A year after premiering acclaimed French playwright Florian Zeller’s The Truth, the Menier Chocolate Factory now hosts The Lie – which, as the name suggests, acts as a companion piece of sorts.
Infidelity, hypocrisy, disillusionment, betrayal – and yet this is by far the lightest of French playwright Florian Zeller’s current London hat trick. Premiering in 2011, and thus sandwiched chronologically between the bleak pair of The Mother (2010) and The Father (2012), it takes a comparatively sunny approach to the fracturing of trust and deconstruction of the moral ideal of truth.
Created and written by the abundantly talented Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also stars, Crashing is set among a group of twenty- and thirtysomethings living in a disused hospital in London, which the characters are “protecting” – sort of legalised squatting, where the sanctioned occupants pay a small rent and protect the building from being taken over by, well, squatters. It was filmed in an actual disused hospital, with lots of rooms and shared spaces such as bathrooms, which lends bags of atmosphere and allows the story to have several strands.
Michel Gondry’s last film, the unwatchably hyperglycaemic Mood Indigo (2013), was so arch and quirky it irritated more than appealed. Thankfully, Microbe and Gasoline resets the dial to the charm levels of 2008’s Be Kind Rewind. And things hadn’t been plain sailing before that too. The stilted, US-made The We and the I (2012) suggested that, after The Green Hornet, Gondry was a fish-out-of-water in America. Microbe and Gasoline is low-key, sweet, warm and made in France.
Confounding expectations from the first frames, Girlhood is the endearingly scrappy and staggeringly beautiful third film from French writer-director Céline Sciamma (Tomboy) and no relation to Boyhood. Intimate and exuberant, it's a coming-of-age story that takes us into the company and confidences of a quartet of teenage girls.
It’s a hostage to fortune really to create a play on one of the funniest books ever written, and a Victorian one at that. Still, Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat is regularly mined for stage and small screen entertainment, and this version by Craig Gilbert turns out to be a diverting and enjoyable touring show for Britain’s small town theatres, for which hurray, and particularly so for towns on the Thames, where the boat hired by J, George and Harris is being ever so uncertainly steered.
Taking inspiration from classic westerns even as it vigorously sets itself apart, The Homesman combines the taciturn and muscular with a feminist bent, and manages to be stirring and sweeping while also embracing the odd. It's a gorgeous, painfully sad tale of a man who's been nothing but a disappointment to himself and a woman constantly disappointed by others who, together, shepherd three lost souls on a desperately treacherous journey.
Pretty in Pink featured an interesting example of female friendship between a teenager and a grown woman. A record shop owner imparts motherly advice to her employee while also getting to grips with her own identity. In a similar manner, Lynn Shelton’s indie comedy (which was written by YA author Andrea Siegel) pairs up Keira Knightley and Chloë Grace Moretz, but shifts the focus away from teen angst to tackle the quarter-life crisis from the point of view of a woman who decides she needs to find herself 10 years after graduating from high school
When Anthony (Mark Webber) proposes to Megan (Keira Knightley) due to nothing more than an overwhelming desire to fit in with the rest of their group of friends, he starts a chain reaction which leads Megan to seek refuge with erudite teen Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz). Sent into a tailspin at the prospect of getting married, Megan tells Anthony she needs to take a week-long retreat but instead ends up crashing at Annika’s place and reaching back to her youth. Megan in turn finds a new friend in Annika’s father Craig (Sam Rockwell, pictured below), to whom she openly admits all her worst secrets.
Megan runs away from her close-knit group of friends who are all either settling happily into married life or on their way there and , though Siegel does poke fun at the conveyor belt marriage, she is surprisingly generous with her supporting characters. Knightley's energetic performance is entirely endearing; she bounces around in a beautifully shot wedding scene - which boasts the backdrop of Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle - like Lewis Carroll's Alice learning all manner of shocking new things.
Knightley shows off her comic chops as the cynical and neurotic Megan and she’s really rather funny. Siegel has written a witty, charming character for her to have some fun with and at the same time explore female arrested development. Likewise, Moretz is given a role that allows her to flourish. The two have great chemistry together. Rockwell brings his usual charismatic flair to his turn as a single father and chatty divorce lawyer. Previously, Shelton has directed from her own shorter scripts, in films such as Humpday and Your Sister's Sister, and left her actors to improvise. This marks the first time she has worked from someone else’s script and its traditional structure results in some loss of her usual naturalistic style yet still allows her to craft convincingly intimate moments.
Despite sticking close to formula, Say When makes a refreshing alternative to the man-child shtick of Adam Sandler. The simple gender role reversal and an eccentric lead performance which doesn't rely on cheap gags only further highlight the desperate need to shake things up. Shelton and Siegel make a great writer/director team who skilfully blend mainstream comedy appeal with genuine warmth and prove to be a positive addition to the romantic comedy genre.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for Say When
Kicking off with an epic eight-and-a-half-minute-long tribute to New Jersey’s Palisades amusement Park and a lament to forgotten friendships, the Counting Crows seventh studio album intentionally invokes the spirit and sound of Seventies rock. The opening track has high aspirations with its triumphant horns, confident piano chords, shore setting and coming of age theme clearly paying homage to Bruce Springsteen’s early work, most obviously the Born to Run album.
This is a strange one. Precious little happens and, in some ways, little is said in David Storey's muted chamber play from 1970. Two men named Harry and Jack – getting on in years, but keeping up appearances in jackets and ties – linger on a patio that's skirted by grass and strewn with autumn leaves. The sun is shining softly. Low-level birdsong is just audible in Amelia Sears's strongly cast production, staged in-the-round in the Arcola's intimate studio space.