Social-climbing caper lacks heart despite a brilliant cast
BALTIMORE
Now showing; Cert 15A
With uncanny timing, this tense biopic of UK heiress-turned-IRA soldier Rose Dugdale arrives the week of the 82-year-old’s death in a Dublin nursing home. It makes a somewhat fitting tribute to the republican zealot (portrayed with much verve by Imogen Poots), who walked away from an enormous inheritance so she could devote herself to the socialist revolutionary ideals she acquired in her student years.
Filmmaking couple Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor frame this saga of radicalisation with the infamous 1974 art heist at Russborough House and its aftermath.
Aided by smart-mouthed Dom (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, sporting the custom IRA stage outfit of polo neck and leather jacket) and the more callow Martin (Lewis Brophy), she hides out at a remote cottage with the priceless artwork. From their paranoid hideout, the film jumps back and forth, showing us the makings of a hardline republican from the most unlikely of beginnings.
Poots, Vaughan-Lawlor and Kubrickian cinematography are the big attractions in this snapshot of a life less ordinary. The time-hopping and outlandish finale can feel a little overcooked, but the ambition is admirable.
Hilary White
GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE
In cinemas; Cert 12A
You won’t find a wonkier franchise entry than Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Director Gil Kenan, working alongside screenwriter Jason Reitman, has assembled a chewy, flavourless tribute to the 1984 comedy. Some of the original members have returned.
Bill Murray, wearing that face he makes whenever he’s asked to act in something he shouldn’t, appears for a matter of minutes. Dusting off their old proton packs, a committed Ernie Hudson and a charming Dan Aykroyd bring some enthusiasm to the table. If only they were given something interesting to do.
The central plot concerns a ghastly spirit who, if freed from a haunted paperweight, will bring about another Ice Age. Along the way, the youngest Ghostbuster (Mckenna Grace) befriends a lonely teenage phantom, Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon turn the famous firehouse into a home, Kumail Nanjiani cracks meaningless one-liners and Finn Wolfhard chases Slimer around an attic.
Some good ideas there, but they’re not allowed to breathe, and the finished product is bland, disjointed and staggeringly pointless. This is what we get for being nostalgic about everything.
Chris Wasser
THE DELINQUENTS
Selected cinemas; Cert 15A
Moran (Daniel Elias) and Roman (Esteban Bigliardi) are colleagues at a bank in Buenos Aires. Over a meal one night, the former tells the latter he intends to steal twice the amount of money he would earn were he to work in the bank to retirement – and then turn himself in. Moran’s proposal is that he will give half to Roman if he agrees to stash the loot while he is serving his sentence.
After the calmly executed heist, Roman struggles to relax as a bank inquisitor grills staff. At home, meanwhile, a pounding stress dogs him knowing the score is hidden in a closet under his girlfriend’s nose. Taking instruction from Moran, he hides the money in a remote village, only to lose his heart to a local girl (Margarita Molfino) and thereby complicate the plans.
Time may be an abstract concept but it remains valuable, all the same. While filled with dry humour and perceptive characterisation, Rodrigo Moreno’s meandering heist drama doesn’t quite justify the three-plus hours it asks of us. Shame, really; with a bit of editorial austerity, a bemusing, oddly sensual crime caper could have been added to the modern Latin American canon.
Hilary White
PALM ROYALE
Apple TV+
Remember that classic Simpsons where Marge joins the country club, has to remake her Chanel dress umpteen times so it seems new, and deals with an arch dowager who sees through the whole thing and hopes Marge “didn’t take my attempt to destroy her personally?”
At first there seems to be a little of all that class-climbing pathos and wit in Palm Royale, Abe Sylvia’s adaptation of
Juliet McDaniel’s 2018 novel Mr and Mrs American Pie. Kristen Wiig plays Maxine Simmons, an imposter proto-influencer who wants to break into 1960s American high society, an oasis of privilege far from all that civil rights and Vietnam angst, by inveigling her way into a country club.
She apparently has the right connections, including a wealthy old woman who can’t contradict her by virtue of being in a coma. Maxine’s clothes and jewels are borrowed or stolen, the Ivy league backstory is made up, and with her model looks and entitlement she does look the part. But thanks in no small part to Wiig’s nerve jangling performance, something’s still just a little off about her, and it sets the Ladies That Lunch spidey senses tingling. The resident Queen Bee (Alison Janney camping it up with relish), and her sometimes rival, Dinah (Leslie Bibb), sense an interloper in their midst and they and their coterie of bejewelled frenemies begin to close ranks on Maxine.
Where Marge just had some inventiveness with a sewing machine to keep her going, Maxine finds that there is another currency which might prolong her stay in this beautifully-lit Valhalla: secrets.
The sense that everyone has their own damaging skeletons stashed somewhere behind the furs, makes her feel that the playing pitch might be levelled, and brings her to places that the country club mean girls would never visit, such as a feminist bookshop and the after-hours clubs frequented by staff. Each uncovered revelation is another piece of collateral that prolongs her stay at the country club.
The cast is a brilliant mixture of big stars — Wiig and Laura Dern, who is also a producer — and hilariously well-cast supporting roles such as Ricky Martin as an officious but well-meaning country club employee, and Kaia Gerber — daughter of Cindy Crawford — as a manicurist who dreams of becoming a model.
Carol Burnett, who is 90 but still looks fabulous, also has an important part as one of the more likeable socialites. The plot is a soapy melodrama which twists and turns back upon itself so often you get the feeling it might have worked better as a movie. At times it works but it can feel like a barrage of camp comebacks and put-downs; just as the glossy surfaces of Emily in Paris were once described as “ambient television” — made to be played in the background as one absently scrolls through Instagram on another screen — so Palm Royale might be summed up as TikTok TV, tailor-made to be spliced out and incorporated into a meme.
But even memes require the bedrock of shared context in which to flourish and one wonders if a series like this has the power to drive enough new viewers to Apple TV to give them that context. The streaming service has had the odd massive hit like Ted Lasso, but, compared to Netflix and Prime, it’s still a little light on must-see content to justify paying for it.
There are faint gestures toward social commentary: we’re reminded that abortion was illegal in the period depicted, that women were expected to know their place and that some men were off dying in a war while others smoked cigars by a pool.
But the vicious “eat the rich” sentiments of other shows of the last few years — such as White Lotus — are softened and muted here; it’s never quite clear that what Maxine is striving toward is really worth it after all. This makes it a little hard to cheerlead for her character, who isn’t even sure she’s a feminist (she prefers designer labels to social ones). And in the end, Maxine is just Marge in handsewn Chanel, but without the heart.