8 1GT Friday July 31 2020 | the times
film reviews
Summerland
12A, 100min
{{(((On paper this Second World War-era
melodrama is perfect. It’s written
and directed by Jessica Swale, the
theatrical heavyweight who made the
BBC comedy short Leading Lady Parts.
It features a best-of-British cast,
including Penelope Wilton, Tom
Courtenay and Gemma Arterton.
And it’s gorgeously shot, with the
Kentish coastline consistently
bathed in golden-hour hues. It’s just
a shame that Summerland is almost
repulsively saccharine.
The central narrative features
Arterton as Alice, an introverted
scientist embittered after a failed
affair with aspiring writer Vera
(Gugu Mbatha-Raw, yet again
outclassing her material). A chirpy
young evacuee from London called
Frank (Lucas Bond), however, will
soon melt Alice’s heart. Everything
is chocolate-boxy sweet and all lines
are on-the-nose, while the crucial
depiction of Vera and Alice’s romance
is bizarrely prudish: a single chaste
kiss, obscured by Mbatha-Raw’s
shoulder, is the only evidence. KM
Available in cinemasf***ing f***ed!”), then you’re close to
the delights on offer here.
Bella Thorne, above, centre, is
the model, singer and actress who
takes centre stage as Florida trash
Arielle Summers, a hard-drinking,
cat-fighting, wannabe Instagram star
who hooks up with her boyfriend for
a trans-American crime spree. The
twist? They film their robberies and
murders on their phones and stream
them live on social media. The lines
are terrible, the acting excruciating
and the narrative uninspired. KM
Available on Amazon, Apple
and GoogleEva Green excels
in this sensitively
observed space
drama, writes
Kevin Maher
I
n the brief history of female
astronaut movies we’ve had
Sandra Bullock’s blockbusting
heroine in Gravity, Natalie
Portman’s deluded sociopath in
the recent Lucy in the Sky and,
well, Jane Fonda’s interstellar
sexpot from Barbarella. None
of them, however, can hold a candle
to Eva Green in this nuanced and
moving account of the impact that
an impending mega mission has on
the emotional life of an especially
determined space cadet.
Green plays the French astronaut
Sarah Loreau, who, as the film opens,
is preparing for a punishing 12-month
stint aboard the International Space
Station. With almost documentary-
style realism, we watch her attending
meetings with European Space Agency
physicists in Cologne and experiencing
brutal conditioning at the Star City
training camp in Moscow, where
cumbersome underwater exercises
and vomit-inducing “9G” centrifuge
spins are daily requirements.
One of Proxima’s quiet pleasures
is its refusal to engage with the
mythologies of Nasa and American
space bombast, and to instead root
itself in a European context and in the
efficiency of the Soyuz programme.
The movie’s dramatic motor is
Loreau’s personal life. Her relationship
with her delicate eight-year-old
daughter, Stella (Zélie Boulant), is
her raison d’être and Achilles’ heel.
As the launch looms closer Stella
becomes distant, sometimes difficult
and resentful, just as the mission
is requiring Loreau’s greatest
commitment. In one of the film’s
sweetest and most perfectly observed
moments, a desperate Stella finally
cracks during a phone conversation
with her mother and reveals herHow to be a full-time
mother and astronaut
Proxima
12A, 107min
{{{{(greatest sorrow. “I don’t understand
maths,” she says, wailing dramatically.
“And we’re doing multiplication
tomorrow.” She’s not, of course, crying
about maths (she’s distraught about
her mother’s imminent departure),
but the screenplay is too smart and
sensitive to crudely spell it out.
It’s directed and co-written by
Alice Winocour (she made the
remarkable Mustang in 2015), who
quietly highlights the sexist slights
that Loreau consistently endures. The
macho American team leader Mike
Shannon (Matt Dillon), for instance,
jokes to the media that Loreau will beuseful on board the space station
because, obviously, she can do all
the cooking.
And yet even here Winocour avoids
the easy option (Shannon as villain),
and finds grace notes in Dillon’s
character. Green, meanwhile, has
rarely deployed her poker face to
better effect (Loreau is constantly
hiding her inner world), and holds
the movie together. There’s a final
resolution that’s perhaps a bit too
easily earned, but mostly Proxima is
thoughtful and beautifully crafted
top-tier film-making.
Available in cinemasEva Green
as Sarah LoreauInfamous
15, 100min
{((((A sexy premise and low-key cultural
commentary is wilfully squandered in
this garish “lovers-on-the-lam” retread
for the Instagram age.
If you can imagine Natural Born
Killers and Nicolas Winding Refn’s
Drive remixed and remade by
a committee of dimwitted and
borderline illiterate teenagers (sample
dialogue: “We need some f***in’ cash!”
“F*** you!” “Move bitch!” “We’reMake Up
15, 86min
{{{{(As Cornwall is swallowed up by
tourists, here’s another reminder, after
the extraordinary Bait, that it’s not all
boogie boards and Rick Stein.
An unsettling blend of bleak
naturalism and swirling reverie, Claire
Oakley’s debut follows 18-year-old
Ruth (Molly Windsor) as she joins
her boyfriend, Tom (Joseph Quinn),
working at a caravan park in the off
season. Ruth bristles when she finds a
red hair on his clothes, but this is no
vanilla infidelity tale. The emphasis is
on self-discovery and sense of place
over straightforward storytelling.
There are echoes of Don’t Look
Now and the coming-of-age drama
Somersault, and a wonderfully
unvarnished performance from
Windsor, a Bafta winner for Three
Girls. Well, her acting is unvarnished,
but her nails aren’t, thanks to Jade
(Stefanie Martini), a twentysomething
colleague who pushes cosmetics
like Huggy Bear pushes drugs.
“Jade’s got a bit of a reputation,”
Tom says. He doesn’t elaborate. It’s
not that kind of film.
Ed Potton
In selected cinemas and on
Curzon Home CinemaThe Vigil
15, 89min
{{{{(The Orthodox Jewish world has been
the backdrop to some fine dramas,
from Disobedience to Unorthodox, but
the first-time director Keith Thomas
proves here that it’s a splendidly
atmospheric setting for horror.
Dave Davis, below left, stars as
Yakov, who is trying to break away
from Brooklyn’s Orthodox community,
but is persuaded by his rabbi to act
as a shomer, someone who watches
over a corpse to comfort the soul
that’s about to depart.
This soul needs a lot of comforting.
The dead man was a survivor of
Buchenwald and he leaves behind
a decidedly creepy widow. Given
that Yakov himself has a disturbed
history, it’s going to be a long night.
Although Thomas sometimes veers
into cliché — flickering lamps ahoy —
he makes inventive use of text
messages and video calls, and the
chills rarely subside. There’s one
excruciating scene in which Yakov has
his back to the shrouded body and
you’re just waiting for it to move. EP
Available in cinemasALAMY