CURE FOR A PLAYWRIGHT’S MIDLIFE CRISIS? IT’S A RAP
The Forty-Year-Old Version (Netflix, 15) Verdict: Hugely engaging ★★★★☆ Eternal Beauty (Cinemas, 15) Verdict: Sad, sweet and funny ★★★☆☆
A FILM with a title that puns on another film’s title, Judd Apatow’s The Forty-Year- Old Virgin, should perhaps be regarded with suspicion.
But you realise very quickly that such suspicions are misplaced. Radha Blank, making her feature-film debut as writer, director, producer and star, has crafted a compellingly touching and funny story about race, middle age and frustrated artistic ambition in modern-day New York.
It is too long, at more than two hours, and some will find it too edgy, but I enjoyed i t enormously. Blank’s character, a lightly fictionalised version of herself, is approaching 40 without having fulfilled her early promise as a playwright.
Her job, teaching drama to truculent teenagers, merely compounds her midlife crisis, but things begin to look up when she turns to rap as a means of self-expression.
There are many great scenes in what becomes less a linear narrative and more a slice-of-life tale, and the decision to film in black and white, with only sporadic bursts of colour, pays off with some fantastic cinematography (by Eric Branco).
This hugely engaging film is too singular to categorise, but try picturing Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It crossed with Woody Allen’s Manhattan.
ETERNAL BEAUTY is also about a woman with midlife problems, but it’s a very different kettle of fish indeed, and not just because it takes place in a drab British town.
Sally Hawkins gives a riveting performance as Jane, who has suffered increasing mental health problems ever since she was jilted at the altar years earlier.
A high- quality supporting cast i ncludes Penelope Wilton as her dysfunctional mother, Billie Piper as her horrible sister and David Thewlis as the man she falls for, who also has mental health issues.
The film is written and directed by actor Crai g Roberts, who apparently based t he story on someone in his own family. It is sad, sometimes very funny and brilliantly acted throughout.