Small screen offerings from some very big screen stars
by the family she works for, but very clearly an outsider too, Cleo finds herself on an intense journey when she falls pregnant just as her employer’s husband walks out on the family.
Cuaron, who apparently based the story on a housekeeper who worked for Cuaron’s parents, draws parallels between the emotional upheaval she’s experiencing and the political upheaval happening on the streets of Mexico City via some extraordinary images reminiscent of the most hard hitting moments in Children of Men.
The end result is an extraordinary tribute to the way small, seemingly marginalised lives can have a transformative effect on those they come into contact with.
The Front Runner (JJJ), on the other hand, shows how easily the mighty can be undone by banal human failings. Dramatising the political implosion of 1988 Democratic presidential hopeful Gary Hart, the film, which premiered last night, is an intriguing exploration of the moment where licentious behaviour in politics suddenly became fair game for newspapers forced to compete with the increasingly sensationalist television news.
Directed by Jason Reitman, the film features a very good performance from Hugh Jackman as Hart, a political idealist who naively and somewhat arrogantly expected to be accorded the same discretionary privileges as the Kennedys 20 years earlier, only to find – to his mounting horror and disgust – that four years of work to get him into position to take the White House could be undone in a matter of weeks following allegations of an affair.
The film attempts to put forth a balanced view of the story, with pointed lines about abusing his sexual power and historic lines that seem prophetic of the the Trump administration. But it also has a bit of a sanctimonious tone and fails to mention that while Hart suspended his presidential race, he also returned to it, withdrawing for a second time amid a financial scandal.
ALISTAIR HARKNESS