So imagine for a minute, you’re Luca Guadagnino. Your last three features have been the cannibal road-movie Bones and All (2022), the blood-spattered remake of Suspiria (2018) and the sensitive love story Call Me By Your Name (2017). What do you do next? What’s that? Tennis? Yep, tennis! The mercurial director’s new project is Challengers,…
PIP Theatre’s first offering for 2024 is the hilarious Banging Denmark, written by Van Badham and directed by Heidi Gledhill. Badham wrote the play as a way to cope with the horrendous online trolling she faced as a journalist for The Guardian. Banging Denmark was shortlisted for the 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Nick Enright…
May December is a richly layered, melodramatic but deliberately ambiguous character study from director Todd Haynes (Carol). The film was inspired by the real-life case of Mary Kay Letourneau, a 34-year-old schoolteacher who was convicted of abusing her 13-year-old student. After completing her jail sentence for statutory rape, she married her teenage victim and started…
In a crucial scene in Anatomy of a Fall, Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) tells her son, “Everything you hear in the trial it’s just… it’s twisted. It wasn’t like that.” Indeed, a lot about Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning drama isn’t what it seems. This multi-layered film presents a complex narrative web that invites its…
Some pieces of writing are straight forward. Others are open to interpretation. Claire Come Home is the latter. Written by Amelia Newman, it deals with relationships and mental health. Beth (Lucy Orr) met her best friend Claire (who is continually referenced but not seen) in year 7. Claire tells Beth everything. Claire’s boyfriend is Jared (Sam Dolan),…
A quirky, psychological drama, Cat Person takes its time to ignite but comes into its own in the third act. Margot (Emilia Jones) is a diligent, 20-year-old university student, specialising in anthropology, who has a vivid imagination. She works part-time at the candy bar in an old-style movie theatre. Into the cinema walks tall, dark,…
Writer-director Celine Song delivers a stunning debut with Past Lives. This thoughtful, compelling film gives a fresh voice to the migrant experience, while also working as a contemplative character study. Song’s previous experience was as a staff writer on the fantasy TV series The Wheel of Time. This film bears little relationship to that series….
Belgium’s entry for Best International Feature at the Oscars, Lukas Dhont’s film Close won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year. It’s a sensitive and distressing coming-of-age drama, characterised by beauty and darkness. Co-written by Dhont and Angelo Tijssens, the film allows the audience to interpret events, rather than prescribing an interpretation. Leo (Eden…
French auteur Claire Denis (White Material) often explores fragile relationships in her films, looking at the tension between her characters and the corrosive effects of the lack of trust. Her latest film Both Sides of the Blade (known as Fire in some territories) explores a romantic triangle that spirals out of control and the emotional…
The French tend to make fine films about food, family and fashion. While Haute Couture is set against the backdrop of the high-end fashion industry it primarily deals with complex mother/daughter relationships and class issues in contemporary France. Ester (Cesar winning actress Nathalie Baye) is the head seamstress at Dior Avenue Montaigne workshop in Paris,…
