ALSO SHOWING
The Shape of Water (15)
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After the disappointing Pacific
Rim and Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro returns to the form of earlier triumphs such as The Devil’s
Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth with this Oscar front-runner about a cleaning woman (Sally Hawkins), mute since childhood, who falls for the amphibious creature being experimented upon in the government lab where she works.
Set against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Civil Rights injustices of the early 1960s, it’s another film that roots fantasy horror in real life horror and uses this dynamic to examine how oppressive life can be for those living on the margins of society.
Del Toro makes no bones about the fact that the villain is the military industrial complex, personified here by Michael Shannon’s square-jawed, Cadillac-driving security agent, which at times can make the political allegory a little heavy-handed.
But del Toro creates wonder in other ways, starting with Hawkins’ Elisa and her erotically charged relationship with the be-gilled object of her affection (played by del Toro regular Doug Jones). As a character she has much more agency than normal for a heroine in a monster movie love story, and Hawkins – who’s flat out brilliant in an Oscarnominated though nearly silent role – embraces it.
Elisa’s friendship with her closeted gay neighbour, Giles (Richard Jenkins, playing a supporting character with the depth of a lead), is beautifully sketched out as well, and del Toro takes great delight in paying homage to the magic of cinema, locating their apartments above an old movie house where the light from the projector seeps up through the cracks of their floorboards – a reminder of the way fantasy can seep into real life in positive ways.
The Mercy (12A)
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This fatuous tale based on true life from Man On Wire director James Marsh casts Colin Firth as Donald Crowhurst, an amateur sailor who disappeared while competing in a solo round-the-world yacht race in 1968. Though there’s certainly an intriguing story buried in here somewhere, the film abandons it in its efforts to valorise Crowhurst and his foolhardy dream while simultaneously demonising the press – who started smelling a rat in his progress reports – for doing their jobs.
Loveless (15)
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Cannes-winning Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan) isn’t messing around with the title of his latest film. Loveless is a bleak yet brilliant portrait of the end of a marriage and the fraught paths each party takes as their 12-year-old son disappears in the midst of their breakup. The procedural aspect gives it a gripping narrative drive, but it’s the pitiless portrait of middle-class life and societal disconnection in modern Russia that lingers longest.
Phantom Thread (15)
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If Daniel Day-lewis is genuinely going to make good on his recent retirement announcement, he couldn’t have picked a better swansong than his latest collaboration with There Will Be
Blood writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson.
They’ve made an event movie for cineastes; high-minded yet as deliciously sinister and compelling as any Hitchcock mystery. Day-lewis plays a fastidious and celebrated couturier in post-war London who falls for a young waitress (Vicky Krieps), whom he quickly moves into the recently vacated position of in-house muse, only to find a battle of wills ensuing as her ingénue-like appearance masks a more playfully domineering spirit.
A bizarre and brilliantly acted portrait of a destructive relationship in which the destructive parts might be what make it thrive. ■