Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 109 i Little White Lies

WELCOME TO… LWLIES 109: A TILDA SWINTON READER This issue is a study of the actor as auteur. As one is often drawn into looking for patterns in the work of writers and directors, those that perform in front of the cameras are dismissed as shape-shifting pawns, human avatars manifesting the desires and dreams of those shady figures behind the viewfinder. Tilda Swinton – Ongoing is a major exhibition taking place at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam between 28 September 2025 and 8 February 2026. Rather than the usual mausoleum of trinkets and artefacts displayed to help us retroactively piece together a creative life already lived, Ongoing is about performance as a continuum that gifts us the infinite possibility for renewal and rebirth. “I wouldn’t call her an actor,” says Julia…

Tilda Swinton is credited as ‘The Nurse’ in Derek Jarman’s 1989 film adaption of Benjamin Britten’s ‘War Requiem’. She first appears in the crimson and white uniform of a World War One nurse, standing over the body of the Unknown Soldier and pressing her fingers into her eyelids as she lets out a Brechtian silent scream. About 50 minutes into the film, Swinton appears in an altogether different guise – now seated on the stone steps of an altar, she wears a large, masculine white shirt which has fallen off her left shoulder, baring her pale skin. Her head piece is gone, and now she sits twisting her long blonde hair into tightly woven plaits. Britten wrote his ‘War Requiem’ for the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral in May…

Directed by ARI ASTER Starring JOAQUIN PHOENIX, PEDRO PASCAL, EMMA STONE Released 22 AUGUST America was already some way down the road of self-immolation by the year 2020, with President Donald Trump having already pounced on the convenient capacity of electronic media to obscure the nature of commonsense truth. In the sleepy township of Eddington, New Mexico, sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) refuses to employ his state-mandated powers to enforce mask usage during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, seeing the global outbreak which laid waste to millions of lives as somebody else’s problem. Incumbent mayor of Eddington, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), meanwhile, demands that Cross put his unhelpful personal beliefs aside and promote public safety during this unprecedented moment. Though he may be responsible for slick, manipulative campaign videos and seems…

Directed by ALBERT SERRA Starring ANDRÉS ROCA REY Released 5 SEPTEMBER The closest literary analogue to Albert Serra’s astonishing new film, Afternoons of Solitude, is Ernest Hemmingway’s lyrical exploration into the grisly allure of bullfighting – ​ ‘Death in the Afternoon’. It is a piece of spare cine-portrature about Peruvian/​Spanish ​“maestro” toreador Andrés Roca Rey, with Artur Tort’s camera locked into his every bodily fluctuation and gurning grimace as he whisks a slew of raging bulls back and forth under his cape and blood arcs into the air like champagne. In terms of its cinematic connections, it sits somewhere between Jennie Livingston’s classic text on queer expression, Paris is Burning, and those strange faux-ethnographic documentaries such as Mondo Cane which tease viewers with the prospect of seeing real people and animals die. The…

Directed by MACON BLAIR Starring PETER DINKLAGE, LUISA GUERREIRO, JACOB TREMBLAY Released 29 AUGUST “J ust play the fucking hits,” is the advice given by grotesquely combed-over, club-footed Fritz Garbinger (Elijah Wood) to members of local band The Killer Nutz, some way into The Toxic Avenger. He is talking about an open-air performance that they have to give, midway between carrying out abductions and assassinations for Fritz’s brother Robert (Kevin Bacon), who operates a run-down highly pollutant factory producing supposed panaceas that are actually carcinogenic. Fritz’s words might as well apply to writer/director Macon Blair’s remake, which still plays many of the old tunes from Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman’s 1984 original. The setting, for example, is “St Roma’s Village”, concealing within itself, in mutated form, the original toponym Tromaville. For this The Toxic…

Directed by URŠKA DJUKIĆ Starring JARA SOFIJA OSTAN, MINA ŠVAJGER, SAŠA TABAKOVIĆ Released 29 AUGUST It feels churlish to complain about the queer coming of age drama, especially when such films originate from countries that are particularly hostile towards LGBTQ+ people. Often conflated with the coming out drama, us queer cinephiles know their narrative beats off by heart and it’s sometimes hard to suppress an eye-roll. Little Trouble Girls, a debut by Slovenian director Urška Djukić, which takes its title from a Sonic Youth song, certainly doesn’t boast a strikingly original set-up. Lucija (Jara Sofija Ostan) is a shy, virginal 16-year-old with a severe fringe who’s yet to start her period. She’s irrepressibly drawn to Ana-Marija (Mina Švajger), a popular, vivacious fellow member of the choir at their strict Catholic girls’ school. Cue…

Directed by JONATHAN MILLET Starring ADAM BESS, ATAWFEEK BARHOM, JULIA FRANZ RICHTER Released 19 SEPTEMBER Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail played at the Cannes Film Festival a full year before Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or-winning It Was Just an Accident, which is worth noting in that both films have strikingly similar set-ups regarding the moral and ethical pretexts of bringing war criminals to justice. Hamid (Adam Bessa) shiftily walks up to a park bench in a playground and sits down next to Nina (Julia Franz Richter). They look like they’re from different worlds, but as she wanders off, he grabs an attaché case she leaves on the floor and scarpers. He is a Syrian refugee, inducted into a covert crew looking to track down and expose similarly displaced countrypersons who may now be trying to…

It’s that time of year again when the capital is flooded with film. When the sun rises on Wednesday 8 October, anyone wandering past the Royal Festival Hall will likely hear the tap of hammers as the final touches to the London Film Festival opening night gala are being put into place. The great Rian Johnson is back with the third chapter of his beloved Benoit Blanc saga, named Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, with Daniel Craig back as the southern sleuth in a film that boasts more stars than they’ve got in heaven: Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack and Thomas Haden Church. The full festival programme will be revealed on 3 September, so…

Directed by OTTO PREMINGER Starring JEAN SEBERG, DAVID NIVEN, DEBORAH KERR Indicator Released 18 AUGUST Just try to wrap your head around the fact that a major studio funded, produced and distributed this psychosexual drama that, almost 70 years on, remains more sophisticated, troubling and radical than 99 per cent of equivalent modern fare. In the monochrome present, jaded party girl Cécile (Jean Seberg) has a touchy-feely relationship with the much older cad, Raymond (David Niven), who turns out to be her father. A colour flashback takes us to the crystal blue skies of the Côte d'Azur, where he toys with a buxom strumpet, and Cécile is just glad to see him happy. In rolls Deborah Kerr’s older, wiser, more responsible fashionista Anne, and Raymond sees a chance to go straight and tumbles into…

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As with one of her great friends and creative partners, David Bowie, Tilda Swinton is an avid reader. It’s fun to delve into old interviews and just bump into another weird and wonderful literary reference, or a hat-tip to a book she’s currently enjoying. These range from old faithfuls like Muriel Spark, Herman Melville and Nancy Mitford, to some intriguing deep cuts such as Patrick Dennis’ 1955 comic novel, ‘Auntie Mame’, the collected works of poet Frank O’Hara, and the complete essays of Michel de Montaigne (“Should, in my humble opinion, replace Gideon in hotel bedside tables the world over”). One book that crops up on a few occasions is ‘Bento’s Sketchbook’ from 2011. It’s a late work by the art critic and poet-philosopher, John Berger, who trained a generation…

Were you there? In 2008, between 15 and 23 August, two boilersuited revolutionaries, Mark Cousins and Tilda Swinton, rented a grand old ballroom in Nairn, Scotland and threw a movie festival. This one didn’t have stuffy press desks, accreditations, queues, club-weilding security guards, red carpets or throngs of slathering paparazzi. It did have bean bags, baked goods, dance party intervals and the sort of downhome vibe you might find at a Portland healing retreat. The festival lasted eight-and-a-half days, and the screening programme reflected a more urgent and grab-bagish variation of modern cinephilia, with films by Ozu, Lubitsch, Powell and Pressburger, Fassbinder, and even one starring OG pensioner detective, Miss Marple. We tracked down three attendees who offer some glowing recollections of their time in the Ballroom… Laura Anderson: I…

In 2023, speaking to The Guardian about the making of Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter, Tilda Swinton described her relationship with the filmmaker as, “The OG working relationship. It set the course for me … profoundly personal and unapologetically vulnerable attempts at unearthing the unsayable things. I realise looking back that so many of our shared interests and dialogues when we were young were about experiencing life from a similar position of somewhat removed, even alienated, observation.” In Hogg’s gothic ghost story, The Eternal Daughter, Swinton plays both a mother and daughter, a continuation of their explorations of memory and intimate relationships after The Souvenir: Part I (2019) and Part II (2021). Prior, it had been 33 years since Tilda starred in Joanna’s NFTS graduation film - the tale of…

Directed by ETHAN COEN, TRICIA COOKE Starring MARGAET QUALLEY, AUBREY PLAZA, CHRIS EVANS Released 5 SEPTEMBER Ethan Coen has earned the right to do whatever the hell he wants when it comes to making art. Whether that translates to whatever the hell we, the audience, want is another matter entirely, as this new one, co-created with partner and long-time editor Tricia Cooke, is the blithely inconsequential middle chapter of a proposed trilogy that was kicked off in 2024 with the glibly amusing lesbian exploitation caper, Drive-Away Dolls (née Drive-Away Dykes). Honey Don’t! reteams with Dolls star Margaret Qualley who plays power-suited private shamus Honey O’Donahue. She’s investigating the strange death of a female parishioner from a local superchurch run by Chris Evans’ kinky priest Dean. Meanwhile, she strikes up a sexual relationship with…

Directed by JEAN-PIERRE AND LUC DARDENNE Starring BABETTE VERBEEK, SAMIA HILMI, LUCIE LARUELLE Released 29 AUGUST The Dardenne brothers’ new film, Young Mothers, opens at a bus station — one of the unlovely liminal spaces in which their dramas tend to unfold. We’re in the company of a young girl with baby-fat cheeks, rabbity eyes, and coiled nerves. But soon, a slight downward tilt of the handheld camera reveals that Jessica (Babette Verbeek) is pregnant, her belly all out of proportion with her scrawny frame. Jessica, whose little girl is due in a few weeks, is the newest arrival at a group home for teenage mothers outside the Dardenne brothers’ native Liege. There, they change, wash, and feed their infants under the watchful eye of nurses and social workers who step in when…

Directed by JAN-OLE GERSTER Starring SAM RILEY, STACY MARTIN, JACK FARTHING Released 12 SEPTEMBER There’s a man face down in the sand, unmoving. Nothing but vast golden sand dunes and endless blue sky surrounds him. Then, his body twitches awake. This is the raspy and rugged Tom (Sam Riley), who regularly wakes up hungover on the beach or by the pool or in his car with no recollection of how he got there. This jarring opening to German director Jan-Ole Gerster’s first English-language film sets the stage for one man’s wandering descent into a shrouded mystery that shifts between thrilling and sluggish. Combining Hitchcockian thrills with a seductive European sensibility, Islands is a slow-burner set in an all-inclusive Canary Islands resort. Tom, a professional tennis player-turned-coach, spends his days pelting balls at holidaymakers.…

Directed by NEO SORA Starring HAYATO KURIHARA, YUKITO HIDAKA, YUTA HAYASHI Released 19 SEPTEMBER From its opening moments, Neo Sora’s Happyend evokes a world aflame with uncertainty. Title cards bearing cryptic phrases about old systems, restless enforcers, and crumbling frameworks give way to the declaration: “Something big is about to change.” In context, the statement seems ominous, but it doesn’t take long for the film to articulate that its near-future vision of Japanese society is in dire need of a bouleversement. With the nation trembling in fear of a cataclysmic earthquake, its authority figures are all too eager to violate citizens’ rights under the guise of public safety. In the shadow of this ideological crisis, a tight knit friend group of puckish highschoolers comes apart at the seams as they hurtle, in divergent…

Directed by SEPIDEH FARSI Released 22 AUGUST “Meeting her was like a mirror held in front of me that made me realise how both our lives were conditioned by walls and wars,” notes Sepideh Farsi early on in her documentary about the 24-year-old Palestinian photographer Fatma Hassona, which is made up almost entirely of video calls between the two. In Farsi’s film, walls manifest in the form of screens as she opts for filming her smartphone during these calls, as well as her laptop and television screens with snippets of news broadcasts. It’s by no means a refined approach, but as the images of genocide that we’re confronted with on a daily basis are mediated to us by our screens, it’s a decision that makes perfect sense. Here, the frame of Farsi’s…

Directed by JOSEPH MILLSON Starring SARAH-JANE POTTS, DAVID GANLY, SHARON DUCE Released 5 SEPTEMBER An extremely mismatched couple randomly happen across ways to ease one another’s strife in Joseph Millson’s melancholy, post-Aftersun tale of an emotionally overcast package holiday. Signs of Life sees Sarah-Jane Potts play the pixie-cropped, mouse-ish Anne, who carries around a notebook and Sharpie with her at all times, often presenting the irritants attempting to talk at her the final page which reads, “I’m not deaf, I just don’t speak.” Why she’s putting herself through this ordeal is unclear, but in trying desperately to mind her own business she keeps seeing a rumpled, motormouthed man, also on his own, making a mini scene wherever he goes. Bill (David Ganly) was supposed to be having fun with his wife and two…

Directed by PAUL VECCHIALI Starring MARIANNE BASLER, PIERRE COSSO, JEAN SOREL Radiance OUT NOW Until the release of this essential disc, UK cinema goers have had to rely on the flighty whims of trigger-happy repertory programmers to be able to see the films of French post-New Wave director, Paul Vechialli. And this first bite of the cherry is one of the (bitter) sweetest works in his estimable oeuvre, offering a sunny, funny portrait of the mid-1980s Les Halles quarter in Paris, in particular the cheerful, blue-dressed sex worker Rosa (Marianne Basler), who presents as a kind of ethereal angel walking the salty streets. Rosa La Rose: Fille Publique is one of those films that could be defined as a musical even though there are no non-diagetic song-and-dance numbers, as music seeps into every…

John Maybury was a fellow graduate of the Derek Jarman school of filmmaking, and it was in those heady, early days that he first became aware of Tilda Swinton. The pair worked closely on two challenging, thought-provoking and radical performance pieces – Man to Man and Remembrance of Things Fast – in which both director and performer pushed their creative boundaries. A small but vital role in the British indie hit, Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, capped off their professional collaborations, but not their personal friendship. LWLies: When were you first aware of Tilda as an actor, and under what circumstances did you first encounter each other? Maybury: I think the first time I came across Tilda was with Derek Jarman. I worked on…

Call her a chameleon, call her a shape-shifter, call her the heir apparent to transformative performers from Lon Chaney to David Bowie: since the start of her screen career Tilda Swinton has taken joy and inspiration from altering her appearance, whether to play a male aristocrat in Orlando (1992), the Archangel Gabriel in Constantine (2005) or the White Witch in the Narnia franchise (2005-2010). But it was only in the second decade of the 21st century that Swinton really started to experiment with her physical form, resulting in a series of ambitious, freakish, at times (intentionally) absurd, at others genuinely nightmarish performances. Maybe it was the fact that her career, by this point, was on a firm footing, or simply that she was growing tired of playing the Brittle Posh…

Directed by JASMIN GORDON Starring OPHÉLIA KOLB, JASMINE KALISZ SAURER, PAUL BESNIER Released 5 SEPTEMBER Single mother Jule (Ophélia Kolb) takes her three children to a restaurant and promises to be back in five minutes. A long time passes without Jule’s return, so the young children decide to find their own way home. While ten-year-old Claire (Jasmine Kalisz Saurer) and eight-year-old Loïc (Paul Besnier) bicker over the best way to locate their mother, six-year-old Sami (Arthur Devaux) crosses the motorway, and a terrifying shot shows him standing alone in the middle while cars fly by. Scenes such as this one make for uncomfortable viewing, but Jasmin Gordon’s debut feature film, The Courageous, refuses to shy away from the chaotic reality of grasping for a better life. Throughout the film, lingering camerawork emphasises the…

Directed by MIKE FLANAGAN Starring TOM HIDDLESTON, JACOB TREMBLAY, KAREN GILLAN Released 20 AUGUST This year Mike Flanagan, known best for turning horror’s greatest novels into palatable limited television series for Netflix, is switching it up! His latest, The Life of Chuck, may still be a literary adaptation (of a Stephen King novella by the same name), filled with sincere monologues, overt metaphors for grief, and existential ponderings, but he has traded horror for a work of light sci-fi. It follows the seemingly unremarkable Chuck – depending on his age, played by Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay and Benjamin Pajak – from childhood to curtain call as he learns various philosophies of life from his teachers (Kate Seigel and Samantha Sloyan), grandparents (Mia Sara and Mark Hamill) and the many other lives that interlace…

Directed by EVA VICTOR Starring EVA VICTOR, NAOMI ACKIE, LOUIS CANCELMI Released 22 AUGUST Aomething very bad happened to Agnes. It’s hinted at in the first segment of Sorry, Baby, when her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) arrives for a visit, and asks Agnes (Eva Victor) if she feels comfortable having the office of their old English professor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi). It’s fairly easy to infer what Lydie means by this, particularly once they go for dinner at the home of their former classmate Natasha (Kelly McCormack) and she snarkily remarks that Agnes was always ​“Decker’s favourite”. Lydie politely changes the subject and gives Agnes’s leg a reassuring squeeze. There has been a deluge of films about sexual assault in the wake of MeToo, but for all the artistic capital (rightfully) afforded…

Directed by MICHAEL SHANKS Starring ALISON BRIE, DAVE FRANCO, DAMON HERRIMAN Released 15 AUGUST When David Cronenberg wrote The Brood in the late 1970s, the body horror maestro was going through an acrimonious divorce and custody battle. It’s a deeply personal film full of rage which manifests as a gross intertwining of the physical and psychological. It’s a hugely influential horror in its depiction of relationships and the anxieties that come with connecting yourself to another human being. Australian writer-director Michael Shanks takes a similar personal and icky approach to the subject of co-dependency as Alison Brie and Dave Franco (who are together in real life) star as a couple with major issues. Tim (Franco) is an out of work musician who just can’t seem to get his big break. He’s also grieving…

Directed by CÉCILE EMBLETON, ALYS TOMLINSON Released 29 AUGUST Inner turmoil and spiritual crisis, set against the austere black-and-white backdrop of the monastic environment, provides the context for Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson’s intimate documentary portrait. Mother Vera — formerly known as Olga — has lived for 20 years in a hidden Orthodox monastery surrounded by the deep snow of a Belarusian forest, devoting her life to the service of others. In confessional-style voice-over narration, Olga tells us of the turbulent past which brought her to the convent. The frankness and vulnerability with which she discusses heroin addiction and mental health struggles lend a great deal of humanity to the film’s stark visuals, providing truly unique insight into the woman beneath the habit. But Mother Vera is equally powerful in everything it…

Directed by PETER MANOOGIAN Starring GARY FRANK, TONY TODD, RAY PARKER JR Arrow Video OUT NOW It’s a cryin’ shame that actor Gary Frank bid adieu to motion pictures fairly early on in his long career, opting instead to be a go-to small screen guy for over 30 years. His nervy presence elevates this Carpenter-esque siege thriller in which Frank’s woeful insurance clerk Barry Rapchick is given a sweet lead with the promise of a juicy commission. All he has to do is mosey on down to the roughest housing estate in New York City, have some papers signed and then mosey on back again. Simple. Well, not if Tony Todd’s murderous wreckin’ crew The Vampires have anything to say about it, as they’re swiftly baying for Barry’s blood when a security guard…

Directed by TAKASHI ISHII Starring JINPACHI NEZU, NORIKO HAYAMI, HIDEO MUROTA Third Window Released 25 AUGUST This intriguing set offers a small window on a massive career, bringing together four transgressive works by the vaunted undeground Japanese exploitation writer/director, Takashi Ishii. He spent the majority of the 1980s writing screenplays for prestige pornos known as “pink” films, but made the move to directing in the early 1990s and he worked until roughly a decade before his death in 2022. In this set are four films, each focused on a character named Nami (played by different actors). 1992’s Original Sin charts an extra-marital affair that takes an extremely dark turn; 1993’s A Night in Nude again sees a femme fatale take advantage of a man, goading him in to whacking out her abusive Yakuza lover;…