24 THE NEW REVIEW | 01. 1 0. 17 | The Observer
Daphne
(86 mins, 15 ) Directed by Peter Mackie Burns;
starring Emily Beecham, Geraldine James, Tom
Vaughan-LawlorDaphne is a Londoner in her early
30s who lives her life like an act of
war. Intensely inhabited by Emily
Beecham , it’s a performance full of
jangling discord and serrated edges,
capturing a woman at the exact
moment when circumstances magnify
her already forcefully nihilistic
personality.
Even before Daphne, a junior chef
in a busy kitchen, witnesses a violent
stabbing in a convenience store, she
drinks hard, takes drugs and sleeps
with whoever she wants. She rebuff s
the attempts of anyone to get close to
her – she deliberately and repeatedly
gets the name of one hapless conquest
wrong, before brushing his hand away
like dandruff and stomping off into
the night. She recoils from her well-
meaning mother’s mindfulness DVD
as if she has just been handed a bag of
cold vomit.
It’s tempting to draw parallels
between Daphne in this striking fi rst
feature from Peter Mackie Burns
and the protagonist in Carine Adler’sBut while it’s not easy being
Daphne, or being around her, she’s a
knotty character, articulately drawn.
I particularly loved a moment when
she grasps the remove between the
way she sees herself and the way she’s
perceived. Daphne identifi es with the
cool self-suffi ciency of the snake she
keeps in her fl at. But to the wife of the
stab victim she helped, she is pitiable- the runt kitten that is written off and
kicked away.
Brimstone
(149 mins, 18 ) Directed by Martin Koolhoven ;
starring Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce, Kit
HaringtonA lurid tale of vengeance and
lust, set against the backdrop of
the American west at the end of
the 19th century, Brimstone stars
Dakota Fanning as a mute woman
persecuted by a preacher (Guy
Pearce ) who is determined to
destroy her and everything she
holds dear. Although the four -
chapter structure is neatly handled
and the savage backdrop strikingly
photographed, there’s something a
little unsavoury about this picture.
It’s not the graphic violence, rape,
incest and numerous shots of women
being bound and fl ogged that are
the problems, as such. It’s the hint
of tumescence behind the camera
accompanying these scenes that
gives the whole picture a queasily
sensationalist quality.Under the Skin , who spirals into
self-destruction after her mother’s
death. But that would suggest a tragic,
victim-like quality to Daphne which is
simply not the case. Her main problem
is an eye-rolling impatience that sees
her bored with each experience –
food, sex, conversation – before it has
even fi nished. As such, this is almost
as much a portrait of a city as it is a
person – London, with its manifold
distractions and endless scope for bad
behaviour, is the ideal playground for
the self-sabotaging thrill-seeker.Film
Emily Beecham in Daphne: ‘a performance
full of jangling discord ’. Agatha A Niteckareal-life namesake at London Zoo, the
fact that both are imprisoned in a public
enclosure does not go unnoticed.
With his pudding-bowl hair and
gender-neutral smocks (plaudits to
ace costume designer Odile Dicks-
Mireaux ), young Will Tilston as
Billy looks the spit of E H Shepard’s
timeless illustrations, so much so that
director Curtis is able to slip from livePursued
by a bear...
himself blocked, until a few strolls with
his young son, Christopher Robin, in
their “hundred acre paradise ” brings
forth unexpected beauty. “Are we
writing a book?” asks the boy whom
everyone calls “Billy Moon”. “I thought
we were just having fun.”
Credited with rekindling the joy
wiped out by the Great War, Milne’s
innocent poems and stories become
an international sensation. But such
success comes at a price, as young
Billy fi nds his perfect childhood
put up for sale. “If I’m in a book, ” he
protests, “people will think I’m not
real”, a problem intensifi ed as his
parents proceed to parade him around
“like a show pony ”. When Billy is
photographed alongside his toy bear’sFILM OF THE WEEK
Th e sunlight is dappled
with darkness in this
delightful story of
AA Milne’s creation
of Winnie-the-Pooh
and its eff ect on the
son who inspired him
MarkMark
KermodeKermode
Goodbye Christopher Robin
(107 mins, PG ) Directed by Simon Curtis ;
starring Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie,
Kelly Macdonald
@KermodeMovie@KermodeMovie
action to gently animated illustration
with seamless ease. Whether he’s
pulling on his boots or dragging his
bear up the stairs, these images have
a warm familiarity, tapping into vast
wellsprings of aff ection.
Meanwhile, the script contrives to
play the greatest hits: the little boy
kneeling at the foot of the bed; the
“hot’s so hot” in the bath; the circular
tracks in the snow; the bees concerned
only with making honey. A game of
garden cricket evokes memories of
John Boorman ’s Hope and Glory, while
the fl ashbulbs and popping champagne
corks of success transport Milne back
to the blood-soaked fi elds of France.
The supremely versatile Gleeson
is excellent as the PTSD-affl ictedTh e deeper themes of
betrayal and despair in
Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s
script survive amid
the schmaltz
We ndy
Ide@wendyideWith its bittersweet interweaving of
fact and fantasy, youthful innocence
and adult trauma, this tale of the
creation of a children’s classic could
have been called Saving Mr Milne.
Like Mary Poppins , Winnie-the-Pooh
occupies a sacred space in our hearts
and anyone wishing to co-opt some
of that magic must tread very lightly
indeed. Director Simon Curtis’s
movie could easily have tripped (like
Piglet) and burst its balloon as it
evokes a dappled glade of happiness
surrounded by the monstrous spectres
of two world wars. Instead, it skips
nimbly between light and dark, war
and peace, like a young boy fi nding his
way through an English wood, albeit
one drenched with shafts of sugary,
Spielbergian light.
We open in Ashdown Forest in
1941, where the arrival of a telegram
foretells tragedy – the farewell of
the title? It’s a moment around
which writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce
(working from an original script by A
Bear Named Winnie co-writer Simon
Vaughan ) builds his cleverly structured
narrative, bookending the fantastical
adventures of Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore et al
with the real-life battles of their father-
and-son creators. Spiralling back to
1916, we fi nd Domhnall Gleeson ’s A A
Milne ( “Blue ” to his friends) in the
trenches of France, the horror of which
haunts him on his return to a bling-
fi lled life in Blighty.
Abandoning London for rural East
Sussex, where he intends to write an
antiwar book (despite the protests of
his socialite wife, Daphne ), Milne fi ndsAND THE REST