★★★★
If watching A Bigger Splash was like climbing into a jacuzzi and discovering that it may contain a crab, Luca Guadagnino’s third chapter in his so-called trilogy of desire, Call Me By Your Name (which follows the former and I am Love before it), might be considered akin to climbing into said jacuzzi, finding it crab free, being handed a cornucopia of cool, Sicilian lemonade, and then having to remain as the water drains away. It may be la dolce vita, but love stings.
★★★★
Bittersweet has rarely felt more apt a description than in the case of Ingrid Goes West, a film both painfully sour in its bitterness and poignantly sweet in its aesthetic. Pitch black humour might make for a biting satire but, in Matt Spicer’s hands, this comes not at the expense of heartbreaking emotional resonance. You’ll never ‘follow’ social media in the same way again.
★★★★
How delightful it is to witness the screen reunion of Julie Walters and Jamie Bell twenty-seven years on from Billy Elliot. He’s no longer a scrawny adolescent ballet lad (though the boyish looks are still there), she’s ditched the stockings, and they’ve both decamped to Merseyside for Paul McGuigan’s funny, affectionate and heartbreaking tale of the fascinating, true story, relationship of a former fifties film star – a dazzling Annette Bening – and the boy next door. Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, but they do sparkle.
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