DON’T PASS THE ROTTEN TOMATOES!
ALSO SHOWING
PICTURE someone standing on stage and being pelted with rotten fruit. Just when the momentum seems to be slowing, a putrid banana flies in and the whole fusillade starts up again.
That, in a critical sense, is pretty much what has already happened to Sia, the Australian singer-songwriter, in the wake of her directorial debut, Music (★★III).
Well, I’m quite capable of unleashing a bagful of overripe plums myself, but the truth is that critical maulings can be oddly infectious and Music isn’t as terrible as all that. Which is not to say I’d want to see it again, or would recommend it for a fun night in, but the abuse has reached a disproportionate, near-hysterical pitch.
The film stars Kate Hudson as Zu, a troubled and feckless woman who, when her grandmother dies suddenly, must care for her autistic half-sister Music (Maddie Ziegler).
The portrayal of autism and the casting of a non-autistic (or neurotypical) actress is what has provoked most of the criticism, but I confess (admittedly with limited direct experience of the condition) to being rather moved by Ziegler’s powerfully committed performance.
From where I was sitting, the film’s flaws lie more in an uneven narrative and sudden lurches into dreamlike song-and-dance sequences that feel pretentious and indulgent.
Weirdness also abounds in another directorial debut, Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century (★★★II). In fact, it could hardly be weirder, which in itself is strange, because the subject — the life of Canadian statesman William Lyon Mackenzie King (Dan Beirne) — seems so, well, square.
Instead, it’s a trippy extravaganza, parodying different film styles and toying with gender expectations, as if Monty Python had teamed up with Salvador Dali and together they’d decided to push the boat out. It’s good eccentric fun, in parts, but the fun wears off, leaving only the eccentricity.
■ MUSIC and The Twentieth Century are both available on digital platforms.