Three to see
Running out of shows to watch? We round up the best streaming and DVD releases of the week
SAINT FRANCES (15) ★★★★ ★
RESTAURANT waitress Bridget (Kelly O’Sullivan) attends an interview for the position of nanny in an affluent suburb of Chicago. Annie (Lily Mojekwu) and Maya (Charin Alvarez) are looking for someone to care for their bright, rambunctious daughter Frances (Ramona Edith-Williams).
Bridget lands the job as a last-minute replacement for the preferred candidate and awkwardly integrates into the family.
She witnesses tension between Frances’s mothers and forges a deep bond of trust with her obstinate charge.
Saint Frances is a tender comedy drama. Download/stream from November 13.
STAGE MOTHER (15) ★★★ ★★
FISH-OUT-OF-WATER comedy. Maybelline Metcalf (Jacki Weaver) is a conservative choir mistress in a small Texan town, who has been estranged from her gay son Ricky for 10 years.
She learns that her boy has died from a drug overdose and sets out to ensure Ricky is “put to rest properly” in San Francisco.
After a flamboyant memorial service, Maybelline discovers she is the heir to her son’s business, Pandora’s Box, a drag club. Aided by Ricky’s best friend Sienna (Lucy Liu), Maybelline encourages resident drag queens to sing live rather than lip-sync.
■ Download/stream and available on DVD from November 16.
I AM GRETA (12)
★★★ ★★
IN 2018, 15-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg delivered a stunning rebuke to dignitaries at the United Nations.
Film-maker Nathan Grossman ventures behind the headlines to follow the teenager over the course of 12 months when her life became something akin to a blockbuster film.
I Am Greta isn’t the warts-and-all portrait that the title might suggest. Instead, it’s an affecting and reverential study of a girl with Asperger syndrome, rudely dismissed by one American news commentator as “a mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her parents and the media”.
Download/stream from November 16.