A valentine to the movies from 1917 and Skyfall director Sam Mendes (here taking a solo screenplay credit for the first time), set in and around an English seaside cinema in the early 1980s. For Hilary (Olivia Colman), it’s not the most glamorous job in the world, shoveling popcorn and warmed over dogs for a dwindling number of punters, and sordid backroom fumblings with her manager (Colin Firth) don’t make her feel any better about herself. But when young, good-looking Stephen (Micheal Ward) joins the team, her outlook soon brightens. Indeed, the two of them forge an unexpectedly intense bond.
Colman must be odds-on favourite to make it four Academy Award nominations in five years for her deeply affecting and acutely nuanced portrait of an unhappy woman rediscovering her sense of joy. But there is another story going on here: Stephen is Black, and not likely to forget it in the racially entrenched and divisive surroundings of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. Small wonder the lovers seek refuge in their dreams.
Master cinematographer (and Mendes regular) Roger Deakins conjures all his wizardry here, and the Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score pulls everything together. Mendes has helmed a transformative movie.
Sam Mendes
Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Tom Brooke
UK/USA
2022
English
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
The Secret in Their Eyes
This month's Talking Pictures screening is a multi-layered, poignant thriller interweaving the personal lives of a prosecution investigator (Ricardo Darin) and a judge, with a manhunt spanning twenty-five years. Stay for cookies, coffee and a chat after!
The Haunting
Directed by Robert Wise in 1963, The Haunting is a classic exercise in the suggestive power of cinema, adapted from Shirley Jackson's 1959 best-seller, The Haunting of Hill House, a provocative blend of supernatural and psychological horror.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Once Upon a Time in Harlem splices together footage shot by William Greaves in 1972 of a group of Harlem Renaissance luminaries in conversation at Duke Ellington’s townhouse. The film is a living archive of memory, disagreement, style, and Black genius.
Possible Love
Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning (2018) is a sardonic, slow-burning satire about two couples: a documentary filmmaker married to a wealthy businessman, and a working-class family struggling to make ends meet after the husband has been laid off.
Credits
Michael Lerman, Julie Pastor
Producer
Pippa Harris, Sam Mendes
Screenwriter
Sam Mendes
Cinematography
Roger Deakins
Editor
Lee Smith
Production Design
Mark Tildesley
Original Music
Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross