Oh dear, Olivia... there’s plenty to worry about
Don’t Worry Darling
Cert: 16 2hrs 2mins ★★☆☆☆
After Yang
Cert: PG, 1hr 36mins ★★☆☆☆
Juniper
Cert: 15A, 1hr 34mins ★★★★☆
Sidney
Cert: 12A 1hr 51mins ★★★★☆
Catherine, Called Birdy C ert: 12A 1hr 48mins ★★☆☆☆
On one level, Olivia Wilde has nothing to be embarrassed about as the second feature film she’s directed (the first was the impressive Booksmart in 2019) hits cinemas. It looks wonderful, Florence Pugh is fantastic in the central role and even Harry Styles – whose subsequent off-screen relationship with Wilde had sparked such a furore – is decent enough.
But on another level… oh dear. As Don’t Worry Darling gets under way, with the action unfolding on one of those perfect 1950s American executive estates and we watch all these perfect wives, in their perfect dresses, mixing perfect cocktails for their perfect husbands, we’re mentally ticking off the things it reminds us of.
Mad Men and Desperate Housewives from TV, Pleasantville and The Truman Show from the cinema. Maybe a touch of Stepford Wives. And somewhere along the line, you just get it, and far too quickly. This is a film that spends a long time springing no surprises at all and when it finally does, it leaves you both disappointed and frustrated. Oh… right. Again? Really?
It’s a shame as Pugh, who unlike her co-star Styles is playing an American, is so good as Alice, who becomes the second housewife to suspect that there’s something not altogether right about the so-called ‘Victory Project’ that employs their husbands. The first was poor Margaret but no one really knows what’s happened to her. Apart from maybe Frank (Chris Pine), the project’s charismatic leader.
With hair and make-up, wardrobe and production design all rising to the cinematic challenge splendidly, there’s no denying that Don’t Worry Darling oozes style.
But when you come out coveting the mid-Century furnishings and desperate for a martini, you know a film’s in trouble.
The spectre of Blade Runner hangs over After Yang, with director Kogonada clearly out to impart the same dry, deadpan delivery to proceedings that Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford memorably brought to the 1982 classic.
So where once Deckard spent ages trying to discover the manufacturer of a particular synthetic animal scale, so Jake (Colin Farrell) now laboriously tries to find out what’s gone wrong with Yang, the android he bought as a companion for his adopted daughter and which has now broken down.
Memory lies at the heart of things but not, alas, in a way that particularly lingered in mine. Charlotte Rampling is on top form in Juniper, playing an imperious, gin-swigging grandmother who comes to recuperate at her son’s country house in New Zealand after breaking her leg.
But even before Ruth (Rampling) arrives, the house is not a happy place – her daughter-in-law has recently died, her son is broke and her hot-tempered grandson, Sam (George Ferrier) is in trouble at school. The arrival of a cantankerous alcoholic seems unlikely to improve things. Nevertheless, what ensues is touching and rather lovely.
The great Sidney Poitier died this year and Apple TV’s documentary, Sidney, is a fascinating reminder, not just of his talent and screen charisma, but his contribution to black civil rights and to the advancement of black actors. Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Spike Lee all pay homage, while Poitier himself – the star of In The Heat Of The Night and To Sir, With Love – eloquently demonstrates that he had lost none of his talent for storytelling right up until the end. If you’re anything like me, you’ll come out desperate to revisit at least half a dozen of his best films.
Lena Dunham, creator of the cult TV show, Girls, is an American, which may explain why she comes quite badly unstuck with Catherine, Called Birdy, which ambitiously attempts to give a 14year-old girl growing up in muddy 13th-Century England the Fleabag treatment.
Despite a nice performance from Bella Ramsey as the tomboy-ish Birdy, what ensues ends up looking like a distinctly uncinematic cross between TV’s Tracy Beaker and Horrible Histories. Underwhelming.