Death Becomes Her (1992)

We’ve all heard his tall tales about the living dead in Beverly Hills. 1978. Narcissistic fading actress Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) performs in a Broadway musical. She invites long-time frenemy, mousy aspiring novelist Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn), backstage along with Helen’s fiancé, famed plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis). Infatuated with Madeline, Ernest breaks off his engagement with Helen to marry Madeline. Seven years later, a lonely, obese, depressed and destitute Helen is committed to a psychiatric hospital where she obsesses over taking revenge against Madeline. Another seven years later, Madeline and Ernest live an opulent life in Beverly Hills but they are miserable: Madeline is depressed about her age and withering beauty and Ernest, now an alcoholic, has been reduced to working as a reconstructive mortician. After receiving an invitation to a party celebrating Helen’s new book, Forever Young, Madeline rushes for spa beauty treatments. When she mentions she will pay any price, the spa owner gives her the business card of Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini) a mysterious, wealthy socialite who specialises in rejuvenation, which Madeline dismisses. Madeline and Ernest attend Helen’s party and discover that Helen is now slim, glamorous and youthful despite being 50. Jealous of Helen’s appearance, Madeline observes as Helen tells Ernest that she blames Madeline for his career decline. Madeline later visits her young lover but discovers he is with a woman of his own age. Despondent, Madeline drives to Lisle’s mansion. The youthful Lisle claims to be 71 and offers Madeline a potion that promises eternal life and youth. Madeline hesitates but then buys and drinks the potion which reverses her age, restoring her beauty before her eyes. Lisle warns Madeline that she must disappear from the public eye after ten years, to avoid suspicion of her immortality and to treat her body well. Meanwhile, Helen seduces Ernest and convinces him to kill Madeline. When Madeline returns home, she belittles Ernest who snaps and pushes her down the stairs, breaking her neck. Believing her to be dead, Ernest phones Helen for advice but drops the phone in shock when he sees Madeline approach him with her head twisted backward. Ernest takes Madeline to the hospital where the doctor’s (Sydney Pollack, uncredited) analysis shows she is clinically dead. Ernest finds Madeline in a body bag and considers her reanimation to be a miracle. He uses his skills to repair her body at home. Helen arrives and, after overhearing her and Ernest discussing their murder plot, Madeline shoots Helen with a shotgun. The blast leaves a large hole in Helen’s torso but she remains alive – she also has taken Lisle’s potion. Helen and Madeline fight before apologising and reconciling. Depressed at the situation, Ernest prepares to leave, but Helen and Madeline convince him to first repair their bodies. Realising they will need regular maintenance, they scheme to have Ernest drink the potion to ensure his permanent availability. The pair knock out Ernest and bring him to Lisle, who offers him the potion in exchange for his surgical skills … You are in violation of every natural law that I know. You’re sitting there, you’re talking to me – but you’re dead! Eternal youth, cosmetology, the living dead, remarriage screwball, Gothic horror and mad science combine fruitfully in this satirical black comedy that takes swipes at everything within range – Hollywood, vanity, fame, narcissism, beauty, immortality and of course actresses, which leads to an interesting casting conundrum with two of the town’s most amazing fortysomethings as the leads. Hawn is a gorgeous and gifted comedienne but here she is the designated ugly duckling who blooms into a fabulous romantic novelist. Streep had actually played just such a character in She-Devil and essayed her BFF Carrie Fisher’s avatar in Postcards From the Edge a role which supposedly made this frosty technical performer more loveable, as the critics of the era might have it. Here she goes full Joan Crawford in a movie which asks the audience to see her as a legendary screen beauty but her singularity mitigates this proposal somewhat. (Un)naturally there has to be a quote from Bride of Frankenstein and Hawn is gifted It’s alive! It is of course Rossellini who astonishes in her semi-nude presentation, a luscious cross between Cleopatra and Louise Brooks. Now she really has a body to die for. This fact alone crystallises the point of the movie – the business’ attitude to its female cohort. That she’s escorted by Fabio places this in its time but luckily both Elvis and James Dean turn up at one of her gatherings which lands the premise about stars living forever. It’s nice to see Ian Ogilvy at hand as the master of ceremonies. With a combination of CGI (including skin texture) produced by Industrial Light and Magic, animatronics and blue screen, this is a triumph of special effects if not entirely of story despite Martin Donovan & David Koepp having a hand in the screenplay. The characters simply aren’t developed adequately and they feel like the object of a long joke that pitches actresses against each other and then forces them to finish out their days with their worst enemy – each other. The often hysterical lively fun occasionally feels like it has a hole in the middle, like Helen. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. You gave other people your youth and wasted your own

The Lost King (2022)

Five hundred years of lies. Edinburgh, 2012. Separated mother of two boys, 45-year old Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins) is passed over for a promotion at work in favour of a less experienced better-looking younger woman. She unsuccessfully confronts her male boss that her chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) has never affected her work. Distraught at her distractedness and work absences, her estranged husband John (Steve Coogan), who lives in his own flat and helps out with their two teenage boys Max (Adam Robb) and Raife (Benjamin Scanlan), tells her to keep her job as they need the money. Philippa attends Shakespeare’s play Richard III which Max is studying at school and she identifies with Richard (Harry Lloyd) whom she feels was unfairly maligned as a hunchback, child killer and usurper. She begins to have visions of Richard who appears to her when she reads a biography that persuades her he has been unjustly treated by history. She joins the local Richard III Society who believe he was unfairly vilified by Tudor propagandists. Philippa stops going to work, manages her illness with medication and begins talking to her Richard III apparition (Harry Lloyd again). Her research shows some sources say he was buried in 1485 in the Leicester Greyfriars priory quire, while others say his body was thrown into the River Soar. After Greyfriars was demolished in the 1530s Reformation, Leicester mayor Robert Herrick around 1600 had a shrine built in his garden saying Here lies the body of Richard III, sometime king of England. Philippa attends a lecture in Leicester on Richard, lying to her ex-husband about it being a work trip and returning late forcing him to miss a date with his girlfriend. He knows she’s been skipping work and makes fun of her interest in Richard III. She meets Dr Richard Ashdown-Hill (James Fleet) who is publishing a genetic genealogy study on a Canadian direct descendant of Richard III’s sister, traced through maternal mitochondrial DNA. He tells her to look for Richard in open spaces in Leicester because people for centuries have avoided building over old abbeys. While walking around Leicester looking for the ancient site of Greyfriars, and seeing apparitions of Richard, she gets a strong feeling that an R painted on a car park is the site of Richard’s grave. Returning home, she confesses her activities to John. Philippa contacts University of Leicester archaeologist Richard Buckley (Mark Addy) who quietly dismisses her ideas but when the university cuts his funding, he gets back to her. Buckley finds a mediaeval map of Leicester marking Robert Herrick’s property, showing a possible public shrine in his garden. They overlay a modern map of Leicester and decide that the shrine may be in the middle of the car park that Philippa had felt strongly about. Philippa and Buckley team up. She pitches the project for funding to Leicester City Council. Richard Taylor (Lee Ingleby) of the University of Leicester advises that her amateur ‘feeling’ is too risky. The Council still approves her plan for the publicity it could generate but when ground-radar finds nothing, funding drops out. She turns to the Richard III Society to crowd-fund her Looking For Richard project and the money comes in from around the world to fund three trenches … I just don’t like it when people put others down for no reason. That’s Philippa’s take on Richard III’s bad rep but we know it’s a parallel with her own experience as an ME sufferer (the initials are unfortunate for an illness long rumoured to be imaginary). Plenty have tried to find him and failed. Not only does Philippa act on her feelings, she tells people about them – it takes Council funding committee chairman Sarah Locke (Amanda Abbington) to advise her not to mention them, they’re too female – but it’s her feeling when she stands above the letter R (for reserved) in the car park that she gets the greatest sensation of all. And she acts on it. Rewriting people into history isn’t just the story of Richard it’s the story of Philippa too – the amateur historian marginalised by the archaeological team at the University of Leicester whom she hired to do the dig and then finds them taking credit for her discovery in front of the world’s press. The same people who mock: It’s like someone with a home-made rocket saying they’re going to the moon. That Ealing feeling isn’t a coincidence in a tale of rehabilitation. The film reunites the Philomena team of star/co-writer Coogan with screenwriter Jeff Pope and Stephen Frears, making another mostly true seriocomic story about a seemingly eccentric contemporary woman trying to right the wrongs of history. Of course it has a preposterous provenance – imagine finding Richard III in a car park in Leicester (and this has four characters called Richard so it must be true). Yet they did and it actually took a decade but for dramatic reasons this is telescoped into a matter of months and Richard was indeed found on the first day, in Summer 2012. Look for an open space, advises Ashdown-Hill like some kind of academic Yoda to the expressive Philippa who follows her passion with determination and empathy. Eventually she even gets her ex to move back in with the family and he comes around to her feeling about Richard, making an anonymous donation to the cause which necessitates a small sacrifice on his part. So twisted spine equals twisted personality, does it? Philippa takes everything so personally. If I can find him I can give him a voice, she says but when she finally asks the dead king’s apparition why he never speaks to her, he tells her it’s because she’s never asked him a question – content to run off at the mouth with those monologues, probably an in-joke about Shakespeare in the narrative’s constantly self-reinforcing metaverse precipitated by a hunch(back). John initially sees Richard as almost a romantic rival yet he knows why Philippa is talking to herself – he’s seeing Seafood Sarah whom he calls normal but the difference is we never encounter this real-life woman whereas a long-dead king shows up all the time, often on his horse, quietly imploring Philippa to continue on her quest. This is perhaps taking the romantic notion of history a little far yet its role in the text is what a certain playwright got away with doing, on more than one occasion. When John takes the boys to the cinema it’s to see Skyfall – a monster movie production about as far from the world of this film as it is to imagine. And yet this sidebar is about an epic episode in history and what remains. Raife asks Philippa about getting a licence to kill – and this is a narrative all about (dramatic) licence, licence to read, remember, restore, exhume and, yes, to kill and to sideline. And as it’s a story about archaeology it has its procedural structure of excavation which in this interpretation involves the straightforward light-enhanced overlaying of maps (Buckley never thought of it, it’s too simple an idea, being a woman’s), radar views and a mechanical digger. When the skull with fatal wound and curved spine are uncovered it’s strangely moving. And our reactions are written in Hawkins’ extraordinarily mobile face. Naturally everyone must acknowledge the Tudor apologists: they’re going to have a field day. That phrase of course prompts a visit to Bosworth Field, where Philippa has her final encounter with Richard III, again on his fine white steed, accompanied by his men, about to meet his maker. The film concludes with real footage of the funeral of Richard III. And so it is that the rightful king of England, the last Plantagenet ruler 1483-1485, got his long-earned decent burial and Royal honours. Underdog Langley got an MBE but Buckley got the OBE, a higher honour, consistent with the doctorate he was awarded and again metaphorically expressing the idea here – that men write history and take the credit. This has led us back to crime writer Josephine Tey’s 1951 novel The Daughter of Time, a book that served to re-ignite interest in Richard for a twentieth century readership and also questioned whether he could have killed the Princes in the Tower (who were apparently still there after the Battle of Bosworth Field by order of Henry VII). The cover features the portrait that Philippa explains here to John was doctored by the Tudors to retro-fit his image to their scurrilous version of events in which he was cast aside to make way for a new dynasty: his descendants include a cabinet-maker currently living in Clapham – no wonder QEII preferred to give a higher honour to an alleged establishment liar. This is about the real person who lies beneath the reputation and the effort it takes to read between the lines and understand the role of bias. It is about the very construction of history and how Shakespeare’s mythical play came to determine our perception of this misunderstood if controversial man whose dignity had been lost. Adapted from The King’s Grave: The Search for Richard III by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones, this is a small film about a mighty achievement. And, as the Titles inform us, it is Based on a true story. Her story

The Second Woman (1950)

There must be a reason. There’s always a reason for everything. Architect Jeff Cohalan (Robert Young) is haunted by the death of his fiancée Vivian Sheppard (Shirley Ballard) the boss Ben’s (Henry O’Neill) daughter the previous year. He sequesters himself in the modernist clifftop house he designed for himself and his beloved and broods over the incredible string of bad luck he has experienced since her death. His horse breaks its leg in its stable, his dog dies, his rose bush suddenly dies and a striking watercolour portrait by a dead local artist is deteriorating despite not being exposed to sunlight. Fortunately, his neighbour Amelia Foster’s (Florence Bates) CPA niece Ellen (Betsy Drake) a newcomer who has encountered Jeff on the train, takes an interest in his travails, and is determined to discover the real cause behind his misfortune, seemingly engineered by his workplace rival Keith Ferris (John Sutton) who has just divorced office secretary Dodo (Jean Rogers) and now has his sights on old Sheppard’s fortune. Local doctor Hartley (Morris Carnovsky) is convinced Jeff is mentally ill, guiltily replaying his suffering after taking the blame for Vivian’s death … Six accidents and every one of them killed something you love. It takes a while for this film noir-ish mystery to kick into gear but after the distraction of some on-the-nose dialogue, a poor score and the kind of shooting style familiar from live TV plays of the period it soon assumes the mantle of a clever gaslighting in reverse – a man is the victim in a drama displaying several Gothic tropes: a spooky portrait, a staircase, flashbacks, distinct shades of paranoia and all set in the interesting and highly dramatic seaside backdrop of Costa Del Rey, California, with waves as crashing accompaniment to the downfall of a decent man. Naturally the psychological element is personified in the local (but invariably European) GP who thinks he knows more about psychiatry than he possibly could and peddles the idea that persecuted Jeff is nuts: Interesting subject – who’s sane and who isn’t. Young’s affability is nimbly exploited as even his professional reputation is shattered while Drake is given one of her rare significant leads, both controlling the outcome and occasionally lending her thoughts to the voiceover, a welcome instance of a woman’s agency and investigative capacity in this sub-genre. Ferris practically twirls his moustache as the smarmy pantomime villain of the piece. A most unusual modern paranoid man’s thriller with plenty of good aspects to override the occasionally problematic direction by James V. Kern who did one more feature and then had a prolific career in television. Written by Mort Briskin & Robert Smith. Perhaps that’s why a woman gets out of proportion to a man

Frida (2002)

I like you this way – you’re easier to keep up with. Young Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) is a rambunctious teenager who lives riotously and has an active sex life with her teenage boyfriend Alejandro (Diego Luna). When a tram accident lays her up with potentially life-threatening and crippling injuries she fights back and during all the months encased in plaster discovers a talent for painting, beginning with self-portraits. When she tries to interest people in her paintings she seeks out Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) whom she taunted as a student. Despite his womanising ways she falls for him and they begin an affair which his wife knows about. They end up living in an apartment above hers. Rivera continues to sleep with his models and Frida paints and her surrealist work attracts attention. In New York in 1934 where Diego has been commissioned to create a mural for Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton) his work is censored and both he and Frida have affairs with Tina Modotti (Ashley Judd) and Frida suffers a heartbreaking miscarriage. Back in Mexico her sister Cristina (Mia Maestro) becomes his assistant and Frida finds them in bed together. She returns to her parents’ home and descends into alcoholism. After meeting Diego again at a Day of the Dead celebration he introduces her to Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush) who falls for her when he moves into her house when he is granted political asylum and Frida leaves for Paris when Trotksy’s wife finds out. She returns to Mexico and Diego asks for a divorce then Trotsky is murdered … I should never have put you in a room with him. Adapted by Clancy Sigal, Diane Lake, Gregory Nava & Anna Thomas (and Antonio Banderas and Edward Norton, uncredited) from the 1983 book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera, this is a beautiful, reverential and somewhat stolid biopic despite the talents, the artistry and the protagonist herself, memorably played by Hayek (who shepherded the production) especially as a teenager. However the episodic nature contrives to mitigate against momentum in this cosmopolitan tale, despite the wonderful aesthetic embellishments – with scenes melting out of Kahlo’s paintings, animations bringing still lifes to fast-moving existence and the use of costume as signifier. As is so often the case in these historical stories, it seems the people around the main character are more interesting and the circumstances more stimulating – and here it’s Diego Rivera who controls the narrative: Frida’s life and fate are basically a reaction to him and that both unbalances the characters and tilts the story in a different direction than it wants to go. It really succeeds as a portrait of a country in a kind of turmoil and exercising fascination for artists, bohemians and the international left. It’s not a failure but more a near miss that ironically really comes to life in the music scenes when Hayek is singing those mournful Mexican songs that make the hairs stand up in thrall to the passions this woman conjures. Beautifully shot by Rodrigo Prieto and there’s a wonderful score by Elliot Goldenthal. Directed by theatre great Julie Taymor. A communist generous enough to pay off our mortgage

Black Christmas (2019)

Aren’t you tired of fighting against your true nature? With holidays around the corner, Riley Stone (Imogen Poots) and her friends Jesse (Brittany O’Grady) and Marty (Lily Donoghue) prepare for a Christmas party at their sorority house at Hawthorne College. But when a masked stalker targets girls and goes on a killing spree following a series of threatening direct messages to the girls’ phones purportedly from the school’s slave-owning founder, they decide to fight back – but he’s in the house. Then they realise there’s more than one masked man to deal with and a girl is missing …Something doesn’t feel right. The woke millennial remake of Bob Clarke’s brilliant 1974 Canadian slasher, this plugs into campus stories from the past decade involving unwholesome fratboy rituals and a rape culture targeting female students. It ups the ante by also unpicking the masculinist backlash against women and the idea of safe spaces – all that and with a supernatural undercurrent too. Written by director Sofia Takal and April Wolfe, adapting the original screenplay by A. Roy Moore, the Final Girl narrative is therefore stunningly contemporary in its politics but that means the thrills take a bit of a back seat. There really is no room in the story for the geeky romantic Landon (Caleb Eberhardt) who might or might not help the girls but Cary Elwes is good as the lecturer whose misogyny rules the roost. Riley is a good character but she never rises to the occasion, as it were, and needs help – so you might say that this heroine’s journey is very much a group endeavour as she is forced to come to terms with a past sexual assault. Truly a tribute to the notion of sorority. You used to be a fighter. It’s time to be a fighter again. If not for yourself for your sisters

Silver River (1948)

I’ve got news for you – I think you’ve just gone into the gambling business. Unfairly cashiered from the Union Army Mike McComb (Errol Flynn) heads to Nevada and after running some card games gets into the silver business following an encounter with Georgia Moore (Ann Sheridan) whose husband Stanley (Bruce Bennett) is a mining engineer convinced that the nearby hills are full of silver. McComb lets him go out to the territory despite knowing the Shoshone Indians are on the warpath and his lawyer Plato Beck (Thomas Mitchell) cannot persuade him of the wrong he is doing – McComb is smitten with Georgia. By the time guilt overwhelms him he is too late to save Moore and ends up marrying Georgia and getting rich off the proceeds from the mine. His bank is using vouchers from the miners but when Plato shows up drunk at a housewarming dinner and tells the truth about McComb’s faults, the townspeople end up taking their savings from the bank, rival owners open other mines and he loses everything … His name marks our schools and our banks – and one day, maybe, our finish. Raoul Walsh liked both Flynn and Sheridan and this has a fantastically sparky script by Harriet Frank adapted from a story by Stephen Longstreet. He was a friend of Flynn’s and knew that by 1947 the star’s looks and acting were deteriorating, mainly from drink, possibly drugs and definitely from the financial and marital hurt inflicted by some wives. He says that both Flynn and Sheridan were drinking heavily on set and that director Raoul Walsh told him, ” ‘Kid, write it fast. They’re not drinking.’ It soon became clear that they were even if we didn’t see how. [Later on set] I went over and tasted the ice water. It was pure 90-proof vodka.’ ” What a shame. Because there are some great lines and exchanges here and the performances by the leads are sluggish, muted and dead on arrival for most of the film. The humour and ribaldry are fine, it’s the delivery that’s the issue. The irony that it’s about a man whose ability to lead is ruined by some intrinsic flaw cannot have been lost on Flynn. The references to King David, Bathsheba and the serpent’s egg by Mitchell are very clear Biblical analogies that point this up as a morality tale. What might have been, alas, in a film that is rather stillborn from such a paradoxically lively cast and a gifted director. Don’t let’s have a lynching

Miranda (1948)

There’s a dreadful shortage of men below sea. With his wife Clare (Googie Withers) uninterested in fishing, Dr. Paul Martin (Griffith Jones) goes on holiday in Cornwall.  There he snags mermaid Miranda Trewella (Glynis Johns) and is pulled into the water. She keeps him prisoner in her underwater cavern and only lets him go after he agrees to show her London. He disguises her as an invalid patient in a wheelchair and takes her to his flat for a month-long stay. Clare reluctantly agrees to the arrangement, but gets him to hire someone to look after their house guest and he selects Nurse Carey (Margaret Rutherford) for the eccentric nature that previously caused him to get rid of her and takes her into his confidence. To Paul’s relief, Carey is delighted to be working for a mermaid as she always believed they exist. Miranda’s seductive nature earns her the admiration of not only Paul, but also his chauffeur Charles (David Tomlinson), as well as Nigel (John McCallum), the artist fiancé of Clare’s friend and upstairs neighbour Isobel (Sonia Holm) arousing the jealousy of the women in their lives. Clare starts to follow her instincts and starts reading up on her suspicions. Nigel breaks off his engagement, but then he and Charles discover that Miranda has been flirting with both of them ….  You’ve hated me ever since I set tail in this house. The delightful Johns has fun as the beguiling mermaid who insinuates herself into the life of a doctor living quite the de luxe life in his well appointed London apartment with his lovely wife Withers. And then she drives every man mad with desire. There are lovely moments when she can’t help herself – snacking on the goldfish straight from the bowl, scarfing cockles at the fish market and depriving a sea lion of his lunch on a trip to the zoo. Witty and surprising, this wastes no time in introducing Johns – two minutes – and once she fishes Paul out of the water and into her cave she wastes no time in telling him she had to throw the last two men back because their legs were too short. She has a disarming way of critiquing men’s physiques to their face. Withers plays opposite offscreen husband McCallum while the redoubtable Rutherford has an amusing scene in a museum with a mummy and off-screen husband Stringer Davis. Witty, charming fluff with Johns as bewitching as ever as the flirty fish out of water and some timely references including the novel Forever Amber – which plants the suggestive conclusion. Adapted from his play by Peter Blackmore with additional dialogue by Denis Waldock, this was produced by Betty Box and directed by Ken Annakin. Tail by Dunlop. There is a sequel, made 6 years later, Mad About Men. If you ask me there’s something very fishy about this case

Portrait of a Lady On Fire (2019)

Aka Portrait de la jenue fille en feu. Will you be able to paint her? Painter Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is instructing a class of art students in Paris. They ask her about the origins of a painting and she reminisces: France, 1770. Marianne is commissioned to do the wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) a young woman who has just left the convent and is at home on a remote island off the coast of Brittany. She is a reluctant bride to be and her mother the countess (Valeria Golino) wants Marianne to paint her portrait in secret for an arranged marriage to a nobleman suitor in Milan whose visual approval is required. The last male artist failed in his mission and Marianne must study Héloïse without her knowing. Marianne accompanies her on her daily walk under the pretence of being her companion but observes her carefully and paints her secretly. Is that how you see me? When she reveals her identity and Héloïse dislikes the portrait Marianne destroys it, to the rage of the countess who goes away for a while as long as Marianne agrees to do another portrait, this time with her subject’s full co-operation. He doesn’t make the lover’s choice, but the poet’s. The women fall in love and Héloïse reads Orpheus and Eurydice by firelight to Marianne and Héloïse’s servant, Sophie (Luàna Bajrami) whose pregnancy the women help to end. As Marianne finishes the portrait and the countess is returning they must accept what happens next … Your presence is made up of fleeting moments that may lack truth. French writer/director Céline Sciamma’s historical romance is stately, elegant and well framed:  this is a picture of female solidarity and love, grounded in the most obvious of ideas – the female gaze in a patriarchal world – in a film about looking and perception. We are going to paint. This is about turning around and acknowledging and engaging with what you see – and making a choice. The performers look and watch and are passive aggressive as society dictates they must be with their taboo affair, illuminating each other’s lives in secret. How people see each other has rarely been so truthfully portrayed. A profound, at times magical, meditation on what it means to be a woman, this is beautifully and carefully staged, with nothing excessive or ornamental and driven by stunning performances. The digital cinematography by Claire Mathon is so exquisite there are candlelit scenes you will want to reach out and touch and hang on your wall. This show and tell is far from still life. If you look at me, who do I look at?

Dorian Gray (1970)

Aka The Secret of Dorian Gray/Il dio chiamato Dorian/Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray. One day when even you’ve become an old and hideous puppet this will still be young. London student Dorian Gray (Helmut Berger) is the subject of a portrait by society painter Basil Hallward (Richard Todd) whose clients hedonistic aristos Lord Henry Wotton (Herbert Lom) and his wife Gwendolyn (Margaret Lee) take a fancy to him. Meanwhile he has fallen in love with aspiring actress Sybil Vane (Marie Liljedahl) as she rehearses Romeo and Juliet. She makes him think about someone other than himself for a change. As Basil completes his portrait Dorian finds himself obsessed with his painted image and swears that he will trade his soul to remain young. His relationship with Sybil grows complicated and argumentative and she is killed when she is knocked down by a car. Dorian is heavily influenced by Henry who has him sleep with Gwendolyn and Dorian then becomes immersed in society as a kind of gigolo who makes other people famous, be they men or women. However as the portrait begins to reveal his age and escalating depravity he hides it away from sight where it changes appearance and becomes ugly and Dorian ends up killing Basil when he says he’s not responsible for the alterations.  Dorian is conscious of the peril of his situation, particularly when Henry introduces him to Sybil’s double, a woman married to a scientist embarking on research into rejuvenation … Everything is yours. Take it. Enjoy it. The most beautiful man of this or any time stars in a European co-production of the greatest work of literature by the greatest Irish author and it’s updated to the flashy, groovesome Seventies. What bliss is this?! With equal parts tragic romance and fetishistic kink it easily falls into the category of trash yet the moral at the centre – the idea that youth is beautiful in itself, not just for what it can obtain – gives it a lingering value. The god-like Berger is perfectly cast as the impossibly erotic creature who transitions from youthful selfishness to graceless decadence, and his sleazy polymorphous journey through the fashionable world of swinging London is both quaintly dated and oddly touching, principally because of the relationship with Liljedahl (best known for her soft-core films in her home country of Sweden) and Berger’s consistent performance, beset by narcissistic fascination, bewildered by loss. It is precisely because this plugs into the truly pornographic ideas behind the 1890s textual aesthetics that it seems oddly perfect as an adaptation despite the occasional surprise – a bit of S&M in a stables, plus it’s not every day you see Lom approach a beautiful young man to have his wicked way with him. The screenplay is credited to giallo director Massimo Dallamano, Renato Romano, Marcello Coscia and Günter Ebert, from  Oscar Wilde’s indelible novel. The contemporary score is composed by Peppino De Luca and Carlo Pes. Produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff and Harry Alan Towers for American International Pictures. You only have a few years to live really fully

Mapplethorpe (2018)

The shy pornographer. After he bails on the Pratt Institute, horrifying his conservative family, Robert Mapplethorpe (Matt Smith) leaves for New York City where he lives on the wild side and teams up with another wannabe artist, Patti Smith (Marianne Rendón).  They set up home together at the Chelsea Hotel where they discover their artistic abilities and dream together. However Mapplethorpe is gay and Smith disappears to enjoy a hetero marriage when she is supplanted by curator and collector Sam Wagstaff (John Benjamin Hickey) who takes Mapplethorpe as one of his lovers.  He becomes his benefactor and backer and shows him some nineteenth century photographs that open up Mapplethorpe to the possibilities of the medium, having two exhibitions simultaneously, one high-art, one erotic, showing both sides of his artistry. A symbiotic relationship is born, albeit Mapplethorpe continues to party and sleep around as his success grows. He falls for black model Milton Moore (McKinlay Belcher III) but when Milton finds his diaries he believes he’s being used fetishistically and abandons him. Mapplethorpe’s lifestyle verges on the reckless, between sex and drugs, but he is now famous and celebrated.  His younger brother Edward (Brandon Sklenar) whom he barely knows is training in the technical side of the medium and joins him as his assistant.  When Edward displays his own talent, Mapplethorpe doesn’t want the competition and tells him to stop using the family name. Wagstaff has AIDS but Mapplethorpe refuses to be tested. When he is dying, Patti visits. He gets Edward to take one more photograph of him… I’m an artist. I would have been a painter, but the camera was invented. Luckily for me. Unsurprisingly considering the subject matter and the fact that this was made in co-operation with the Mapplethorpe Foundation, this contains an array of graphic and pornographic images, all by Mapplethorpe himself.  That’s only disconcerting when Matt Smith is in the same scene as Mapplethorpe’s self-portraits. The value here is not intrinsic in the dramatic exposition but in the ideas it espouses and the path it traces as Mapplethorpe finds his medium – from drawing and making jewellery to figuring out that his narcissism offered a view on masculinity previously unexplored (or exposed in public). You’re the Jekyll and Hyde of photography. He’s not an easy character to portray or to like because his essence lies in provocation and attention-seeking and Smith’s performance is not terribly convincing in a role that is better written than it is acted. Nor does the script deal with the essential lesson that this is a man who knew he wouldn’t live long and was prepared to die for his art. Beauty and the Devil are sort of the same thing to me. The relationship with Patti Smith doesn’t quite ring true either.  The film is about how photography evolved as Mapplethorpe’s own high-contrast signature developed – as he repeatedly says, Look at the blacks. It’s the revolution in image-making to replace the affect and emotion of painting that holds the eye. The context in which the drama is produced is a major factor in the narrative and the celebrities of the day become his models but NYC has cleaned up a lot since the filthy Seventies and if the Chelsea Hotel looks grimy enough for anyone and the spectre of AIDS haunts every frame a cleaned-up look still expresses a dispiriting social scene. The chronological approach that dogs biographical film drama doesn’t add a lot here but the punctuation – setting up famous photographs and then showing the real thing – is a useful technique of juxtaposition that adds to the tension of creation:  these pictures still manage to shock, captivate and provoke. Mapplethorpe died thirty-one years ago this week. Directed by Ondi Timoner (on Kodak film) from a screenplay co-written with Mikko Alanne, based on a screenplay by Bruce Goodrich. They call it playing chicken with the avant garde