8 1GT Friday November 27 2020 | the times
film reviews
Horror that gets
inside your head
This violent sci-fi story will leave you
unsettled for days, says Kevin Maher
Avatar meets La Femme Nikita with
a side order of body horror in this
inventive and disturbing sci-fi thriller
from Brandon — son of David —
Cronenberg. Andrea Riseborough
proves, yet again, that she’s one
of the most versatile performers
of her generation — from Margaret
Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley
to this! — by wholly inhabiting the
psychologically brittle role of Tasya
Vos, a lethal future assassin who
remotely hacks the minds of luckless
patsies and converts them into
kill-crazy lunatics.
The opening scene sets the tone as
a glamorous hotel assistant in future-
town USA is remotely overcome by
Vos and attacks a rotund businessman
with a carving knife, transforming his
substantial torso into a claret-spewing
piñata. The toll taken by the mind-
hacking and the murder, however, is
immediately evident in Vos’s fragile
off-duty state. She is seen rehearsing
the line that she plans to deploy (“I’m
absolutely starving!”) that night when
she meets her estranged husband and
son for dinner. She’s become mentally
unmoored, adrift in a sea of characters
and without a real self to play.
The acting analogy applies for most
of the film, with Jennifer Jason Leigh
appearing as Vos’s boss, Girder, who is
her surrogate director and gives her
notes on how to perform a scene once
inside her target’s head.
This proves useful when Vos accepts
her biggest assignment yet — to hack
the mind of a vacuous tech industry
flunky called Colin (Christopher
Abbott) to assassinate his boss, the
corporate giant John Parse (Sean
Bean, suitably odious). Naturally, it
all goes horribly wrong, Vos’s grip on
reality evaporates and someone gets
their face viciously re-engineered by
the action end of a poker (that
18 certificate is well earned).
It’s a tough watch, but also brilliantly
unsettling in its depiction of Vos’s
breakdown and the questions it asks
about the malleability of human
identity. It’s technically accomplished
too, artfully framed and punctuated
with subliminal flashes of melting
faces, slit throats and gouged eye
sockets. Images that will sit in your
mind, like the intellectual content of
the film, for days afterwards.
Amazon, Apple, Google and Sky
from todayHappiest Season
12, 102min
{{{{(Mackenzie Davis and
Kristen StewartSophisticated, moving and very funny,
this gay love story blows the dust off a
traditional genre, writes Kevin Maher
the big film
T
here’s a delicious
moment of visual
comedy midway through
this witty charmer about
a Christmas family
meltdown. Penniless art
student Abby (Kristen
Stewart) has been invited to a swanky
Pittsburgh restaurant for a pre-
Christmas dinner with the Caldwells, a
family of high-achieving Wasp elitists
(think the family in Get Out).
Patriarch Ted Caldwell (Victor
Garber) is hoping to become the city’s
new conservative mayor, running on a
family values ticket (“I can assure you
this family has nothing to hide!”). His
wife, Tipper (Mary Steenburgen), has
opened an Instagram account solely
to document his campaign and his
perfect domestic life. Ted’s three
daughters are Ivy League graduates
who earn his love through accolades
and triumphs, especially Harper
(Mackenzie Davis), a journalist at
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
There’s just one tiny snag.
Unbeknown to anyone in the clan,
Harper is a closeted lesbian and Abby
is her girlfriend, soon to be wife. The
maintenance of their deception (they
are “room-mates”) is vital to the
emotional stability and the political
future of Team Caldwell.
So Abby steps up to the Caldwell
table and, after a polite kerfuffle of
greetings, the restaurant staff,
stretched on their busiest night
of the year, realise that they are
missing a final setting and have
only a low kiddie chair to offer our
undercover girlfriend.
Politely, awkwardly, Abby sits,
descending slowly until her head is
almost level with the tabletop.
Stewart’s wordless grimace is a thing
of beauty, but the sequence is typical
of a film that’s brimful of extra
delights. Abby is metaphorically and
literally below the Caldwells. As an
orphan — her parents died when she
was a teenager — she is also
infantilised, a child to them. Plus, it’s
just funny, pure Groucho Marx.The film was directed and co-
written by the actress Clea DuVall
(Marjorie Palmiotti in the TV series
Ve e p), who manages to embrace all the
Christmas rom-com clichés and invest
them with a new vibrancy. There are
echoes of the in-law clash in The
Family Stone, a nod to the misty-eyed
tone of Love Actually, and even softer,
deeper resonances with Bing Crosby
and Marjorie Reynolds as destined-
for-each-other lovers in Holiday Inn.
There are also unmistakable hints of
King Lear — the patriarch, the three
daughters, the earned affection. Yet
DuVall streamlines everything into a
ruthlessly efficient story built around
one simple question. Can Abby and
Harper survive five days at home
without spilling the beans? Moreimportantly, DuVall furnishes this
skeleton plot with an extraordinary
array of characters, each complex, rich
and utterly credible.
Even Dan Levy as the, sigh, “gay
best friend”, a literary agent called
John, brings that cliché to life with
dignity, empathy and an uncommon
ability to nail wicked one-liners. When
John hears about Abby and Harper’s
plan to “play it straight” for the
holidays, he says, deadpan: “Yes,
because there’s nothing more erotic
than concealing your authentic selves.”
A rom-com ultimately lives or dies
by the strength of the rom in the com,
and this one has struck gold with
Davis and Stewart. It’s not just that
their chemistry is palpable and more
convincing than any couple from
recent hetero rom-coms (sorry, The
Broken Hearts Gallery; sorry, The
Lovebirds). It’s that their connection
is so clearly expressed and their
relationship so fallible, real and sorely
tested. DuVall throws so many devious
obstacles in their way during the five-
day trial by fire — Abby’s self-doubt,It is possible to make a riveting
documentary about a long-dead
Hollywood icon. The Eyes of Orson
Welles nailed it in 2018 with
illuminating insights and searing
analysis. This earnest but
consistently dopey portrait of
Audrey Hepburn, right, however,
is ill-equipped to make rigorous
observations or thought-provoking
life notes.
Instead we plod dutifully
through the movies (and then
she made... and then she made...
and then she made.. .), the
relationships (and then she
married.. .) and her impressive
Unicef years while a rogues’
gallery of nonentities (her
Swiss groundskeeper! Richard
Avedon’s grandson!) trot
out the platitudes. “She was
made of so many different
dimensions.” “She became
an icon.” “She created her
own style.”
You know you’re in trouble
when you have to lean on ballet
sequences that describe key
moments in Hepburn’s life,
such as her father leaving home,
through the power of dance.
Sweet, but cringeworthy. KM
Amazon, Apple, Google, Sky
and DVD from November 30Anna Sewell’s 1877 children’s classic is
given a radical Disney overhaul with
mostly pleasing results. The English
countryside of the 1870s is swapped for
today’s American West (actual filming
location: South Africa), Beauty’s
favourite stable boy, Joe Green, is
now a newly orphaned teenage girl
called Jo Green (Mackenzie Foy),
while Beauty, the most handsome
horse in the business, after some
creative gender reassignment, is
now a filly, voiced by Kate Winslet.
Sewell’s rough narrative structure,
however, remains intact, and Beautybounces from bonding with Jo
to a series of increasingly painful
misadventures. The barn at Birtwick
Park (now a ranch) catches fire, and
she falls badly during a race, nearly
drowns, is struck down with colic and
is almost turned into dog meat by a
cruel cab-company owner.
It skews very young (this is Disney
for tots) — although, interestingly,
the novel was originally written for
an adult audience before it was
hijacked by kids. However, the
charismatic Foy convinces entirely
as the surly, lonely Jo, and the
character’s evident connection
with Beauty pays dividends in the
tear-jerking finale. KM
Disney+r m U g S A o m d a o w s m s
th
S
A
aBlack Beauty
108min
{{{((Audrey
PG, 100min
{{(((
Reinventing the Chris
You’ll root for
the couple to
stay together
Possessor
18, 103min
{{{{(
Mackenzie Foy in Black Beauty
Andrea Riseborough in Brandon Cronenberg’s disturbing drama Possessor