Beau Travail, Claire Denis’s tale of French legionnaires stationed in Djibouti, adapted to a degree from Herman Melville’s novel Billy Budd (1924), is a film which negotiates a path between stasis and movement (between moments of the sea glistening and laminary, and hard toil in the heat of the sun), all subordinated to an elusive, […]
There are moments in filmgoing when you know unmistakably that something is nestling its way into your personal pantheon: this is how I feel about Juliette Binoche’s performance in Let The Sunshine In, the latest from the superb Claire Denis. Binoche is Isabelle, a deeply unhappy Parisian artist. Divorced and convinced that her love life is […]
Mary and The Witches Flower ★★★☆☆ No one loves retirement quite like Hayao Miyazaki. The renowned Japanese animator-director has thrice announced the end of his career, following the releases of his films Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001) and The Wind Rises (2013). Predictably, his latest ‘retirement’ hasn’t stuck either – he’s been at work […]