Helena Bonham Carter

The House

06/02/22

Netflix

It’s a cold Sunday afternoon, with the threat of snow hanging over it. We’ve nothing pressing to do, and we’ve already braved the elements for a bracing walk. We don’t want to go out again. It’s warm in our lounge, and there must be something worth watching that we haven’t already seen… But what?

The House pops up as a suggestion, and we’re intrigued.

Originally billed as a miniseries, The House appears on Netflix as a portmanteau, and is – I think – all the better for it. Viewed as one, the themes coalesce, and the strange beauty of this piece is given time to develop.

The house in question is a rather lovely one: three storeys of opulence and grandeur. Enda Walsh’s script shows it to us in three different times: the past, the present and the future.

Chapter One, And Heard Within, a Lie is Spun, is an eerie origins tale, directed by Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels, and brought to life via some very spooky felt dolls. Mabel (voiced by Mia Goth) is a little girl. It’s some time in the 1800s, and her father’s fecklessness means her family is impoverished. Raymond (Matthew Goode) is a decent man; it’s just that he’s not very good at making money or managing his alcohol intake. One night, he wanders drunkenly into the forest, and meets a mysterious being, who offers him a way out. The enigmatic architect, Mr Van Schoonbeek, will build him a house. It is a gift. The only catch is that they have to live there – and that doesn’t seem like a catch at all. What could go wrong?

A lot, as it happens. Mabel is disconcerted to discover that Mr Van Schoonbeek keeps making changes. Big changes. Such as removing the staircases, so that she and her baby sister, Isobel, are trapped on the upper floor. Her parents seem caught up in the house’s spell, lured by its riches, and all too soon are literally defined by what they own…

Chapter Two, Then Lost is Truth That Can’t Be Won, directed by Niki Lindroth von Bahr, takes us to the present day. The house is now part of a suburban row, and is in the process of being renovated.

By a rat.

Said rat, known only as The Developer and voiced by Jarvis Cocker, is a hard-working soul. He has everything riding on the success of what seems to be a solo project, and – as his constant calls to the bank confirm – is relying on a quick sale. At first, he’s confident. His plans are meticulous. He has dedicated his life to this money-making scheme, sleeping in the basement for months, doing the place up room by room. It’s a wonder of high-spec luxury. But when he spies a fur beetle scurrying along the kitchen floor, he realises he has a problem. He fills in gaps in the skirting boards and throws around a liberal amount of beetle-poison, but all to no avail. He has an open viewing scheduled. What is he to do?

In Chapter Three, Listen Again and Seek the Sun, director Paloma Baeza offers us a washed out dystopia, set in the near future. Floods have risen, and the house looms precariously out of the water, an island in a never-ending sea. It’s all studio apartments now, owned by a cat called Rosa (Susan Wokoma), who dreams of restoring the dilapidated building to its former glory. The Pinterest-style boards attached to her wall show an ambitious vision, but she’s fighting a losing battle. All but two of her tenants have left, and those who remain, Jen (Helena Bonham Carter) and Elias (Will Sharpe), pay their rent, respectively, in crystals and fish. Which is all very well, Rosa tells them crossly, but no plumber will accept them as currency so no, sorry, she can’t do anything about the horrible brown water that’s coming out of the taps.

When Cosmos (Paul Kaye) arrives, the truth becomes clear: Rosa needs to let go of her attachment to the house if she wants to survive.

Taken as a whole, these three stories amount to a gentle polemic, an admonishment to us all to realise what really matters before it’s too late to save the world. It’s beautifully done. The tales are fresh, engaging, and quirkily animated – a lovely way to while away an hour and a half.

4.1 stars

Susan Singfield

Enola Holmes

28/09/20

Netflix

Let’s get one thing straight, shall we? Enola Holmes is an invention of American author Nancy Springer. The character does not appear in any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories. Furthermore, news that the Conan Doyle estate is in the process of suing Netflix for having the temerity to feature a ‘likeable’ version of the great detective strikes me as faintly absurd. Still, here is the aforementioned Enola, as portrayed by the immensely likeable Millie Bobby Brown, (better known as ’11’ in Stranger Things) in the first of what is intended to be a series of six films – and you know what? It’s really rather good.

Enola is the estranged little sister of Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin), though she hasn’t seen either of them since she was a toddler. Brought up by her reclusive mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) she’s been home-schooled in a whole series of unusual subjects, all designed to develop her mind and (importantly) her martial arts skills.

When Eudoria suddenly disappears without explanation, Enola’s care passes to her humourless guardian, Mycroft, who decides to put her in a finishing school run by the dreaded Miss Harrison (Fiona Shaw being suitably repellent). But instead, Enola opts to go in search of her mother, using a series of disguises and the kind of detection skills that Sherlock would be proud of. Along the way, she encounters another runaway, Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) and it isn’t long before sparks begin to fly between them. But first, there’s a complicated mystery in need of unravelling…

Handsomely mounted and featuring a whole battalion of revered character actors, there’s much here to enjoy, though it really is Millie Bobby Brown who keeps everything bubbling along, maintaining a jovial conversation with the audience as she goes. This is witty, inventive and – unusually for a Holmes project – has a nicely handled feminist subtext at its heart.

Legal actions not withstanding, there’s every reason to believe that Enola Holmes could go on to be an engaging series, but – should it turn out to be a standalone – it’s still an enjoyable way to pass a couple of hours.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Ocean’s Eight

19/06/18

I like Ocean’s Eight. I like its exuberance, its stellar cast, its slick plotting and its silliness. It looks great: as polished and meticulously groomed as the A-listers at the Met Gala, where the eponymous Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), sister of the franchise’s previous lead, masterminds an audacious jewellery robbery.

What’s not to like? Well, it’s just another heist movie, albeit a well-told one – a slice of polished nonsense, not particularly memorable. And it’s VERY American in its glorification of the maverick, a veritable celebration of outlaws and their crimes. Can you imagine a British film on a similar subject where everything runs so smoothly, where the thieves are as sympathetically presented, where no one bungles anything? Ocean and her team are almost super-human. All that talent – it’s a shame it’s wasted stealing sparkly stones. But still.

It’s great to see this fine group of actors given the chance to have some fun, playing roles that are strong, cool, funny and exciting. They don’t have to be seductive or damaged or any of the other limited options usually available to mainstream-movie women over thirty. (Of the eight, only Awkwafina is still – just in her twenties: Anne Hathaway, Rihanna and Mindy Kaling are all in their thirties; Cate Blanchett and Sarah Paulson in their forties, and – almost unbelievably – Sandra Bullock and Helena Bonham-Carter are over fifty now. How did that happen?) They all look like they’re having fun, especially Blanchett, razzing around on her motorbike, exuding charisma.

The plot’s a pretty simple one, even if the plan within is fiendishly complex. Debbie Ocean has been in prison for the past five years, and has spent her time conceiving every detail of this heist. She wants to pull off this crime, not just for the riches it will afford her, but for the kicks, and to live up to her family name. If she can exact revenge upon her ex at the same time, well, why wouldn’t she? So she looks up her old ally, Lou (Blanchett), currently engaged in watering down vodka at a nightclub she owns, and lays out her idea. They assemble a team and away they go.

It’s a shame there’s not much jeopardy: once the group has been established, the film is pretty much a series of daring steps, each one successful, building towards the climactic moment when the diamonds are snatched. The boldness is impressive, but there’s not much to feel other than admiration for their cunning; it’s pretty much a one-note film.

James Corden’s appearance in the final act is fun: he’s a much vilified man, but I’m never really sure why. He’s always been a good actor, and he’s very funny here, with some laugh-out-loud lines that help to puncture the smugness that’s in danger of creeping in.

All in all, this is an enjoyable way to spend a few hours; sadly though, that’s all it is.

3.8 stars

Susan Singfield

Suffragette

Unknown-3 Unknown

17/10/15

Suffragette feels like an important – and timely – film. There’s a bit of a feminist backlash going on at the moment, with cries of “feminazi” and “what about the men?” drowning out the fact that all feminists have ever really asked for is equality, which shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Suffragette brings to the screen the stories of the unknown women who fought the cause. The casting of Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst cleverly highlights this shift in focus: the most high-profile actor has a cameo role, as does the figurehead of suffrage. This film is all about the less-exalted stars of the women’s movement: working-class washerwomen like Maude and Violet (Carey Mulligan and Anne-Marie Duff) and middle-class professionals such as Edith, a pharmacist (Helena Bonham Carter). Their lives are tough and unforgiving, and they have little control over anything. Their husbands own their property, their children. No wonder they want something more, or at least the right to have a say.

But, as ever, change is difficult to effect: the beneficiaries of the status quo are reluctant to let go, and others are afraid to rock their fragile boats. Here, we see Maude vilified and reviled as she begins to speak up for herself, and the reality of what she’s lost hits home – both for the character and the audience – when we see her son adopted because her now-estranged husband, Sonny (Ben Whishaw) thinks she will corrupt the boy. Sonny is bereft too: he’s threatened and undermined by Maude’s assertion of her rights; he’s a decent man who doesn’t understand. His tragedy is real as well. Everyone’s trapped by the rigidity of societal norms: Brendan Gleeson’s Inspector Arthur Steed feels some sympathy for the women, but that doesn’t stop him locking them up or allowing them to be force-fed.

Abi Morgan’s script is well-balanced: dispassionate and informative as well as emotive and personal. It’s a truly moving tale of the past with a message for the future: as Maude says, speaking tentatively to Lloyd George, “This life… I thought there might be a better way to live it.”

4.7 stars

Susan Singfield