “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” wrote French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir in 1949. Seventy years on, her observation about gender identity holds true – and finds form in Petite Maman, a gentle drama about daughterhood by French writer/director Céline Sciamma. It’s set predominately in a modest house, with a small cast that opts for subtlety, but this is no simple, traditional nor literal coming-of-age tale. By welcoming the benevolent shadow-self lurking behind de Beauvoir’s quote – that is, the adult who carries their childhood inside them like a pearl – Petite Maman becomes a profound meditation on inheritance Walking the halls of an aged care home, bidding formal farewells to the residents, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz)…

Directed by MOHAMMAD RASOULOF Starring BARAN RASOULOF, MAHTAB SERVATI, MOHAMMAD SEDDIGHIMEHR Released 3 DECEMBER Unfolding across four divergent stories, Mohammad Rasoulof’s Golden Bear-winning anthology film There Is No Evil presents a potent tapestry of perspectives informed by capital punishment in present-day Iran. Rather than being caught between poetry and censorship, Rasoulof strays from the stronghold of allegorical aesthetics and instead adopts a necessary and uncompromising antagonism against governmental oppression with fearless narrative urgency. Each short is emotionally draining in its portrayal of the personal responsibility of executioners against a backdrop of authoritarian rule. Depictions of complex family dynamics, mandatory military conscription and corrupt state practices work in tandem to create a textured understanding of violence and its banality, of its immersion in the quotidian and the mundane. The first two vignettes are captivating…

Directed by REINALDO MARCUS GREEN Starring WILL SMITH, AUNJAUNE ELLIS, SANIYYA SIDNEY Released 19 NOVEMBER There’s a difficult balance to strike in Reinaldo Marcus Green’s King Richard. The accomplishments of many a prodigy – from Andre Agassi to Tonya Harding to Mozart – have been partially attributed to parental ambition. But, from the outset, a film centering the accomplishments of two of the greatest sports women who have ever lived on their father makes for an uneasy proposition. It also has to escape the shadow of a brazen Oscar bid from its star Will Smith, whose open ambition to secure a statuette has garnered nominations for Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness, but his trophy cabinet remains empty. Inspiring biopics seem the safe path to silverwear, and some of the moments in this…

Directed by SHINJI SÔMAI Starring HIROKO YAKUSHIMARU, TSUNEHIKO WATASE, RENTARÔ MIKUNI Blu-ray/DVD Released 15 NOV You never really know what you are going to get with Shinji Sōmai, but it is generally going to be good. In Sailor Suit and Machine Gun – an early film by the underrated Japanese director who made gems like Moving and Typhoon Club prior to his passing in 2001 – unpredictability is key to the film’s success. Meshing elements of the yakuza genre with a coming-of-age story, Sailor Suit and Machine Gun moves gleefully between action and comedy, continually upending expectations about where the narrative will go next. After her father’s death, high-school student Izumi (pop idol Hiroko Yakushimaru) inherits his role as leader of a small mob. At first this seems like fun, but when her…

What is the greatest film score of all time? That’s a debate that has the potential to range all day, but whatever one’s answer, the relationship between music and the moving image is incontrovertible. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, filmmakers were swift to capitalise on the powerfully symbiotic relationship between visual poetry and subjective, illusory notes on a cue sheet. In the days of vaudeville and silent cinema, it was common practice for live pianists to perform live to picture before increasingly sophisticated working practices began to take hold. Organs were installed that could mimic objective sound elements like bird songs, and a boom in cinema construction saw movie theatres equipped with specially designed orchestra pits capable of accommodating the finest classical musicians of the period.…

Directed by HARRI SHANAHAN, SIÂN A WILLIAMS Released 26 NOVEMBER Against a backdrop of 1980s austerity and oppression, a group of punk lesbian activists and artists meet at the Greenham Common peace camps and begin to drift towards the squats of South London. This is where punk rebellion and its disruptive spirit turn into direct action and loud protest against the silencing strategies of Section 28 and the AIDS epidemic. The punk music of the Sleeze Sisters and the Sluts from Outer Space blasts at The Bell pub in King’s Cross, and the unequivocal hedonism of the ’80s SM dyke scene is embraced in the erotic magazines ‘Love Bites’ and ‘Quim’. These intersections of politics and intimacy, party and protest, allow filmmakers Harri Shanahan and Sîan Williams to produce a historical and…

Directed by PAOLO SORRENTINO Starring FILIPPO SCOTTI, TONI SERVILLO, TERESA SAPONANGELO Released 19 NOVEMBER Paolo Sorrentino loves breasts. This is striking to anyone who has watched The Great Beauty, Youth or Loro, in which naked female flesh is as integral to his set decoration as whooshing dolly shots are to his cinematic language. Amongst other things, The Hand of God is the story of the patient zero of boobs, which belong to Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri) aunt to the Chalamet-esque protagonist, Fabietto Schisa (Filippo Scotti). This Naples-set coming-of-age story is a portrait of the artist Sorrentino as a young man, before and after a tragedy of worst-possible-nightmare-so-couldn’t-really-happen proportions replaces boisterous family life with a lonelier path. We’re introduced to the sprawl of the Schisa family through Patrizia one night as she waits in a…

Directed by VALDIMAR JÓHANNSSON Starring NOOMI RAPACE, HILMIR SNÆR GUĐNASON Released 24 JULY In the beautiful but harsh Icelandic countryside, María (Noomi Rapace) and her husband Ingvar (Hilmir Snar Guðnason) tend to their sheep farm in relative harmony. The work is hard and the days are long, but the couple seem content enough – until a shocking discovery among their flock offers them both a gift and a curse. The fable-like quality of Valdimar Jóhannsson’s feature debut is evident in this premise alone, as a childless couple yearn for a baby to call their own, only to fall prey to the old adage ‘be careful what you wish for.’ Their unexpected arrival, Ada, is an unconventional child who they must keep secret from the world – a situation complicated by the arrival of…

Directed by JANE CAMPION Starring BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH, KODI SMIT-MCPHEE, KIRSTEN DUNST Released 24 JULY The year is 1925. Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) owns a ranch in Montana with his brother George (Jesse Plemons). Nearby, recently widowed Rose (Kirsten Dunst) is trying to survive with her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) by running a small restaurant. One visit from the Burbanks later and Rose has a new husband in George and a new enemy in Phil. “Hello, brother Phil,” says Rose on entering her new home, the dark and well-appointed Burbank ranch. “I’m not your brother, you’re a cheap schemer,” he says, as her face crumples. Dunst does emotional heavy lifting as a character who has trouble speaking, showing ragged and devastated emotions as Phil finds new ways to torture her. This is a man’s world…

Directed by PHILIP BARANTINI Starring STEPHEN GRAHAM, VINETTE ROBINSON, ALICE FEETHAM Released 3 DECEMBER The professional kitchen should lend itself well to the sort of sweat-inducing freneticism popularised by the Safdie brothers, at least judging by TV docusoap Kitchen Nightmares. So as to prove such a thesis, enter Philip Barantini’s second feature, Boiling Point: shot in what appears to be a single take (yep, literally an uncut gem) across a Dalston restaurant’s evening service, here’s one to make you sweat more than a hard-pressed maître d’. Enter a haggard Stephen Graham, whose character, Andy, is once again having a torrid time of it (is there anyone better, in the current moment, at playing the under the cosh everyman). As head chef, he has the sort of sandpapery stubble that signposts lassitude, his hands…

Directed by EVA HUSSON Starring ODESSA YOUNG, JOSH O’CONNOR, OLIVIA COLMAN Released 24 JULY Somewhere at the heart of Eva Husson’s period drama Mothering Sunday is a story worth telling. The director makes her English-language debut with an adaptation of Graham Swift’s 2016 novel of the same name – written for the screen by playwright Alice Birch – and finds a handsome, magnetic cast to paint this portrait of love and loss. Yet there is so little potent emotion or personality in the film, as mournful stares and countless intimate scenes look the part but ring completely hollow. Odessa Young rises to the occasion as Jane Fairchild, who we find both on the eponymous Spring holiday and again at several points in her future. She is an orphaned maid working for Mr and…

Directed by MICHAEL PEARCE Starring RIZ AHMED, OCTAVIA SPENCER, JANINA GAVANKAR Released 10 DECEMBER A film I find myself thinking about a lot is Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter from 2011, in which Michael Shannon plays a father plagued by apocalyptic visions which lead him to construct a bunker beneath his property in Ohio. The question hangs over the film as to whether his premonitions are real or a symptom of mental illness; it’s a beautiful, haunting end-of-days drama that regularly springs to mind whenever I have a nightmare, or see a particularly overcast sky. Michael Pearce’s second feature Encounter recalls Nichols’ work, but only in that it’s an inferior film which deals with similar subject matter. Riz Ahmed plays ex-marine Malick Kahn, who appears to be on some sort of covert mission concerning…

Directed by DENNIS HOPPER Starring LINDA MANZ, DENNIS HOPPER, SHARON FARRELL Blu-ray/DVD Released 8 NOV After 1971’s The Last Movie, it might be thought that Dennis Hopper would never make a film again. Yet, nine years later came Out of the Blue, a film that is just as unique and unhinged as his psychedelic western wig-out, if differently so. Out of the Blue imagines a world in which the brash young beatniks of the ’60s (as seen in Hopper’s Easy Rider) have aged but not grown, and now have children of their own. The summer of love is over, Elvis is dead, disco sucks, and punk is here to stay. The hippies rebelled against the old world, but now their kids despise the one they imagined instead. Hopper plays Don, recently out of…

LWLies.com A perfect digital companion to the magazine experience, our website is updated daily with new stories, reviews and features. Head over to read our interview with Lashana Lynch, star of debbie tucker green’s stunning ear for eye. Become a member Support independent journalism by signing up to become a Little White Lies member. We offer exclusive behind-the-scenes titbits, monthly movie recommendations and access to quarterly masterclasses hosted by staff and friends of the mag. Truth & Movies: A Little White Lies podcast Michael Leader hosts our weekly delve into new releases and discursive movie chatter. Recent episodes have included discussions on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch. YouTube.com/LWLies Our hub for video work of all varieties, including bespoke video essays, filmed interviews and the best new…

“I have identified as a composer since being a child, when I scribbled dots on manuscript paper while sitting at. the piano… to me a composer is someone who could write. music the same way an· author wrote books or an artist painted paintings.” Suzanne Ciani “As a composer, you keep going and going until you surprise yourself."” John Murphy…

Directed by PAUL ANDREW WILLIAMS Starring NEIL MASKELL, DAVID HEYMAN, LOIS BRABIN-PLATT Released 5 NOVEMBER With the exception of the coming-of-age drama, the revenge thriller must be the most well-worn story template in all of cinema. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using revenge as a protagonist’s primary motivation but there needs to be something unique about the way it’s depicted to properly pique audience interest. With Bull, write/director Paul Andrew Williams’s USP is the gruesome, unflinching manner in which his title character metes out punishment to the former friends and family who have wronged him. Neil Maskell plays the brooding Bull, a former enforcer in a vicious criminal crew led by his father-in-law Norm (David Heyman, delightfully unpleasant). Through a series of flashbacks we gradually that learn Bull’s relationship with Norm’s daughter Gemma…

Directed by PAUL SCHRADER Starring OSCAR ISAAC, TIFFANY HADDISH, TYE SHERIDAN Released 5 NOVEMBER Here are the rules for The Card Counter drinking game: when you see a character take a drink in the film, you have to match them. Tom Collins with Tanqueray. Double Jack Daniels. Double Johnnie Walker. Manhattan. Soda water. Beer. First you get that buzz which turns to mild euphoria, then the nasties kick in and the sickness starts to rise. It emulates the experience of watching Paul Schrader’s rollocking new spin on his God’s Lonely Man project, this time focusing on Bill Tillich (aka William Tell), played by Oscar Isaac (easily his best performance since Inside Llewyn Davis), a man with a past who just likes to wrap his table lamps in bed sheets and play a bit…

Directed by AMJAD ABU ALALA Starring MUSTAFA SHEHATA, MAHMOUD MAYSARA ELSARAJ, ISLAM MUBARAK Released 12 NOVEMBER Without meaning to sound glib, Amjad Abu Alala’s emotionally tortuous feature debut plays like a classic movie about teen angst, in which a brooding youngster becomes obsessed with the prospect of his untimely demise. Its story doesn’t play out in some grey Western suburbia, rather a far-flung Sudanese village wrought from glowing sandstone in which our brooding hero Muzamil (Mustafa Shehata) must carry the existential weight of a death sentence handed down to him while just a babe. The doomsday clock applied to this boy’s life is the result of a whirling dervish who topples over at a traditional ceremony and then counts to 20 – onlookers assume the meaning to be that Mumazil will die at…

Directed by PHILIP STEVENS Starring HANNAH DOUGLAS, SEBASTIAN DE SOUZA, EMMETT J SCANLAN Released 26 NOVEMBER A faraway beachside encampment, somewhere in Tudor England, and toxic masculinity is running rife among the men and women of this fair isle. Lapwing is debutant Philip Stevens’ film of Laura Turner’s script, and its themes of domination, gaslighting and psychological abuse across gender lines could apply to any place or any time. At the centre of all this is Emmett J Scanlan’s David, a knife-wielding, beady-eyed confidence trickster who has set up a scheme to secure passage to those looking to flee the country. As they wait for a boat to arrive (will it ever?), the mute Patience (Hannah Douglas) connects with a strapping yet tender Egyptian wanderer named Rumi (Sebastian de Souza), and when David…

Directed by PABLO LARRAÍN Starring KRISTEN STEWART, TIMOTHY SPALL, SALLY HAWKINS Released 5 NOVEMBER With films such as Tony Manero and Post Mortem, Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín has made a name for himself as a purveyor of bleak surveys of life under dictatorship conditions that foreground terror, oppression and sudden violence. With Spencer, his strange psychological fable about the late Diana Spencer over an especially tense Christmas season at the royal Sandringham estate, he presents the British monarchy as a daffy totalitarian enclave, steeped in traditions which only serve to extend their old world shelf life and filter them out from the plebs. It is an understatement to say that many living royals – including the current regent – do not come off well in this film. The little white mouse in the…

Directed by DÉNES NAGY Starring LASZLO BAJKO, FERENC SZABÓ, TAMAS GARBACZ Released 12 NOVEMBER Unlike its title suggests, light is mostly absent in this cold World War Two drama, where stoic Hungarian farmer István Semetka (Ferenc Szabó) is enlisted as second lieutenant in a unit sent to hunt down Soviet partisans. They reach an isolated village after their commander is killed in an ambush. Semetka takes command in a manner that’s vacant, passive and detached – a testament to the need to stay emotionless in order to survive the atrocities of war. It’s a claustrophobic film, where the crushingly bleak nature of war is made to feel tangible. The characters are played not by professional actors, but agricultural workers from rural Hungary and Latvia, and their naturalistic performances are suitably framed by Tamás…

Directed by REGGIE YATES Starring ELLIOT EDUSAH, JORDAN PETERS, REDA ELAZOUAR Released 26 NOVEMBER It’s New Year’s Eve in London. The year is 1999. Google is something we’ve barely heard of. Tamagotchis are something we all still care about. Three best friends are trying to break into the music scene through pirate radio and embark on a mission to see in the new millennium in style. It’s a simple premise that forms the backbone of Reggie Yates’ feature debut, Pirates, yet the film has all the ingredients to become a British classic. Cappo (Elliot Edusah), Two Tonne (Jordan Peters) and Kidda (Reda Elazouar) have a solid agenda of ‘Tekken and titties’ to see in the new year, before Two Tonne’s infatuation with local girl Sophie (Kassius Nelson) causes him to promise her the…

Directed by LIZ GARBUS Starring JACQUES-YVES COUSTEAU Released 12 NOVEMBER Spellbound by the splendour, silence and harmony of the sea, Jacques “Jeke” Cousteau, with his characteristic red knitted cap and deeply rooted nomadic instincts, was only truly happy when underwater. Liz Garbus’ documentary attempts a straightforward dive into the depths of the man’s own Odyssey: from being the co-inventor of the first commercially successful scuba equipment, to popularising filming technologies that brought the underwater imagination to the surface. In short, Cousteau paved the way for future generations of divers, environmentalists and underwater filmmakers. Although faded into relative obscurity, his films linger on, capturing the glorious seascapes and powered by gripping storytelling. He used to say: “My films are not documentaries. They are true adventure films.” Eschewing the conventional talking heads format, Garbus’ film…

Directed by MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL Starring OLIVIA COLMAN, JESSIE BUCKLEY, DAKOTA JOHNSON Released 17 DECEMBER Cinema is full of stories about trouble in paradise. There is something about the unspoiled tranquility of sun and sea that tempts past demons to the surface, as if our species wasn’t built to be happy for long. Maggie Gyllenhaal uses her directorial debut – based on a 2006 novel of the same name by Italian sensation Elena Ferrante – to revel in and wrestle with what it looks like to have been a bad mother. The result is an off-kilter psychodrama driven by a stressful leading lady. When Leda (Olivia Colman) first arrives at the Greek island where she is renting a room from weatherbeaten American expat, Kyle (Ed Harris), she can’t believe her luck. She is a…

Produced by RUNME AND RUN RUN SHAW Starring VARIOUS Blu-ray/DVD Released 6 DEC If an avowed love of Kung Fu movies has led you to the oeuvres of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, your next port of call might be to delve into the work of iconic and prolific Hong Kong producers Runme and Run Run Shaw. The 10 films included on this new ‘Shawscope Volume One’ box set represents a mere drop in the ocean – perhaps a fifth of the brothers’ annual production output (from the mid-’60s through to the early ’80s Shaw Studios were punching out films at a rate of roughly 50 a year). Highlights include Jeong Chang-hwa’s King Boxer, aka Five Fingers of Death, which is a film that Quentin Tarantino has probably watched once a month for…

Aaron Lockwood is an illustrator, printmaker, animator and college lecturer based in Ipswich, with a healthy interest in film and pop culture. Evangeline Gallagher is an illustrator from Baltimore, Maryland, USA who loves limited colour, horror movies and her dog, Charlie. Jenifer Prince is an illustrator and visual artist based in Brazil who loves to work with a mid-century comic book aesthetic. Agnes Ricart is an illustrator and animator from Spain. Her work is bright, bold and defiantly colourful. Lucas Peverill is a freelance illustrator from the UK. Working in editorial illustration, poster art and Visual development. Feature writers Sam Bodrojan is a freelance film critic from Philadelphia, PA. Anna Bogutskaya is a freelance film writer and broadcaster, co-founder of The Final Girls collective and director of Underwire Festival. She…