Tilda’s girl in a tale of secrets and lies
ALSO SHOWING . . .
JOANNA HOGG’s achingly middle-class films aren’t everybody’s cup of decaffeinated Earl Grey, indeed they aren’t really mine, but I can appreciate their quiet intensity. THE SOUVENIR (15) is set in London in the early Eighties, when the city was squarely in the sights of IRA bombers. Julie (honor swinton Byrne) is an aspiring filmmaker from a well-off family, who has chosen working-class sunderland for her latest project, largely because she wants to break out of her privileged bubble.
she is a polite, considerate, sweet-natured young woman, sensitively played by the scot in her debut feature role, with support — doubtless in more ways than one — from her real-life mother Tilda swinton, who also plays her mother on screen.
Julie lives in her mum’s Knightsbridge pied-a-terre, where others rather prey on her decency and naivety. But the main predator in this story is Anthony (Tom Burke), an urbane, smooth-talking fellow a few years older than her, who claims to have a mysterious job at the Foreign office. soon they are lovers, but Anthony has been hiding another secret: he is a heroin addict. By now, however, Julie is hooked on him.
It’s a sad tale, and apparently semiautobiographical, which makes it even more reminiscent of 2009’s An Education, based on Lynn Barber’s memoir. swinton, as so often, steals every scene she’s in, which in this case means pinching from her own daughter. she doesn’t appear much, but there’s a marvellous early scene when she comes to the flat and makes brisk maternal ‘suggestions’, unthinkingly lifting Julie’s hands to check whether she’s biting her nails. It’s very subtly and beautifully done. ★★★✩✩
There’s no subtlety IN ASTERIX: THE SECRET OF THE MAGIC POTION (PG) , a somewhat lumpen animation based on the French comic stories which are 60 years old this year. I was never into Asterix as a child and never introduced him to my own kids, so I can’t really comment on whether this film stays true to the spirit of the original tales. Given how Americanised it is, I suspect not.
It follows the quest of elderly wizard Getafix to find a young druid worthy of receiving the highly secret recipe of, you’ve guessed it, a magic potion. Much of the dialogue will fly well over the heads of the target audience, but there are a few half-decent gags aimed at grownups, and a silly roman senator called Tomcrus, pronounced Tom Cruise.