SYNOPSIS: In “Lee,” a new biopic now playing in theatres, Kate Winslet plays celebrated war correspondent and photographer Lee Miller. The fiercely independent former fashion model became a World War II correspondent for British Vogue, covering the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.
CAST: Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Noémie Merlant, Josh O’Connor, Alexander Skarsgård. Directed by Ellen Kuras.
REVIEW: As a reminder of the importance of journalism and photography, “Lee” contains several unforgettable moments. Recreations of her famous photographs dot the film.
Memorable images of an “unexploded bomb” sign stuck to a tree or a nurse’s underwear hung in a window to dry, mirror her innate visual style, one that combined artful composition with stark matter-of-fact journalism. “Even when I wanted to look away,” she says. “I knew I couldn’t.”
Perhaps Miller’s most famous photograph captured her in front of the camera.
In the iconic image, set up by Miller and taken by Life Magazine photographer David Scherman (Andy Samberg), she is topless, bathing in Adolph Hitler’s bathtub on April 30, 1945, the day Hitler killed himself. New Yorker writer Chris Wiley called it an “apt visual metaphor for the end of the war” and it remains a potent symbol of triumph against evil.
When the film focusses on Miller’s trailblazing work, as in the above examples, “Lee” shines.
Winslet is terrific as the fiercely committed photographer, but she is let down by a conventional set-up—an older Miller looking back on her life—and a tendency to drift from the character’s inner life to the story’s more mundane aspects.
“Lee” is a serviceable film, but it is nowhere near as remarkable as the woman whose story it tells.
“Challengers,” a new love triangle movie from director Luca Guadagnino, starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, and set against the backdrop of the world of sports, gives new meaning to the term “love” as it applies to a tennis score.
The story focusses on three tennis players, the hardworking Art (Faist), the wild child Patrick (O’Connor) and the ultra-competitive Tashi (Zendaya). “She’s in another league,” Patrick says of her all-or-nothing style of play.
The guys have been friends forever, and are very close, to the point that when they meet Tashi, and ask for her number, she declines, thinking they are a couple. “I’m not a home wrecker,” she says.
She finally relents, promising to hand over the digits to whoever takes the next tennis match.
The story then leaps to-and-fro from their teens, twenties and thirties, to portray Art and Patrick as rivals, on the court and in a shared love for Tashi.
This is a Guadagnino movie, after all, so, once again, as he has shown in movies like “I Am Love,” “Bones and All” and, most famously, “Call Me By Your Name,” he delves into themes of desire and identity through the lens of complex relationships.
Their complicated pasts come to a head in the present as Art, a pro player on a losing streak, accepts a low-level Phil’s Tire Town Challenger match against the washed-up, sleeping-in-his-car Patrick. In the middle of it all is Tashi, Patrick’s former girlfriend and Art’s current wife.
“You don’t know what tennis is,” Tashi tells Patrick. “It’s a relationship.”
Relationships are at the heart of “Challengers.” Whether it’s with one another or with the game, the movie is fueled by the passion of fevered relationships. On and off the court the trio are fierce players who rely on the sparks that fly between them to keep the flames of competition alive. It’s a ménage à trois of interchangeable power games, mind games and tennis gameplay in which the power dynamics are batted back-and-forth, just like in a tennis match.
Guadagnino’s tennis scenes are shot with flair. Sometimes it feels as though the camera is attached to the player’s rackets, other times the ball rockets towards the lens in a yellow blur. But as exciting as those scenes are—the climax is pulse racing—this isn’t about the sport. It’s about the thing that makes them good at the sport. The passion for life and for winning.
“Challengers” is a flirty, intimate and indulgent film, often shot in intense close-ups as the actors invade one another’s personal space. Guadagnino rarely strays away from his leads, who match the director’s intensity, theatricality and seductiveness. The combination makes for a playfully exhilarating story, accentuated by an effervescent techno score courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, that is unlike almost any other sports movie ever made.
In climate change circles the term “hope gap” refers to people who worry about global warming but feel powerless to do anything about it. The new film “Hope Gap,” now on VOD, has nothing to do with the climate, but is all about change and a person who feels powerless to prevent it.
Bill Nighy and Annette Bening play mild-mannered Edward and firecracker Grace, a married couple of twenty-nine-years. Their cluttered home displays the earmarks of a life well-lived. Shelves overflow with books and knick knacks, photographs decorate the fridge. They have a seemingly comfortable relationship; they know how one another takes their tea and pad about the house working on their pet projects, his academic updating of Wikipedia history sites, her poetry projects.
When their son Jamie (Josh O’Connor) comes to their Sussex coast home to visit there is tension in the air. Grace, in an attempt to shock Edward out of what she thinks is his silent complacency, picks a brutal fight, overturning a table and slapping her husband in the face. “He should fight back,” she says to Jamie. “I want a reaction.”
The relative calm of the seaside home shattered, Edward announces that he has long felt inadequate in the marriage and that he’s leaving, immediately. Devastated, Grace wants to try and work things out as Edward begins his new life.
“Hope Gap” has moments of humour but make no mistake, this is downbeat story about two people who were living separate lives under one roof. The overall tone is one of melancholy but not melodramatic. Nighy and Bening give naturalistic performances, each feeling the pain of the other’s actions in a battle of wills. Bening is heartbroken, angry and yet hopeful for reconciliation. Nighy plays Edward like a wounded animal, skittish and afraid, a damaged man who has retreated from the relationship.
The beauty of the screenplay by Oscar-nominated writer-director William Nicholson, is that it doesn’t take sides. Complex characters are thrown into a complicated, almost unbearable situation with no real winners. It paints a vivid picture of Grace and Edward but doesn’t judge them.
“Hope Gap” is a portrait of middle-age angst. It may not make for a good date night movie but the nuance of the relationships on display is worth the price of admission.
SYNOPSIS: In “Lee,” a new biopic now playing in theatres, Kate Winslet plays celebrated war correspondent and photographer Lee Miller. The fiercely independent former fashion model became a World War II correspondent for British Vogue, covering the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.
