Daily Mail - 30.08.2019

Page 44 Daily Mail, Friday, August 30, 2019

it’s friday! film

In a moving portrait, Timothy

Spall and Vanessa Redgrave

bring artist L.S. Lowry and

his monstrous mother to life

Tilda’s girl in a tale of secrets and lies

M

rs Lowry & son chroni-

cles the relationship

between the painter

L.s. Lowry (Timothy

spall) and his domineer-

ing and snobbish invalid mother

(Vanessa redgrave), long before

anyone, let alone the two of them,

had an inkling that his sooty town-

scapes and ‘matchstick men’ might

one day be worth millions.

It’s set in Pendlebury, Lancashire, in 1934

— in a world of fussy doilies, frilly lamp-

shades and vanilla slices.

I loved Mike Leigh’s 2014 film Mr Turner,

in which spall played the great 19th century

artist J.M.W. Turner. As you might expect,

he’s no less captivating as Lowry, a very

different painter and a very different man,

meek but kind-hearted, revelling in his

games with the neighbourhood children,

and entirely in thrall to his monstrous

mother, Elizabeth.

The film, by illustrious theatre director

Adrian Noble, making a rare foray into

cinema, never really attempts to smudge its

CAThErINE Deneuve

got the 76th Venice

Film Festival off to a

suitably glamorous

start on Wednesday,

playing, not exactly

against type, a grand

old French actress in

THE TRUTH.

Deneuve might hope

that the comparisons

stop there, because her

character, Fabienne, is

a vain, self-absorbed

diva, whose forthcom-

ing autobiography

paints her as an atten-

tive mother. her daugh-

ter Lumir (Juliette

Binoche), who is mar-

ried to an American TV

actor (Ethan hawke),

knows otherwise.

Writer-director hiro-

kazu Kore-ada’s bitter-

sweet comedy about

mother-daughter rela-

tionships is a little

laboured in parts and

far from the rousing

curtain-raiser we some-

times get here in Venice,

but it’s a treat to see

75-year-old Deneuve

giving such a playful

performance, in partic-

ular a priceless Gallic

shrug at the expense of

Brigitte Bardot.

★★★✩✩

LAsT night’s world

premiere of AD ASTRA

packed a bigger punch.

James Gray’s ambi-

tious sci-fi drama stars

Brad Pitt as a coura-

geous astronaut,

roy McBride, sent

all the way to Neptune

to find his long-lost

father Clifford (Tommy

Lee Jones).

Clifford was the hero

of an earlier mission to

find intelligent life in

the outer reaches of

the galaxy. Though

long considered to

have perished, he is

now believed to be still

alive and responsible

in some way for power

surges threatening the

entire solar system.

There’s plenty of

baffling science but

the film throbs with

energy and empathy,

thanks mostly to Pitt’s

powerful performance

as a loyal spaceman

and conflicted son.

★★★★✩

I loved MARRIAGE

STORY, Noah Baum-

bach’s funny, painful

analysis of divorce,

American-style.

scarlett Johansson

and Adam Driver are

wonderful as parents

of a young son who,

but for the Californian

lawyers they hire, deli-

ciously played by Laura

Dern, Alan Alda and

ray Liotta, might have

a chance of reconcilia-

tion. It’s a Netflix

film but will have a

cinematic release in

November. If you are,

or have ever been,

married, don’t miss it.

★★★★✩

ALSO SHOWING...

JoANNA hoGG’s achingly middle-class films

aren’t everybody’s cup of decaffeinated Earl Grey,

indeed they aren’t really mine, but I can appreciate

their quiet intensity. THE SOUVENIR (15) is set in

London in the early Eighties, when the city was

squarely in the sights of IrA bombers. Julie (honor

swinton Byrne) is an aspiring filmmaker from a

well-off family, who has chosen working-class

sunderland for her latest project, largely because

she wants to break out of her privileged bubble.

she is a polite, considerate, sweet-natured young

woman, sensitively played by Byrne in her debut

feature role, with support — doubtless in more

ways than one — from her real-life mother Tilda

swinton, who also plays her mother on screen.

Round-up from the

Venice Film Festival

Julie lives in her mum’s Knightsbridge

pied-a-terre, where others rather prey on

her decency and naivety. But the main

predator in this story is Anthony (Tom

Burke), an urbane, smooth-talking fellow

a few years older than her, who claims to

have a mysterious job at the Foreign

office. soon they are lovers, but Anthony

has been hiding another secret: he is a

heroin addict. By now, however, Julie is

hooked on him.

It’s a sad tale, and apparently semi-

autobiographical, which makes it even

more reminiscent of 2009’s An Educa-

tion, based on Lynn Barber’s memoir.

swinton, as so often, steals every scene

she’s in, which in this case means pinch-

ing from her own daughter. she doesn’t

appear much, but there’s a marvellous

early scene when she comes to the flat

and makes brisk maternal ‘suggestions’,

unthinkingly lifting Julie’s hands to

check whether she’s biting her nails. It’s

very subtly and beautifully done.

★★★✩✩

ThErE’s no subtlety IN ASTERIX: THE

SECRET OF THE MAGIC POTION (PG) , a some-

what lumpen animation based on the

French comic stories which are 60 years

old this year. I was never into Asterix as

a child and never introduced him to my

own kids, so I can’t really comment on

whether this film stays true to the spirit

of the original tales. Given how Ameri-

canised it is, I suspect not.

It follows the quest of elderly wizard

Getafix to find a young druid worthy of

receiving the highly secret recipe of,

you’ve guessed it, a magic potion. Much

of the dialogue will fly well over the heads

of the target audience, but there are a

few half-decent gags aimed at grown-

ups, and a silly roman senator called

Tomcrus, pronounced Tom Cruise.

★★✩✩✩

Sweet and sour:

Swinton Byrne

and Burke

Picture: AGATHA A. NITECKA

by Brian Viner

Mrs Lowry & Son (PG)

Verdict: Ponderous yet moving ★★★✩✩

The Informer (15)

Verdict: Gritty crime thriller ★★★★✩

MATCHSTIC

origins as a radio play. This

somehow both enables and

disables the narrative, making

it at times almost laughably

ponderous. A scene in which

‘Larry’ takes his mother a cup

of tea is eked out for so long

that other films would fit in a

battle and a victory parade in

the same time.

Yet the pace also allows

redgrave to act her bed-

socks off, and spall to inhabit

the character with his custom-

ary excellence.

A few of Martyn hesford’s

lines serve a little too much as

a nod and a wink to the audi-

ence – ‘You’re not an artist and

you never will be,’ says Eliza-

beth, criticising Larry’s ‘squalid

industrial scenes that nobody

wants to buy’. But there are a

few ripe chuckles, too.

‘What does he know about

art?’ she sneers of the man

next door. ‘he’s a socialist.’

■ A FrIEND asked me only

last week why nobody seems

to make really good crime

thrillers any more.

The kind with a corrupt cop

or two and maybe an under-

cover guy in fear of his life. The

kind that might still be recalled

fondly a generation or more

later, such as Witness (1985) or

LA Confidential (1997).

I couldn’t argue with his

assertion that multiplex audi-

ences don’t really want an

overwhelming diet of super-

hero movies, crash-bang-

wallop sequels and live-action

remakes of Disney animations,

with only the odd rom-com or

biopic to leaven the mixture.

But wait. here’s THE

INFORMER, also packed with

British talent, to remind us

that the corrupt-cop thriller

genre isn’t face-up in the

morgue just yet.

And while it might not be in

the same league as LA Confi-

dential or Witness, it’s a genu-

inely tense, gritty, New York

City-set drama with a compel-

ling leading man in Joel Kinna-

man, and solid support from

rosamund Pike, whose

fragrant English rose period is

now just a distant memory.

S

hE plays FBI special

agent Erica Wilcox,

handler of an intrepid

undercover man called

Pete Koslow (Kinnaman).

Incidentally, it’s odd how

frightfully middle-class Eng-

lish actresses keep being cast

as hard-as-nails U.s. Feds.

Emily Blunt filled a similar

role a few years ago in Denis

Villeneuve’s sicario, which

come to think of it was another

exception to the rule that

classy cinematic crime thrill-

ers are a thing of the past.

I wonder what it is that

makes casting directors look-

ing for the kind of hard-boiled

American women that used to

be called broads, call on the

likes of Pike and Blunt? Maybe

Hidden depths: Spall as L.S. Lowry and, right,

with Redgrave, as his unsupportive mother