Film

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

23/12/22

Netflix

Rian Johnson’s Knives Out garnered plenty of admirers on its release in 2019, though I felt at the time that it was a case of style over substance. Call me old fashioned, but I’m of the opinion that one of the basic requirements of a whodunnit is that it should be hard to crack and, in this case, it really wasn’t. The sequel (helpfully subtitled A Knives Out Mystery, just in case we’ve missed the connection) recently enjoyed a week in cinemas – at a time when we couldn’t see it. It now appears on Netflix, who financed it and they will also be funding several further instalments. The reviews haven’t been quite so ecstatic this time around, but perhaps ironically, I find this one an improvement on the original, mainly by virtue of the fact that I really can’t guess where it’s headed – though it should also be said that there is a glaring plot hole in there that should have been plugged. (See if you can spot it!)

Once again, this is very stylish, bright and kinetic. We’re offered a selection of – mostly repellent – characters who feel more like caricatures than real people. We learn more about ‘the world’s greatest detective’, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), who apparently is fond of sitting in his bath whilst wearing a fez (as you do) and who appears to share his home with a very famous housemate. It all begins with a bunch of seemingly unconnected individuals receiving invitations to an exclusive party on billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton)’s private Greek island.

The invites come in the form of elaborate puzzle boxes, which must be deciphered. Soon enough, Blanc is standing on the dockside with the other guests, who include hapless socialite Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), muscle bound YouTuber, Duke Cody (Dave Bautista) and Bron’s former business partner, Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe). It soon becomes clear that Blanc hasn’t actually been invited to this bash, so his presence is only the first in a whole series of mysteries to be solved.The action is set in 2020, so hats off to Johnson for actually referencing the COVID pandemic, with the characters wearing masks and being all awkward about hugging and shaking hands, something that’s barely ever been referenced in the cinema so far.

Once on the island and inside Bron’s super luxurious home – the centrepiece of which resembles a huge er… glass onion – the host announces that they will all be playing an elaborate murder mystery game. At some point in the evening, he will be ‘killed’ and the guests will have to work out whodunnit…

So far, so Agatha Christie, but it should be said that nothing here goes according to anybody’s plan and, while I feel the early stretches of Glass Onion take some sticking with, once we’ve reached the midpoint, a huge revelation in the form of a series of flashbacks makes everything much more interesting. From here, the proceedings become ever more unhinged, ever more labyrinthine, as Johnson throws aside the conventions of the genre and begins to have fun with proceedings. It’s here too that his central tenet becomes clear. We’re continually reminded that nothing is hidden, nothing is opaque and that the answers to every puzzle are right there in front of us.

It’s clever but, once again, there’s a sense of distance. Because I don’t believe in any of these people, the result is like watching an expert game of chess, with the director manipulating the action like a grandmaster. I’m watching with a sense of detachment rather than being swept up in the proceedings.

Ultimately Glass Onion is an interesting exercise in legerdemain, and Netflix will doubtless do well with it. It will be interesting to see where the series of films goes from here but, for me at least, this feels like a step in the right direction.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Triangle of Sadness

18/12/22

Amazon Prime Video

Writer/director Ruben Östlund clearly has an axe to grind with the rich and privileged. This film amounts to a pretty effective take-down of such people, skewering their pretensions and their innate sense of ownership. Most of the characters depicted are repellent in their own individual ways, so it’s very much to Östlund’s credit that he actually manages to make me care so much about what happens to them.

Carl (Harris Dickinson) is a male model, already suffering the indignities of casting agents muttering that he ‘may need some botox’ just three years after hitting it big in a series of fragrance ads. His ultra-manipulative girlfriend, Yaya (Charlbi Dean), is an influencer, unable to eat a meal without taking thirty shots of herself supposedly enjoying the food. The two maintain a prickly relationship.

Yaya has recently wangled an invitation for her and Carl to go on an ultra-luxurious ocean cruise, along with a collection of super-rich guests, including oligarch, Dimitri (Zlatko Buric),  who’s made his fortune from selling manure, and charming old couple, Winston (Oliver Ford Davies) and Clementine (Amanda Walker), who have become filthy rich from selling military grade weapons. ‘Our hand grenades are very popular,’ they tell Carl, proudly.

Urged on by head of staff, Paula (Vicki Berlin), the ship’s crew do everything they can to fulfil their guests’ every whim, no matter how demeaning, how utterly facile it might be. Meanwhile, Captain Thomas Smith (Woody Harrelson) skulks alone in his cabin, drinking too much alcohol and attempting to keep his distance from the passengers he clearly despises… 

But a storm is coming and, when it coincides with the Captain’s Dinner, it soon becomes apparent that this trip is going to be anything but plain sailing…

Like an Admirable Crichton for our time, Triangle of Sadness is full of delights, by turns excoriating, hilarious and insightful. At times it’s also unpleasant – scenes where an ocean storm induces an outbreak of mass vomiting amongst the passengers are really not for the faint hearted. While the film admittedly loses a little momentum in its final third, when the action transfers to a desert island, it nonetheless still has plenty to say about the human condition, when former toilet cleaner, Abigail (Dolly Le Leon), spots an opportunity to take on the role of leader, by simple virtue of the fact that she’s the only one capable of doing anything practical. Östlund seems to be pointing out that no matter how much we might hate the privileged, when offered the chance to step into their shoes, few of us are willing to pass it up. And to what lengths are we prepared to go to in order to cling onto it?

A late revelation leaves Abigail with a difficult decision on her hands and brings the film to a breathless conclusion. I’ve always hated the idea of going on an ocean cruise and Triangle of Sadness hasn’t made me change my mind. But this film is well worth embarking on.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Avatar: the Way of Water

16/12/22

Cineworld, Edinburgh

There’s no denying the fact that, back in back in 2009, James Cameron’s Avatar was an absolute game-changer. It demonstrated the possibilities of digital filmmaking, relaunched the idea of 3D cinema and, in terms of the box office, was one of the most successful films in history. Of course there would be a sequel. It was a no-brainer. But we could have no idea, back then, how long it was going to take…

Thirteen years later, here I am in my local multiplex, staring at a giant screen through a pair of 3D glasses. It must be said that Pandora looks even more ravishing than it did last time. The world-building is second to none, the action set pieces as explosive as ever… but in terms of story, not an awful lot has changed. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has learned to love the Na’vi body he now inhabits and he and his wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), have acquired a family, mostly by traditional methods – though in the case of Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), through some scientific tinkering in a laboratory, taking genes from Grace Augustine’s avatar. Together the extended family live an undemanding life in their exotic jungle home, even finding room for Spider (Jack Champion), the human son of Sully’s old nemesis, Colonel Myles Quaritch.

But of course, happiness cannot last forever and all too soon, The Sky People (who sound disconcertingly like a 1980s dance troupe) return in force, landing their fleet of space craft with enough power to burn down hundreds of acres of forest. Among them is Quaritch (Stephen Lang), reanimated as a Na’vi version of his former self and assigned the role of hunting down Jake. After an initial skirmish with Quaritch and his crew, Jake realises that he is putting everyone in his tribe in danger, so the Sully family leave their familiar home and seek refuge among the people of the Metakayina Reef.

It’s here of course that the major difference from the first film comes into play. This new tribe is an aquatic one and much of the ensuing action takes place in and under the ocean as the Sullys learn how to operate in an unfamiliar environment. And the film does look exquisite, every frame captured in photo realistic style, the various denizens of the ocean portrayed with all the veracity of a Blue Planet documentary. It is an extraordinary technical achievement and you see exactly where all those millions of dollars have been spent.

But… The Way of Water has a three-hour-twelve-minute running time and, consequently, no matter how stunning it looks, I’m all too aware that there really isn’t enough story here to keep me fully engaged. Every set-piece seems to take forever to play out and, try as I might, I can’t help thinking about the other three (or is is four?) movies that Cameron has waiting in the wings. The final scenes take place in a sinking ship and have more than a nod to Titanic about them. This feels somehow meta: Cameron harking back to another of his former triumphs, where he took on the nay-sayers and won?

I find myself simultaneously hoping and doubting that The Way of Water is the film that will encourage audiences back to the cinema en masse. There are about eight of us at the afternoon screening I attend, which isn’t encouraging – but we’ll have to wait to see how it all plays out. Increasingly, however, the Avatar franchise is in danger of becoming James Cameron’s folly.

It’s massive, it’s impressive, but it’s ultimately an empty vessel. Can he really hope to rekindle those former glories?

The jury is out.

3.6 stars

Philip Caveney

The Silent Twins

09/12/22

Cineworld, Edinburgh

The real-life silent twins of the title are Jennifer and June Gibbons, born in 1963, who refused – for years – to speak to anyone but each other. No one really knows why, but there are myriad theories: they were outsiders – the only Black kids in their small Welsh town; they were bullied; one was controlling the other – or, more crudely, they were ‘disturbed’.

Certainly ‘disturbed’ was the verdict of a baffled legal system, which over-reacted to the girls’ teenage crimes of petty theft and arson, and sent them to Broadmoor high security mental health hospital – a place more commonly associated with hardened murderers than wayward kids. How did they get through the eleven long years they spent there?

Director Agnieszka Smoczynska shows us how: by retreating into their rich inner lives. In this illuminating biopic, adapted by Andrea Seigel from the book by journalist Marjorie Wallace (played here by Jodhi May), we see that Jenny and June are far from mute and far from short of things to say. They just have a different way of expressing themselves. In reality, their so-called ‘secret language’ was a mixture of Bajan slang and super-fast English, which they used to tell stories to each other; here, their tales are depicted as distinctive animations. The girls are writers, producing countless reams of short stories, poems, even novels, spending their meagre benefits on foolscap, typewriter ink and – eventually – vanity publishing. They refuse to engage with their seemingly lovely family, rejecting any offers of help. Sent to separate schools for kids with special educational needs, they both become further withdrawn, refusing to move or eat, let alone speak. They’re driven by their art: once school is behind them, they realise they need to interact with the outside world – how can they write about romance if they’ve never experienced it? But romance is in short supply in their dalliances with the odious Wayne (Jack Bandeira)…

If only all biopics were as imaginative, engaging and sensitive as this! Jenny and June are not presented here as curiosities, but as troubled young people, let down by a system totally lacking in empathy, keen to other them, to set them apart. We see them as little girls (Eva-Arianna Baxter and Leah Mondesir-Simmonds) and as young women (Tamara Lawrance and Letitia Wright), by turns mischievous and vulnerable, selfish and self-absorbed. The four performances are exemplary, like a house of mirrors, amplifying the twins’ co-dependence, as well as the monstrous cruelty of sending them to an institution destined to destroy them, breaking two butterflies on a barbaric wheel.

Smoczynska imbues the girls’ story with humanity: there is sweetness here, and humour, as well as misery and obsession. It’s a thought-provoking, insightful piece of work.

4.5 stars

Susan Singfield

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

19/12/22

Netflix

Guillermo del Toro is one of my favourite film directors – and Disney’s Pinocchio one of the formative films of my childhood. So when I first hear the news that the Mexican director is planning to deliver his own version of Carlo Collodi’s classic tale, it’s naturally something I eagerly look forward to – for a very long time. Indeed, it turns out that del Toro has actually been working on this astonishing stop-frame animation for something like fifteen years.

As the release date finally approaches, I look everywhere for a cinema in Edinburgh that’s planning to show del Toro’s film on the big screen, but alas, with the Filmhouse out of action, it cannot be found. So Netflix it must be. As it turns out, some visions are so powerful, so perfect, that they can blaze out of a small screen like meteors. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is an astonishing film, that has the audacity to take everything we know about the story and give it a thorough makeover. What’s more, the changes that he makes (he co-wrote the screenplay with Patrick McHale) all seem to enrich the original, making it more logical, more explicable.

Revelation number one: when we first encounter woodcarver, Geppetto (David Bradley), he has a real son, Carlo (voiced by Gregory Mann). But Carlo dies tragically when Italian air force planes unload their bombs onto the church, where Gepetto is working on a huge crucifixion. This backstory helps flesh Geppetto out and makes his subsequent actions more believable – especially when Pinocchio is forged from the very tree planted to mark Carlo’s grave.

Revelation number two: the Pinocchio that Geppetto eventually carves in a drunken rage looks nothing like a ‘real boy’. He’s a strange, spindly, half-finished marionette, generally shunned and mistrusted by the people in his home village. Contrary to the original tale, it’s the villagers who have to learn to accept Pinocchio, rather than the other way around.

Revelation number three: this version is set in Italy in the 1930s, under the rule of Benito Mussolini. Pinocchio’s adventures on the ‘Donkey Island’ are exchanged for scenes where he unwittingly becomes a poster boy for fascism. (It’s nakedly clear what del Toro is saying here. And it makes perfect sense, because to take on Disney’s most iconic scenes would be a pointless exercise. If you can’t better a scene, do something entirely different, right?)

There’s more, much more, packed into the film’s two hour run. We meet Sebastian J Cricket (Ewan McGegor), an ambitious, self-aggrandising would-be author, who only agrees to take on the task of being Pinocchio’s ‘conscience’ in the hope off getting a book deal. There’s Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz), the greedy, venal owner of a travelling freak show, who spots an opportunity to make lots of money and who bullies his monkey assistant, Spazzatura (Cate Blanchett) at every opportunity. And wait till you see what the animators (and Tilda Swinton) have done with the infamous Blue Fairy, rechristened here as the Woodland Sprite. More than anything else, there are fundamental changes to the character of Pinocchio himself. He’s no longer the obnoxious, pig-headed lout of the novel, but a sweet, misguided misfit, desperately trying to be liked. A scene where he can’t understand why all the villagers hate him, but adore the other wooden figure nailed to a cross on the church wall is a stand-out.

It’s not just the levels of invention in the story that make this such a unmitigated triumph. It’s the loving attention to detail: every character, every set, every painted landscape; it all pulses and dazzles with imagination of the highest calibre. There’s so much to see here, it’s clearly going to need repeated viewings to really take it all in. And watching it makes me wish that dear old Ray Harryhausen was still alive to see where modern technology has brought the art of stop-motion animation.

Many films have the word ‘masterpiece’ attached to them, but few deserve it as thoroughly as this one. All you need to do it hit the Netflix button, so… no pressure.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Your Christmas or Mine?

08/12/22

Amazon Prime

Christmas movies are so hard to get right, especially when it comes to pleasing a committed Scrooge like me. Much of what passes for festive fare turns out to be inane, tinsel-adorned tat, often built around some available musical output. 2019’s Last Christmas springs immediately to mind. Pitched as a tribute to the late George Michael, it is a big dollop of vacuous candy floss. So I approach this film with some trepidation, noting that it barely registered at cinemas across the UK on its recent release – but a combination of ill-health and freezing weather conditions prompt me to take a gamble on it. I’m glad I do.

Your Christmas or Mine? (terrible title) is written by comedian Tom Parry and directed by Jim O’ Hanlon. James (Asa Butterfield) and Hayley (Cora Kirk) are young drama students in the throes of a heady romance. We first meet them at a busy railway station, where they are preparing to head off to their respective family homes to spend Christmas on different sides of the North/South divide. But, at the last moment, James experiences a sudden overpowering longing to spend more time with Hayley. He jumps off his train, changes platforms and scrambles aboard her service, seconds before it leaves the station.

Unfortunately, Hayley has had the very same idea…

After a sudden snowfall, the twosome find themselves marooned in unfamiliar locations and obliged to spend Christmas with their partner’s families. Once I’ve accepted this unlikely event, things rapidly get more interesting, as James and Hayley realise that neither of them has been entirely truthful. Why does James’ dad, Humphrey (Alex Jennings) hate Christmas so much? Why is Hayley’s dad (Daniel Mays) so obsessed with turduckens? And… who the hell is Hubert?

Parry’s culture-clash comedy sparkles with delightful dialogue, manic misunderstandings and riveting revelations, while the two central characters’ escapades are pitched just on the right side of believability. There’s a poignant explanation for Humphrey’s Scrooge-like persona that unexpectedly gives my tear ducts a bit of a workout; the two leads are immensely likeable, and there are cameos by excellent character actors (Mark Heap, Harriet Walter and David Bradley, to name but three.) Best of all, there are a couple of surprises I genuinely don’t see coming.

Your Christmas or Mine? is a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours and, after witnessing some real festive stinkers in recent years, that’s something to be thankful for. If asked for a Christmas movie recommendation this year, I’m happy to go with this.

Or Die Hard. It’s a tough call.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Matilda the Musical

08/12/22

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Way back in 2010, we spent a few days in Stratford-upon-Avon, to see in the New Year. Of course, we planned to go to the theatre while we were there, but we were winging it, and didn’t check what was on. We just assumed there’d be a Shakespeare, and thought we’d pick up tickets on the night. So we were disappointed to find nothing from the Bard on offer, and grimaced at the thought of the only thing there was: a kids’ musical. Still, we didn’t have anything else to do, so we wandered disconsolately up to the box office, only to find that there were no seats left. Double dejection. “There are some standing tickets,” we were told. “They’re £5 each.” We dithered. Did we really want to spend a couple of hours on our feet watching a play we weren’t that keen to see? “It’s only a fiver,” we reasoned. “If we don’t like it, we can leave at the interval.”

That night, we were treated to the delight that is Matilda the Musical – one of the most fortuitous accidents of our lives. Of course we didn’t leave at the interval: we were captivated. Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly had created a masterpiece, and we’d been lucky enough to stumble upon it.

Of course, the raw material they had was good. Roald Dahl’s Matilda is an engaging character: a little girl with more wit and gumption than any of the adults in her life. At the tender age of ten, she realises that she can’t put up with either her parents’ wilful neglect or her cruel headteacher’s bullying. After all, “if you always take it on the chin and wear it, nothing will change”. It shouldn’t take a child to put things right, but she only knows two decent grown-ups: Miss Honey, who is stymied by her own fear, and Miss Phelps, who doesn’t know the dismal truth, only the fairytale Matilda has concocted for her. It’s a David and Goliath tale, of pantomime proportions.

I am excited to see the film version of this (by now) hit stage show, and it doesn’t disappoint. Alisha Weir imbues Matilda with just the right amounts of sass and vulnerability, all righteous anger and secret yearning. Emma Thompson’s Miss Trunchbull is a towering threat, oversized to illuminate the mountain Matilda has to climb; she’s clearly revelling in the role. Indeed, there’s a sense of relish from all the adult actors playing against type: Lashana Lynch (Miss Honey) unleashing her softer side and some seriously impressive vocals; Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough taking a break from the highbrow as Matilda’s comedically grotesque parents. It’s a fun, feel-good film – despite the horrific violence and cruelty it contains – with a bright, rainbow palette, and the sense, all the way through, that Matilda will triumph.

The young cast are adorable – cute, but not overly contrived. Andrei Shen (Eric), Charlie Hodson-Prior (Bruce), Rei Yamauchi Fulker (Lavender), Ashton Robertson (Nigel) and Winter Jarrett-Glasspool (Amanda) make a formidable team, following Matilda’s lead and ultimately freeing themselves from Miss Trunchbull’s clutches.

Matthew Warchus, who also directed the theatre version, makes the transition to film successfully. There is an element of staginess, it must be said, but only in the best possible way: those huge, ensemble dance numbers are a delight.

With kids or without them, Matilda the Musical feels like a Christmas must-see this year.

4.2 stars

Susan Singfield

The Menu

06/12/22

Cineworld, Edinburgh

This dark and malevolently funny film, directed by Mark Mylod, expertly skewers the pretensions of fine dining and the people who indulge in it. It’s an assured piece of work, but, as somebody who enjoys the occasional bit of haute cuisine, I take its final assertion – that the only food worth getting worked up about is cheeseburger and fries – with a large pinch of smoked paprika.

Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) is a lover of good cooking, sycophantically devoted to the work of culinary genius, Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), about whom he has an encyclopaedic knowledge. When we first encounter Tyler, he’s waiting impatiently at a quayside with his date, ‘Margot’ (Anya Taylor-Joy), for the boat that will take the two of them over to Slowik’s private island. Once there, along with a group of other specially invited guests, the couple will experience the great man’s latest menu. Their dinner companions include a couple of influential food critics, a trio of investors, a B-list movie star and even Slowik’s mother, who appears to be hopelessly drunk as the guests take their seats.

Slowik’s devoted staff hurry obey his every word, while his second in command, Elsa (Hong Chau), wanders around the restaurant politely insulting the diners to their faces.

The ensuing events are presented as a series of courses, complete with onscreen descriptions and, as the time slips by, Slowik’s offerings become ever more absurd. (I particularly love the course that consists of a selection of accompaniments for bread that neglects to include any actual bread, no matter how vociferously the diners demand it.) But soon violence and bloodshed become major ingredients and the diners are fast losing their appetite. It’s clear that this is going to be Slowik’s swan song, a rebuke to a way of life that he has increasingly come to despise – and that it’s going to take considerable ingenuity to survive the final course.

An inventive satire packed with scenes of cruelty and humiliation, The Menu seems to take great delight in settling scores. There are some clever plot twists here – though not everything stands up to close scrutiny – and Fiennes excels as a man who has let his own burgeoning success push him to the very edge of sanity. Taylor-Joy is terrific too, as the only character in the film prepared to tell Slowik exactly what she thinks of his food.

It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I thought The Menu was delicious. Bon appetit!

4 stars

Philip Caveney

The Humans

04/12/22

Netflix

Adapting a stage play into a film can be fraught with difficulties and it’s not often that one manages to rise above the strictures that such a process imposes. The Humans is playwright Stephen Karam’s attempt to do exactly that with his Tony-Award winning drama. His ‘opening out’ procedure is to use the apartment where the action takes place almost as an extra character. As the extended Blake family go about trying to celebrate Thanksgiving, the ugly, ramshackle new home of Brigid (Beanie Feldstein) and Richard (Steven Yeun) has all the grim oppressiveness of a traditional haunted house. We watch the family conversing at the end of a filthy corridor or crammed into an awkward corner. The camera lingers on blistered plaster and rusting metal. It’s almost as though the place is sentient and spying upon them. The sense of impending dread is palpable.

But this is far from being a straightforward ghost story. The Blakes are haunted by their own sense of failure. Patriarch Erik (Richard Jenkins) seems obsessed with the idea that something bad is going to happen, and often refers to the near miss the family experienced with the tragedy of the Twin Towers. His wife, Deidre (Jayne Howdishell), laments another slip-up with her Weight Watchers schedule, while Brigid announces that she hasn’t managed to secure a grant to fund her career as a musician and will have to contemplate working in retail. Brigid’s sister, Aimee (Amy Schumer) is suffering from a debilitating illness and has broken up with her girlfriend, while Richard refers to mental health issues back in his youth. And Erik’s mother, Momo (June Squibb), sits in her wheelchair and unleashes the occasional string of what appears to be rambling gibberish…

The Humans is nobody’s idea of ‘a fun night as the flicks’. Indeed, it’s tortuous, uncomfortable and, at times, dismaying. And yet, it manages to exert a slow, powerful grip on me, as the tension slowly rises to boiling point. If there is no real resolution to the mess of unconnected distress that’s unearthed at the Thanksgiving from Hell, it should also be said that, in its own way, it’s a cinematic offering like no other and – to my mind – that makes it well worth checking out.

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney

The Swimmers

04/12/22

Netflix

Some reviewers have dismissed The Swimmers as ‘a feelgood movie’, but that, I feel, is doing it an immense disservice. While it’s based on the true story of Syrian sisters, Yusra and Sara Mardini, Sally El Hossaini’s film – which she co-wrote with Jack Thorne – takes its viewers through some pretty distressing experiences before we finally experience any sense of uplift.

We first encounter the two girls in their home city of Damascus, where they are enjoying the exuberant nightlife and, by day, are training hard with their father, a swimming coach, whose greatest dream is to see his two daughters representing their country in the next Olympics. But the year is 2012 and a war is inexorably approaching. When next we see the family, it’s 2015, they are experiencing a far less privileged lifestyle and are swiftly coming to the conclusion that there is no hope of ever achieving happiness in Syria. So together with their young cousin, Nizar, (Ahmed Malek), Yusra (Nathalie Issa) and Sara (Manal Issa) take a flight to Turkey and subsequently set off on a hazardous journey, hoping to make it to Hanover, where they have a friend who they know will take them in.

But for Yusra, those long-cherished dreams of being an Olympic swimmer have never faded away…

We’ve all heard of the perils suffered by refugees attempting to escape war-torn countries, but The Swimmers makes them feel horribly palpable A terrifying journey across the sea to Lesbos in an old inflatable boat is only the first in a whole series of nail-biting disasters that ensue. And it seems that wherever the sisters and their companions travel, there are ruthless people who are more happy to make a swift buck from their desperate situation. Is there anybody they can trust? And even when they finally reach their destination, there are more torments they’ll need to endure before they can have any sense of belonging in their chosen home. There’s a genuine sense of the scale of the issues, too. A scene where a group of refugees wander across a Greek beach that is literally littered with thousands of discarded lifejackets is – quite literally – breathtaking.

Real life sisters, the Issas offer delightful portrayals of the central characters and there’s an appealing performance from Matthias Schweighöff as Sven, the swimming coach who accepts Yusra as a member of his swimming team, and helps her to pursue her ambitions all the way to the 2020 Olympics in Rio. For a little while, the ‘feel good’ tag feels well-earned.

But this being a true story, grim reality soon intervenes. A post-credit message informs us what has really happened to Sara since 2020, and the smile fades from my face. The Swimmers is a brilliantly told tale of human endurance that’s also extremely informative, and the Mardini sisters’ incredible journey keeps me hooked throughout.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney