Vicky Krieps

Father Mother Sister Brother

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Adam Driver staring into the camera

Acting when there’s something to do is relatively straightforward. But what about when there’s nothing to get hold of? Father Mother Sister Brother is full of empty space, and for whole stretches of time the characters in it don’t really know how to fill the silence. They babble. They fall silent. They pick up on a tiny detail and won’t let it go. Because where a relationship should be there is none. Jim Jarmusch’s latest film is episodic, three bijou, beautifully crafted Carver-esque mini-dramas. In story one a brother and sister visit their ageing father, who lives all alone and on the breadline miles from anywhere in rural New Jersey. As they approach … Read more

Hot Milk

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Ingrid and Sofia on the beach with Ingrid's horse

In a hot European beach resort a woman in a wheelchair seeks a crank cure for her condition with her resentful daughter along in tow. Hot Milk is a hothouse drama, a sketch of a nasty little co-dependent relationship. Will the worm turn, and if so, when? Is mother really crippled, or is this part of her way of controlling her adult daughter? Does daughter realise her mother is possibly putting it all on? As mother Rose (Fiona Shaw), with sulking Sofia (Emma Mackey) perpetually on call, consults a dubious doctor on one of the Spanish Costas, something appears to be brewing but debut director Rebecca Lenkiewicz isn’t telling us what. “What do … Read more

The Dead Don’t Hurt

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Vivienne and Holger sitting together under a tree

How much of The Dead Don’t Hurt could you cut out without hurting it? Quite a bit, I’m guessing. It’s a slow and steady western, and that’s at least partly the point of it, an exercise in style and genre that could be quite a bit shorter but also a fair bit longer without changing its complexion. The story it tells is archetypal as are the characters in it. But the focus is on the woman, unusually, which brackets this alongside Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, another distinct and handsome movie with a female focus. It’s directed by Viggo Mortensen, who also takes a key role (he stepped in at the last second, apparently, … Read more

Corsage

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Elisabeth at a formal dinner

Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898), the focus of writer/director Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, isn’t that big a deal outside the Germanosphere. Inside it, though, it’s a different matter. A huge number of documentaries have been made about her in Germany and Austria, going all the way back to 1921. The interest remains fervent in the 21st century. So far this decade she’s made an appearance in no less than five Austrian/German dramatisations of her life – as well as Corsage, there’s the TV series Sisi; feature Elisabeth; another TV series, The Empress; and another feature, Sisi and I (whose release date got bumped when Corsage came along). What’s the fascination? Maybe it’s that she, … Read more

Bergman Island

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Chris and Tony

French writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve genuflects before the master, Ingmar Bergman, in her playful and reverential drama set on Fårö (pronounced foe-rer, more or less), the island where Bergman wrote and shot some of his films, and which is now dedicated to promoting his legacy. In meta fashion, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony are a pair of film-makers arriving on Fårö to seek inspiration for the next projects they are working on. Renting the house where Bergman once shot parts of Scenes from a Marriage, or so they (and we) are told by the woman showing them around, they get down to work, him beavering away in the bedroom, her in the mill next … Read more

The Last Vermeer

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Claes Bang and Vicky Krieps

The Last Vermeer is the true story of Han Van Meegeren, art forger extraordinaire, who knocked out old masters by the likes of Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer, among others, during the Second World War and even managed to sell a “Vermeer” to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring for a fortune. Van Meegeren was initially brought to trial in the Netherlands after the War for having sold Göring what was supposed to be a real Vermeer, as a collaborator who had facilitated the expropriation of the cultural property of the Netherlands. But when he eventually admitted that the picture was fake, those charges were dropped. However, because of the skewed logic of … Read more