The original has nothing on this Lady Macbeth
Anyone who thinks Shakespeare’s ‘Scottish Play’ is a bit of a downer should get a load of Lady Macbeth (16) It makes that murderous tragedy look like a frothy farce. Northern England in the 1860s. Young Katherine (Florence Pugh, right) has been sold into marriage to brutish patriarch Alexander (Paul Hilton). Meanwhile, his brutishly patriarchal papa, Boris (Christopher Fairbank), subjects Katherine to regular harangues on enlarging his family. For the movie’s first halfhour or so, Katherine takes all this on the chin. Then, with Alexander away on business, she gets talking to Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), the household’s lusty, dusky groomsman. Soon enough, they’re rutting like rabbits. So far, so standard-issue 19th-Century novel. We know what happens to girls like this. Not this time. Indeed, Lady Macbeth is almost impossible to classify. But if you imagine a Hammer version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, you’ll have an idea where things are going. Theatre director William Oldroyd’s debut movie feature isn’t perfect. The symmetry of its longheld interior shots is beautiful to behold but something of that abstraction bleeds into the storytelling. The movie never convinces you there’s a real world going on outside. Then again, as Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) says to Catrin (Gemma Arterton) in Their Finest (12)
‘People like films because stories have a shape, a purpose, a meaning… Unlike life.’ Tom ought to know, because he’s a screenwriter for the Ministry of Information during the Second World War. His job – and that of new colleague Catrin – is working on a new propaganda film. Given that they have stars like Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy, on sparklingly egomaniacal form) to speak their lines, this isn’t difficult. But love is, because Catrin is married and Tom is a miserable drunk. Will they get it together? Not telling but I wept watching them try. Their Finest more than lives up to its name. Hywel Bennett died last month, and though Loot (15) is not his best work, it demonstrates his insolent charm. It’s out on Blu-ray for the 50th anniversary of Joe Orton’s murder, alongside the film of his masterpiece, Entertaining Mr Sloane (15) left. Jeanne Moreau, who died last month, held on to her languid sexiness a long time too. The Blu-ray of Jacques Becker’s 1954 Parisian gangster flick Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (15) proves she got more beautiful with age. The story’s not much but the dresses and suits and chrome-covered cars are a treat.