Critics’ choices for the week ahead
Cinema
Beauty and the Beast Bill Condon’s fairy-tale update is an out-and-out musical: something none of Disney’s other live-action remakes of its animated back catalogue – from
Cinderella to The Jungle Book – have had the gumption to attempt. Alan Menken’s score and Howard Ashman’s evergreen lyrics may still be the main draw, but the design team haven’t skimped on the sumptuous sets and Emma Watson’s girl-next-door winsomeness sees her through nicely as Belle. PG cert, 129 min
Personal Shopper
Kristen Stewart’s second film with French director Olivier Assayas – a ghost story, infused with sex and suspense – sees the former Twilight star on the form of her career. She’s a grief-benumbed Paris PA whose efforts to contact her dead brother open a line of communication to a less amicable force. 15 cert, 105 min
Get Out
The most potent mix of horror and social comment in years, Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a racial nightmare cunningly wrapped in the paranoid suburban trappings of something like
The Stepford Wives. British actor Daniel Kaluuya plays a black photographer visiting his white girlfriend’s parents, and gradually realising that something is off. 15 cert, 104 min
The Salesman
Last month, the Iranian master of domestic melodrama Asghar Farhadi won the Best Foreign Film Oscar for the second time. While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of his 2011 film,
A Separation, this is a charged drama about a marriage between two actors that comes unstuck after an intruder is mistakenly let into their home. 12A cert, 123 min
A Silent Voice
Intricate, romantic and bright as a jewel, this Japanese animation follows the changing relationship between a deaf girl and the class clown who picks on her, then comes to regret it. Director Naoko Yamada captures the complexity of the high-school social scene, and also the simplicity of the moments that really count 12A cert, 130 min
Elle
What happens when you cross Isabelle Huppert, an arthouse icon, with Paul Verhoeven, the director of Total Recall and Basic Instinct? The answer – a thriller about a woman who’s raped at home by an intruder, then reacts to the attack in unexpected ways – is a needling, ingenious challenge, and more complex, provocative and scaldingly funny than anyone could have predicted. 18 cert, 131 min
Exhibitions Creating the Countryside: Thomas Gainsborough to Today
If artists have drawn endless inspiration from the British countryside, their visions have simultaneously shaped the way we expect our landscape to look. This expansive show features works by Gainsborough, Stubbs, Grayson Perry and Mat Collishaw.
Howard Hodgkin: Absent Friends
Conceived as the National Portrait Gallery’s largest exhibition devoted to a living artist, this show – opening just a fortnight after Hodgkin’s death – serves instead as a timely tribute to a great British artist. Hodgkin’s paintings may look abstract but their rich colours and free-flowing brushwork are infused with the human presence: memories of encounters and events, recalled often over many years. Not much has been heard about him since he won the 2002 Turner Prize, Sussex-based Tyson presents 350 beautifully realised drawings, each representing his response to the events of a particular day.
Stage Love in Idleness
Trevor Nunn revives Terence Rattigan’s 1944 play about a teenager returning to England from Canada to discover that his mother is having an affair with a cabinet minister. Eve Best, Anthony Head and Call the
Midwife’s Helen George star. Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1, from Mon In James Macdonald’s superlative revival of Edward Albee’s 1962 classic, Imelda Staunton is note perfect as Martha, chewing chunks off her husband, George. Conleth Hill, as George, gives an A-grade study in resignation and retaliation. Harold Pinter Theatre, London (0844 871 7622), until May 27
Stepping Out
Richard Harris’s 1984 comedy about a gaggle of women (plus one token bloke) who convene in a church hall to learn the rudiments of tap dancing boasts terrific performances, not least from Amanda Holden, who takes the plum role of snooty Vera. Vaudeville Theatre, London WC2 (0330 333 4814), until June 17
The Miser
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this adaptation of the Moliere classic, and it’s nice to see Griff Rhys Jones in the title role. But the plot is thin and such is the collective chasing after every laugh, that it feels a little bit like a panto. Garrick Theatre, London WC2 (0330 333 4811), until June 10
ENB Mixed Bill
ENB director Tamara Rojo takes her super company into thrilling territory with Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring, Hans van Manen’s Adagio Sebastiano del Piombo’s Mary and Elizabeth (The Visitation) Hammerklavier and William Forsythe’s sleek and sexy reinvention of ballet, Classical & Opera by Ivan Hewett and Rupert Christiansen Handel’s rich comedy is revived by ENO in this wacky production, with a strong cast including Sarah Tynan, Patricia Bardon and Robert Murray.
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Presenter Stephen Johnson and recently arrived chief conductor Thomas Dausgaard explore the music of reclusive Danish visionary Rued Langgaard.
Pieter Wispelwey
The revered Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey and pianist Paolo Giacometti play Schubert’s transformation of his own songs into instrumental forms.
A Village Romeo and Juliet
This atmospheric love tragedy by Delius, set in the Swiss Alps, is being staged by New Sussex Opera, in a production conducted by Lee Reynolds.