Shades of war – and Downton
Mothering Sunday Cert: 15, 1hr 44mins ★★★★★
Cry Macho
Cert: 12, 1hr 44mins HHHHH tick, tick...Boom! Cert: 12A, 1hr 55mins ★★★★★
One of the unforeseen, if not totally unsurprising, consequences of the #MeToo and Time’s Up campaigns is that sex and nudity – for so long staples of grown-up cinema – seemed to disappear from the big screen almost overnight. Suddenly, an entire generation of predominantly male filmmakers was having to think twice about asking leading ladies to disrobe. Not before time, many will say.
So there will be some, no doubt, who see the startling nudity and slightly more modest amounts of sex in Mothering Sunday as a backward step. But others, like me, raised on racy adaptations of D.H. Lawrence, will surely welcome the return of such key elements of human life, albeit now in a more gender-balanced form.
After all, this gorgeous-looking adaptation of Graham Swift’s 2016 novel has been sensitively directed by a woman – the French film-maker Eva Husson. As much male flesh is exposed as female, and most of the female nudity has more to do with class than sex.
Largely played out on the Mothering Sunday of 1924, this is the story of the illicit, upstairs-downstairs affair between orphaned housemaid Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) and posh young English gent Paul Sheringham, played by Josh O’Connor from The
Crown. But the tragic legacy of the Great War hangs over everything.
Of the five boys raised by the Nivens – Jane’s employers and played by Colin Firth and Olivia Colman – and their long-standing friends, the Sheringhams, Paul is the only survivor. No wonder both families are so invested in his future.
The combination of passionate love, an English country house and the backdrop of war is a familiar one. Echoes of Downton Abbey are never far away, either, for a film that certainly doesn’t break new ground but covers the ground it does exquisitely.
The great Clint Eastwood is 91, and that, to be blunt, is the main problem with Cry Macho, a lightweight modern-era western that he makes the mistake of starring in as well as directing. The problem is that the camera that loved him so faithfully for decades – and it pains me to say this – no longer loves him at all.
Nevertheless, here he is playing Mike Milo, a washed-up rodeo star who travels to Mexico to bring back the troubled teenage son of an old friend. This is painful watching. Eastwood doesn’t really look like Eastwood, he fluffs most of his moments of would-be comedy and it’s difficult to know which is more unconvincing – Mike breaking in a wild horse or essaying a sultry rumba with a dark-eyed señora. Yes, I know she’s a grandmother but even so…
Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new film, tick, tick… Boom!, is essentially musical theatre honouring one of its own, in that it’s an all-singing, all-dancing adaptation of the second musical written by Jonathan Larson, whose third effort was the Broadway smash hit Rent.
Rent ran for 12 years in New York but Larson saw nothing of its success, dying of an aneurysm the day before it opened. He was 35. Semiautobiographical in nature, sprinkled with starry cameos and with Andrew Garfield giving a fabulous performance as Larson, Miranda’s film is both moving tribute and generous thank-you.