Film

The Good Boy

26/03/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

The title of Stephen Graham’s new film has caused some confusion. The Good Boy is known as in some quarters as Heel, mostly to avoid being confused with another recent release, Good Boy, which is about a haunted dog – though in both films one of the ‘lead’ characters gets to wear a collar. Confused? Don’t be. Suffice to say this is a fascinating watch, whatever it’s called, featuring one of the darkest, most twisted storylines I’ve seen in a very long time.

Tommy (Anson Boon) is a toxic nineteen-year-old, who revels in drugs, violence and rampant sex, delighting in filming his exploits and posting them up on social media, where he’s attracting quite a following. Unluckily for him, his excesses have come to the attention of Chris (Stephen Graham) and, all too soon, Tommy wakes up on a mattress in the cellar of Chris’s remote detached house, chained in position and wearing the aforementioned collar. In his new home, he is compelled to obey his master’s every command. Should he misbehave, Chris is more than ready to dole out savage punishment – and he makes it clear from the get-go that he intends to show Tommy how a good boy behaves.

So, who is going to come to Tommy’s help? Certainly not Chris’s pale and wan wife, Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), who appears to be broken by something terrible in her recent past. And certainly not Chris’s young son, Jonathan (Kit Rakusen), who looks and talks like a kid from an Enid Blyton novel and is very careful not to misbehave. What about the house’s most recent addition, hired cleaning woman, Rina (Monika Frajczyk)? Could she become Tommy’s ally? Or is she too caught up with family problems of her own? Besides, surely somebody has reported Tommy’s disappearance… won’t the police be looking for him?

The beauty of this film, written by Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid, is that I’m never entirely sure where the storyline is headed, right up to its final scene. Every time I think I’m close to working things out, it swings in an entirely different direction, which only serves to make it all the more intriguing. The three leads all play their roles compellingly, particularly Riseborough, who is obliged to remain mute for many of her early appearances, yet skilfully contrives to exude a palpable air of utter misery. Director Jan Komasa keeps everything on such a tight leash (we’re back to dogs again!) that the film has me in suspense from start to finish.

But what’s it about, I hear you ask? Is it just an unpleasant tale of sadism? No. It’s much more than that. The Good Boy challenges our preconceptions about right and wrong. It is about the power of the family unit – the ways in which it can exert both good and bad influences on those who are held within its tenacious grip. So many people attribute importance to their respective families and are often prepared to go to extreme lengths to ensure that the dynamic continues to function. Chris has clearly taken this approach far further than anyone ever should, but is there something at the heart of his methods that might actually… work?

Whatever your thoughts on the matter, The Good Boy is a powerful and highly original slice of contemporary cinema. See it if you can and draw your own conclusions. I guarantee, you won’t be bored.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

25/03/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

2019’s Ready or Not was one of those plucky little films that made a big impression. It introduced Samara Weaving as Grace, a young woman who unwittingly marries a Satanist (it happens) and then spends the rest of the film playing a bizarre game of Hide and Seek with her new husband and his family, all of whom are doing their level best to murder her with an array of vintage weapons. It was a deceptively simple concept, played through with great flair and absolute precision – and it worked like a charm.

Rumours of a sequel started soon after its release and now here it finally is, bigger, louder and (inevitably) bloodier than its predecessor. It picks up right where the last film finished off with a wounded and dishevelled Grace stumbling from a blazing building and being rushed to hospital. She’s had a close call but it’s all over now. Except, of course, it isn’t (that incredibly redundant 2 in the title is the clue).

She is soon informed that, because she’s managed to despatch an entire family in the Satanist hierarchy, she must now play the same game all over again, this time pitted against the heads of several different households. Whoever manages to kill Grace will be the new Satanic leader, taking over from Chester Danforth, played by esteemed horror director David Cronenberg. He’s glimpsed only briefly before he’s erased – as the rules dictate – by his two children, Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar). And naturally, Chester’s twin kids both feel that they should be the one to inherit the kingdom.

To further complicate matters, Grace is now accompanied by her estranged younger sister, Faith (Kathyryn Newton), who has turned up at the hospital because she’s still listed as Grace’s next of kin. Now the two of them, handcuffed together, must take on seemingly insurmountable odds…

The old rule of sequels is as reductive as ever. Directors Guy Busick and R Christopher Murphy give it their best shot, working from a screenplay by Radio Silence (Marc Bettenelli-Olpin and Tyler Gilett), but they’re in a game of diminishing returns, no matter how much gusto they employ. Most of the running time features that kind of Sam Raimi-esque slapstick horror, where the impulse is to laugh out loud as people quite literally explode. The problem with that is that the reasons for Satanists exploding are quite convoluted and I’m still unclear about a couple of examples – but maybe that’s just me.

Both Weaving and Newton are strong in their roles and their habitual bickering as they flail from one disaster to the next is often more entertaining than the carnage. Elijah Wood gives the film one of its strongest cards as ‘The Lawyer,’ managing to stay straight-faced and erudite as the bodies pile up around him. The film itself runs out of steam long before its ridiculously protracted conclusion and the old adage about ‘less is more’ has rarely felt more apt.

This isn’t terrible, but neither is it a patch on it’s leaner, meaner progenitor. There’s already talk about a third instalment, but I sincerely hope that everyone has the good sense to leave it here. There are only so many exploding Satanists a fellow can take.

3 stars

Philip Caveney

Project Hail Mary

15/03/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Science fiction movies come in all shapes and forms. They can be epic widescreen showcases. They can be intriguing ‘what if’ commentaries on uncertain futures. They can be wildly funny, gently heartwarming. They can be tales of triumph over adversity. They can be suspenseful, ironic, prophetic and surprising. Project Hail Mary somehow manages to be all of these things in the space of a couple of hours and, trust me, that’s not intended as a criticism.

Based on the novel by Andy Weir and adapted by Drew Goddard, the story begins aboard the titular space probe with Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) waking up from a very, VERY long sleep. He’s long-haired, bearded and extremely confused. What’s he doing on a freaking space ship? He’s a junior high school teacher for Christ’s sake! And why are the only other people aboard the probe both dead?

Memories from thirteen years ago gradually start to come back to him. He remembers being approached by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), an administrator for the European Space Agency. She’s looking for a molecular biologist, something that Ryland worked at before he became a teacher. Eva delivers some bad news: the sun is dying, its power being gradually consumed by single-celled organisms called ‘Astrophage.’ If nothing is done about the situation, it will mean that humanity is going to face ‘total extinction’ within just a few short years. Will Ryland help her to find a solution for the problem?

He agrees to join her huge team of scientists, but makes it very clear from the outset that he’s really not interested in going into outer space himself. He’s a homebody, not a hero. On no account will he ever don a spacesuit and venture out of Earth’s gravity. Eva tells him it’s not a problem. So… how did he get here? And now he is here, what’s he supposed to do?

I love the way this complex tale is told, the background to the story gradually released via out-of-sequence recollections. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller seem to relish multi-faceted storylines (see Into the Spider-Verse if you want further proof) and while PHM takes its own sweet time laying out all the pertinent details, it never loses momentum. Around the halfway mark, Ryland has a chance encounter with an alien starship and subsequently meets up with its only surviving crew member. He’s an Eridian, a strange many-limbed creature that appears to be made from lumps of stone and who Ryland immediately dubs ‘Rocky.’ Once they have devised a way to communicate, Ryland discovers that Rocky is on a similar mission to him – trying to find a way to save his own planet, Erid, which is also being ravaged by those pesky astrophages.

The two of them resolve to work together, though that isn’t a straightforward process…

The relationship between the two mismatched travellers is at the heart of this goofy and unapologetically sentimental tale. Rocky is a deceptively simple creation, devised using old-school puppetry rather than digital effects – and Gosling has rarely been more engaging than he is here, as a kind of super-nerd discovering that he’s capable of more than he ever imagined.

Best watched on an IMAX screen – some of the special effects sequences are eye-popping – this is an enchanting and thought-provoking tale that keeps me hooked throughout and delivers an intricate storyline with extraordinary skill.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Crime 101

14/03/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

There’s something delightfully old-fashioned about Crime 101, a sense of quality that harks back to the classic cop thrillers of the 70s and 80s. Directed and written by Bart Layton and based on a novella by Don Winslow, the film moves smoothly through its initial set-up to a pulse-pounding conclusion, prowling confidently along like the proverbial tiger on vaseline. Pretty much all of its characters are beautifully drawn and have very good reasons to be where they are.

A highly-disciplined jewel thief has arrived in LA. All of the million-dollar hits to date have occurred at some point along Route101, a fact that has not escaped the attention of LAPD detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo). But his attempts to get this across to his fellow cops seems destined to get him nowhere. They are much more interested in ticking boxes and ensuring they’re left looking good, even if that means bending the rules.

We know from the get-go who Lou is looking for. It’s Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), a highly-principled villain, who leaves nothing to chance. So, when he doesn’t like the set up for his next job in Santa Barbara, he tells his fence, Money (Nick Nolte), that he’s going to give this one a swerve. Money, more interested in making big bucks, hires motorbiking thug Ormon (Barry Keoghan) to handle the heist instead. Orman is an undisciplined agent of chaos and his messy attack on a jewellery store threatens to completely derail everything.

Meanwhile, insurance broker Sharon (Halle Berry) is getting sick and tired of her bosses passing her over for a long-promised partnership. She is beginning to realise that something is going to have to change. And then Mike is quite literally run into by a stranger called Maya (Monica Barbaro) and he too begins to ask himself if it might be time to get out of the risky career he’s currently embroiled in…

If the story sounds complicated on paper, have no fears on that score. The narrative is beautifully handled and I’m never in any doubt about the many twists and turns the story takes. There’s much to admire along the way, not least Erik Wilson’s stunning cinematography, which depicts LA in all of its neon-drenched glory. Hemsworth, too often fobbed off with roles that don’t actually require him to do much more than stand around and look handsome, actually gets to flex his acting skills here. There are some beautifully-handled car chase sequences (when Lou asks Mike which is his favourite Steve McQueen movie, it’s no surprise that he chooses Bullitt) and I love the scene where Sharon tells her boss exactly what she thinks of him.

On the nitpick side, Nolte’s dialogue is hard to follow, Jennifer Jason Leigh is wasted in a tiny cameo role – and quite why Keoghan keeps playing characters that would be better suited to a teenage actor is quite beyond me.

But these are minor niggles. I am swept up in the story until we get to a slickly-orchestrated final heist where the suspense builds to a thrilling climax. In a story this earthy, it’s rare to find a redemptive conclusion, but somehow Crime 101 manages to achieve one. I am late getting to this, but I’m really glad I’ve managed to catch it on the big screen before it moves to streaming.

4. 8 stars

Philip Caveney

The Bride!

10/03/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s previous film, The Lost Daughter, seemed to be loved by all and sundry – despite being, in my opinion, a bit slight. The Bride! couldn’t be any more different if it tried. This is a film so sprawling, so packed with bonkers invention, that it almost feels as if it’s about to burst off the screen and into the auditorium. It’s also one that embodies the term ‘divisive.’ It’s had some critics clutching their pearls and reaching for two (and even one) star reviews, while many viewers have denounced it in no uncertain terms. How dare Ms Gyllenhaal defile the genius of Mary Shelley in such a way? Doesn’t she understand that Frankenstein is a great work of art that needs to be treated with respect? 

We open with Mary Shelley herself (Jessie Buckley) in close-up monochrome, berating the fact that she didn’t live long enough to continue her famous story, and proclaiming that she will create a sequel by hook or by crook. Somehow, she manages to home in on Ida (Buckley again), a woman misbehaving in a Chicago bar in 1936. A quick case of possession occurs, which has Ida acting lewdly and shouting abuse (in a variety of voices) at Lupino (Zlatko Buric), the gangster who runs the city. For this misdemeanour, Ida is promptly pushed down a flight of stairs to her death. Bye bye, Ida… or is it?

Shortly thereafter, ‘Frank’ (Christian Bale) arrives in the city in search of Dr Cornelia Euphronious (Annette Bening), a scientist famed for her experiments with reanimation. Frank has been around since the 1800s and is starting to feel a crippling sense of loneliness. Would Dr Euphronious be prepared to animate a female corpse for him, so he can finally enjoy a meaningful relationship? The good doctor understandably has some doubts, but luckily she acquiesces (otherwise this would be a very short movie) and Ida’s freshly-buried body and Shelley’s spirit are zapped into something larger than life. 

‘Penny’ – as Ida/Mary is now known – and Frank start to get to know each other and they go out nightclubbing in a sleazy part of the city. After Frank kills a couple of guys who attempt to rape Ida, the couple are forced to go on the run…

And yes, on paper, it does sound ridiculous – but then, so does Mary Shelley’s original story to be fair – and what my words can’t adequately convey is the sheer exuberance with which this is all done, a degree of WTF invention that leaps out of every frame. The Bride! is quite literally a fearless monster mash-up of epic proportions, with knowing nods to Bonnie and Clyde, Mel Brooks and the Hollywood musicals of the 1930s. Frank, it turns out, is a major fan of song-and-dance man, Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), and never misses the opportunity to catch one of his films at the cinema. In doing so, he unwittingly leaves a trail for detectives Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his much cleverer partner, Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz).  

I’ll be the first to admit that not everything Gyllenhaal attempts here quite comes off – she wrote the screenplay, as well as directing – and there are rough edges to some of the scenes of mayhem and bloodshed. Furthermore, if you’re one of those people who hates coincidences, be warned – there are a lot of them here. But overall, The Bride! offers such a wild, unpredictable thrill-ride that I quickly throw aside my qualms and  have a great time with it. Buckley is every bit as mesmerising as she is in Hamnet, while Bale’s interpretation of the Monster as a hesitant, apologetic creature, worn down by decades of travails, makes him strangely endearing. Lawrence Sher’s cinematography is stunning and there’s an intriguing score by Hildur Guõnodóttir. The whole enterprise is underpinned by a powerful feminist subtext, which reflects the era in which it’s set.

So, my advice would be to disregard the bad word-of-mouth and watch The Bride! with an open mind. The film’s opening weekend suggests that it’s going to lay a great big egg at the box office, but those who admire audacious creativity will find much to admire here.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

The Secret Agent

06/03/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

If this film’s title suggests that we might be about to watch a run of the mill spy movie, don’t be misled. Kiba Mendonça Filho’s historical drama is many things, but straightforward it certainly isn’t. Shown here in a season of 2026’s Oscar-nominated films, it’s a complex, multi-faceted work that pulls in elements from many different genres with absolute authority.

The story opens in 1977 in Recife, Brazil, a country suffering under the curse of a brutal military dictatorship. ‘Marcelo’ (Wagner Moura) pulls in at a remote petrol station looking to fill his empty tank. He’s taken aback when he sees a dead body lying in the dirt under a flimsy covering of cardboard boxes. The attendant casually tells him that the man has been lying there for several days while everyone waits patiently for the cops to come and investigate. When two policeman do drive up, they’re much more interested in trying to extort money from Marcelo (real name Armando), who is returning to his old stamping ground three years after the mysterious death of his wife, Fatima.

Armando is also here to reconnect with his young son, Fernando, who lives with Fatima’s parents in Recife. Fernando is currently obsessed with the film Jaws, which he is desperate to see. When a shark is caught in local waters and a man’s leg is found in the creature’s stomach, the resulting news headlines kick off a whole series of wild rumours and myths. Meanwhile, Armando manages to secure a place in a refuge, run by former anarcho-communist, Dona Sebastiano (Tanya Maria), and there he meets others who have various reasons for wanting to stay under the radar. He finds work at the local identity card office, which gives him an opportunity to search for information about Fatima.

But it transpires that two hit men, Bobbi (Gabriel Leone) and Augusto (Roney Vilella), have been despatched by the man responsible for Fatima’s death, their sole mission to murder Armando…

The strength of this film is that it takes in so many different beats that it constantly challenges my expectations. The seventies setting is brilliantly evoked and there’s a vibrant, Latin American score by Mateus Alves and Tomaz Alves Souza. Maura is utterly compelling in the central role, but he’s only one of a host of fascinating characters that parade exuberantly across the screen in smaller parts. Watch out for the final performance of veteran actor Udo Keir as Hans, a German-Jewish holocaust survivor.

There’s also a engaging subplot set in the present day, where young research student, Flavia (Laura Lufési), attempts to piece together the puzzle to discover what eventually happened to Armando.

With a formidable running time of two hours and forty-five minutes, The Secret Agent is inevitably going to prove divisive, but that Oscar nomination for best international picture is there for good reason and I won’t be at all surprised if it ends up walking away with the trophy.

4.5 stars

Philip Caveney

The Testament of Ann Lee

03/03/26

Filmhouse, Edinburgh

Watching The Testament of Ann Lee I find myself, once again, in the uncanny valley of the true story that seems so mind-bogglingly unlikely, I start to ask myself if the ‘facts’ might have been tampered with for entertainment value. But no, it only takes a swift Google after the viewing to establish that Ann Lee really did do all the things that are depicted here. She was the founder of The Shakers – and, if your knowledge of this mysterious religion extends only to the rather fancy furnishings they left in their wake, join the club.

Directed by Mona Fastvold and co-written with Brady Corbet (director of The Brutalist), TTOAL is a great big sprawling narrative about the titular Ann (Amanda Seyfried), narrated by her sister, Mary (Thomasin McKenzie). It follows Ann from her humble childhood in Manchester, through her ill-fated marriage to Abraham (Christopher Abbott), and on to her ambitious pilgrimage to America where, accompanied by her tireless brother, William (Lewis Pullman), she establishes a religion on the premise that she is the reincarnation of God in female form. As you do.

It’s clear, when viewed through a modern lens, that Ann’s beliefs are founded upon a mixture of depression after losing four children in their infancy and her subsequent conviction that sex is inherently evil, something only to be indulged in with the express aim of creating babies. Blaming herself for their premature deaths, she stopped eating and subsequently suffered from visions and began exhibiting the strange, twitchy movements that ultimately gave her religion its name. (For a while there it was going to be the Shaker-Quakers, but they settled for something snappier.)

Oh, and did I mention that this is also a musical? Composer Daniel Blumberg has created a whole series of songs based around original Shaker hymns, to which Seyfried and the rest of the cast dance and leap like demented trancers at an all-night rave. It shouldn’t work and yet it does, big time. TTOAL is an ambitious and exhilarating epic that provides the ever-watchable Seyfried with what just might be the role of her career. She even manages a pretty convincing Mancunian accent, though she does very occasionally lapse into Liverpudlian. It’s important to add that this is not just a star vehicle for Seyfried, but the very embodiment of an ensemble piece, with every member of the cast working hard to make this incredible story credible.

There’s no denying this is the kind of film that’s destined to divide audiences (aside from anything else, I suspect the many song and dance numbers will alienate a lot of people) but, to my mind it’s an ambitious enterprise that achieves all its goals. Brought in on the same kind of ‘modest’ budget that gave us The Brutalist, this screening in 70mm employs old-fashioned matte painting techniques to achieve its stunning vistas and it looks absolutely ravishing. However manic it gets, it manages to keep me hooked throughout its two hours and seventeen minutes run time.

Do I come to understand the rabid sensibilities that fuelled the Shaker movement?

Not for a moment, but I have a wild ride trying to get to grips with it.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

02/03/26

The Cameo, Edinburgh

Her child is sick and Linda (Rose Byrne) can’t cope. Caring for her daughter (Delaney Quinn) is a full-time job – and she has an actual full-time job as well. Throw in an absent husband (Christian Slater), a judgemental doctor (writer/director Mary Bronstein) and a gaping hole in her bedroom ceiling, and it’s no surprise that Linda is tired, snappy and a little too reliant on wine and weed.

The child has an unspecified eating disorder and has been fitted with a feeding tube. (In an audacious directorial decision we never get a proper look at the girl, but it really works – this isn’t her story.) Linda’s paediatrician insists that she should attend parents’ meetings, where a group of mothers (no fathers in sight) are exhorted not to blame themselves for their children’s conditions. With no sense of irony, Dr Spring follows the meeting by telling Linda that her child is “failing,” that Linda doesn’t have the right attitude and, essentially, it’ll be her fault if the treatment doesn’t work.

Meanwhile, Linda’s husband, Charles, can’t help because he’s working away, but that doesn’t stop him from phoning to hector her. She should make the most of staying in a hotel, he says, implying it’s a holiday, but why hasn’t she chased up the contractor who’s supposed to be fixing the apartment? Why isn’t the child gaining weight? Why has Linda left the child alone to go shopping? Why hasn’t Linda answered his texts? Why, Linda? Why?

Her therapist (Conan O’Brien) isn’t much use either. Linda’s a therapist too, with an office down the hall from his, and his impassive responses rile her. She knows the tricks of the trade and is frustrated that he won’t transgress, won’t relieve her of responsibility by simply telling her what to do. When one of Linda’s own patients, a young mother with post-partum depression (Danielle MacDonald), abandons her baby in Linda’s office, it’s the final straw. Linda has reached her limit.

Almost a companion piece to Lynne Ramsey’s Die My Love, Bronstein’s movie is a searing indictment of a system that sets mothers up to fail, that overloads them with responsibility but provides no safety nets. Byrne’s portrayal of Linda’s mental decline is devastating: she loses all confidence in every area of her life, no longer capable of functioning as mother, therapist, wife or friend. Even her putative relationship with her hotel neighbour, James (A$AP Rocky), proves shallow and unreliable, prompting her to turn even further in on herself. The world is hostile and everyone is an enemy. In the end, there’s only one way out…

Linda’s disintegration is magnified by cinematographer Christopher Messina’s use of light: the gold flashes that dance in her periphery; the dreamscapes that veer between illusion and reality. The hole in the ceiling looms ever larger over Linda’s head, a great big gaping metaphor for a woman on the edge.

Byrne’s towering, nuanced performance makes her a worthy Oscar contender (although I’m still backing Jessie Buckley for the win). Meanwhile, this intense, emotional movie certainly seals Bronstein’s reputation as one to watch.

4.4 stars

Susan Singfield

“Wuthering Heights”

15/02/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

I’ll be the first to admit: I’m not the biggest fan of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I love its complexity, its uncompromising depiction of broken people and the wildness at its heart, but it just doesn’t speak to me as clearly as, say, Jane Eyre, Villette or The Tenant of Wildefell Hall. I’m not denying the author’s genius, but – for me – there are too many narrative layers between the reader and the central story; I don’t want the Lockwood and Nelly Dean filters. And, let’s be honest, it’s all a bit histrionic, isn’t it?

Emerald Fennell certainly leans into the melodrama in this sumptuous interpretation, and she’s sensibly expunged Lockwood (whatever purpose he serves on the page, it doesn’t translate well to film). However, some of the other changes are genuinely baffling. It’s like she’s made an adaptation of an earlier movie rather than the novel. It’s also – dare I say it? – like she doesn’t really get the book.

Let’s start with the most glaring problem: Heathcliff. He’s played by two perfectly competent actors: first Owen Cooper and then, in a sudden age-defying leap, Jacob Elordi. There’s no problem with their performances but, let’s face it, neither is right for the part – and not just because Elordi is a decade too old.

They’re white; Heathcliff isn’t.

While I’m not someone who expects screen adaptations to be exact replicas of their source material, I do think that something as fundamental to the character as Heathcliff’s race can’t simply be erased. His outsider status stems from the fact that he is visibly different from those around him; he is deemed an unsuitable match for Cathy because of his unknown ethnicity. Racism is the reason he’s rejected. It matters that he’s found at the Liverpool docks and not just the village pub. He’s persona non grata from the start. It also seems an odd decision to cast British Pakistani, Shazad Latif, as Edgar Linton. Why not swap the two leads?

What’s more, Fennell bottles out when it comes to Heathcliff’s monstrosity. She depicts him as a romantic hero, but that’s the antithesis of what Brontë wrote. The novel’s Heathcliff is a nuanced character, at once sexy, pitiful, admirable and monstrous. Like Frankenstein’s creature (a better casting for Elordi), we are shown the trauma that destroys him, but we also see the nasty brute that he becomes. Fennell’s iteration lets him off the hook: he’s not cruel or abusive, just too deeply in love. Making Isabella (Alison Oliver)’s degradation consensual is horribly tin-eared, especially the moment Heathcliff demonstrates that she could easily get away if she wanted to. I don’t think you need to be particularly socially aware to know that “Why doesn’t she just leave?” is a harmful, victim-blaming trope when it comes to domestic violence.

Leaving aside the obvious issue with Fennell deciding to omit the second half of the story, there are two further choices I need to question. First, why has Hindley been deleted from the tale? His role is shared between Mr Earnshaw (Martin Clunes) and Nelly Dean (Hong Chau): the former physically abuses Heathcliff, while the latter is jealous after being displaced in Cathy’s affections, and neither response rings true. And second, why doesn’t Cathy’s baby live? One of Wuthering Heights‘ main themes is emotional inheritance – but there’s nobody here to represent the next generation. It seems a glaring loss.

Novel aside, there are also some problems with the film itself. Everything is so over-the-top that it’s hard to take seriously. From Isabella’s “ribbon room” to Mr Earnshaw’s ridiculous alcohol-bottle mountains (never mind that he’s famously broke, glass was expensive back then and he’d have been more likely to get his booze in a refillable ceramic jug), there’s no subtlety here at all.

Is there anything to like? Yes. Charlotte Mellington and Margot Robbie both play Cathy well, although – like Elordi – Robbie is way too old for the role (Cathy is only supposed to be 18 when she dies, and Robbie is almost double that). The intensity of Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship is convincingly drawn, and I love the black, red and white colour palette. The moors are perfectly windswept and gloomy, and the portrayal of an impoverished gentry clinging to its name is clear-eyed and unsentimental. I also quite like the music, with a score by Anthony Willis and an album’s worth of original songs by Charli XCX.

But, in the end, that’s not enough. This feels like a wasted opportunity from a promising young director whose blind spots have thwarted her passion project.

2.5 stars

Susan Singfield

Nouvelle Vague

15/02/26

Filmhouse, Edinburgh

I’m a longtime fan of American director, Richard Linklater, and I suspect that what I like most about him is his eclecticism: I never know what kind of thing he’s going to come up with next. Despite this, the advance word about Nouvelle Vague comes as a genuine surprise. It’s about the filming of Breathless (A Bout de Souffle), shot on location in Paris and featuring a cast of (mostly) French actors speaking their own language. There are so many elements here that could have gone spectacularly wrong – and, of course, there were plenty of nay-sayers concerned about cultural appropriation. But no worries, this film is in an unqualified delight from start to finish.

It’s 1959 and the various members of the influential group of film critics known as Cahiers du Cinéma are starting to make their respective marks on the industry. François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) is about to wow the audience at Cannes with his debut feature, The 400 Blows, and Claude Chabrol (Antoine Besson) has also made an impact with a self-financed film, Le Beau Serge. But the group’s leading light, Jean-Luc Godard (Guillame Marbec), has yet to dip his toes into directorial waters.

At Cannes, he manages to persuade veteran film producer George de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfűrst) to finance his debut, which will be loosely based around a script conceived by Truffaut, itself inspired by the misadventures of real-life car thief, Michel Portail. Luc Godard has already signed affable young actor Jean Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) for the lead role, but when the director bumps into American star, Jean Seberg (Zooey Deutch), fresh from her role in Bonjour Tristesse, he becomes convinced that she is the only woman who can play the second lead in his movie and sets about doing everything he can to persuade her to come on board.

But, back in Paris, budget in place and cast duly assembled, it soon becomes clear that Luc Godard has his own ideas about how a film should be directed – and they’re not like anything that’s gone before…

Marbec is brilliant as the chain-smoking, brooding Luc Godard, totally convinced of his own genius and, frankly, a bit of a knob, disregarding every bit of advice he’s given by more experienced friends. His casual approach causes Beauregard enough stress to drive him to the edge of a nervous breakdown. The novice director pretty much always uses the first take (though he rarely bothers to watch it back) and has a habit of calling a halt to the day’s shoot after a couple of hours’ work, simply because he’s ‘feeling peckish.’ Both Deutch and Dullin are eerie lookalikes for their real life counterparts, and the film effortlessly captures the frantic day-to-day shooting process that against all the odds, would result in one of the most groundbreaking films in movie history.

But lest I’ve made this sound like a worthy slog aimed at cinephiles, don’t be misled. Nouvelle Vague is an absolute breeze, fast, funny and utterly charming. Just like the film it’s homaging, it was shot on location in Paris with a tiny budget and no special effects, yet it somehow manages to capture the look and feel of a lost era with absolute conviction.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney