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DANIEL CRAIG

September 4, 2024

hollywood authentic, venice dispatch, venice film festival, greg williams
daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

DISPATCH: DANIEL CRAIG QUEER
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

Well before Bond, Daniel Craig impressed with his range and bold choices (which he then brought to the iconic franchise), but his raw, funny, vulnerable and ultimately transformative performance in Luca Guadagnino’s fever-dream adaptation of William S Burroughs’ autobiographical Beat generation novel is masterful and deserving of awards nominations.

Paying a boozy heroin addict in desperate love with a young man (Drew Starkey) in fifties South America – Queer impressed and shocked in equal measure when it premiered at Venice Film Festival in the main competition. Burroughs’ explicit book translates into a trippy, romantic voyage with erotic sex scenes in the hands of Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes and Guadagnino, showcasing Craig at the height of his powers as he cruises the streets of Mexico City and struggles with all of his character Lee’s addictions: love, lust, drugs, the search for a higher plane…  With costumes by Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson, an anachronistically cool soundtrack (Prince, Nirvana, New Order) and gorgeous sets built in Rome’s famed Cinecittà Studios, Queer is a sensory delight that asks questions about love, life, death and everything in between. Little wonder it was snapped up for distribution by A24. ‘If I wasn’t in this movie and I saw this movie, I’d want to be in it,’ Craig says of the project. ‘It’s the kind of film I want to see, I want to make, I want to be out there.’ 

Though he’s known Guadagnino for years and wanted to work with him ‘for a long time’, Queer finally offered the opportunity for collaboration. Craig and Guadagnino worked together in the key casting of Starkey as former US-serviceman Allerton, the locus for Lee’s attention. They saw the Outer Banks actor early in the process and returned to him despite seeing hundreds of other potentials. Required to dance with each other throughout the film – physically during a trippy sequence in the Amazon, as well as emotionally and sexually – Starkey and Craig worked together for months before production on choreography and movement to nail the connection between the two men.

‘There’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set,’ Craig told journalists when he arrived on the Lido. ‘You’re in a room full of people watching you. We just wanted to make it as touching and as real, as natural, as we possibly could. Drew was a wonderful, beautiful, fantastic actor to work with, and we had a laugh. We tried to make it fun.’

The resulting scenes are striking as much for their eroticism as they are for their tenderness, with Craig bringing a moving sensitivity and humour to his portrayal of a man who is light years away from the assured swagger of James Bond – even if Guadagnino does have him sip a cheeky vodka martini (or two) during one drunken scene in a hat tip to his most recent role. ‘One of the characteristics of the great actors that you love and see onscreen and are affected by, I would say is the generosity of approach, the capacity of being very mortal onscreen,’ Guadagnino said at the Venice press conference. ‘Very few are, and very few iconic legendary actors allow that fragility to be seen, and one of them is Daniel.’

daniel craig, rachel weisz

Queer is released in cinemas later this year
Read our review here


JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX

September 4, 2024

joaquin phoenix, joker: folie à deux, lady gaga, todd phillips

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM

Four primary-coloured umbrellas: the first sign that Joker: Folie à Deux is going to be different. Very different. The sequel to Todd Phillips’ Joker, the film that radically reinvented Batman’s nemesis from the DC Comics universe, this continues the story of Arthur Fleck, the wannabe stand-up who winds up on a murder spree in Gotham City. Now in Arkham Asylum, he’s being transported across a rain-drenched courtyard when up pop the umbrellas, held by the guards. Singin’ In The Rain? Well, they soon will be.

Reinventing the film as a musical, Joker: Folie à Deux takes old standards like ‘That’s Entertainment’ and The Carpenters’  ‘Close To You’, slipping them into the narrative, as Arthur shifts, in his mind at least, from comedian to all-round entertainer. Joining him centre stage is Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), better known to fans as Dr. Harley Quinn (traditionally, the Joker’s love interest in DC lore). Here, she’s been committed to Arkham by her mother for arson; she even sets a communal prison room on fire, allowing her and Arthur to get some brief alone time to spark their obsessive romance.

joaquin phoenix, joker: folie à deux, lady gaga, todd phillips
joaquin phoenix, joker: folie à deux, lady gaga, todd phillips

Lee is obsessed by Arthur, his murderous actions inspiring her just as they do the thousands of deranged followers that line the streets with ‘Free Joker’ posters – ‘he’s not sick, he’s perfect’ she insists. With the title a French-language reference to a shared mental insanity, the film is something of a twisted love story, as an affection-starved Arthur goes looking for love. Complementing this, the narrative also follows Arthur as he stands trial, his lawyer (Catherine Keener) using the defence that he has a “fragmentation” in his personality, that Joker is entirely separate from Arthur. To dodge the death penalty, Fleck needs to convince that Joker does not lie just below the surface, but with a baying mob outside and Lee feeding his alter-ego, which aspect of him will triumph?

Back in the role that won him an Oscar in 2020, Phoenix once again fully inhabits the part, physically and emotionally. Just the sight of his protruding shoulder blades, gaunt face and cadaver-like chest will make you shiver; but more than that, it’s another masterclass in conveying trauma and mania. The flourish of Joker is incrementally hinted at with the twirl of a jacket or a barking laugh, later unleashed to full tap-dancing, snarling bravado in colour-pop dream sequences and desaturated courtrooms. Alongside him, Gaga further cements her status as a performer of note; not only does she handle the songs adeptly, as you’d expect, but she gives a resonant turn as a woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

Once again, Phillips conjures a grim, grimy and grey Gotham, a world so dirty you feel like scrubbing your hands afterwards. And while the film may boast less fiery intensity than the first, the bold choice to twist a prison movie and courtroom drama into a Hollywood Golden Age musical has to be admired. In the words of Al Jolson, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

joaquin phoenix, joker: folie à deux, lady gaga, todd phillips

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM
Joker: Folie à Deux releases in cinemas 2 October

QUEER

September 3, 2024

daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino returns to another beloved book with an intense gay romance at its centre with Venice Film Festival buzz-generator Queer; adapting’ Beat icon Wiliam S Burroughs’ unfinished autobiographical novel tracking his time in Mexico City and South America during the fifties. Starring Daniel Craig as ‘gentleman of independent means’ and heroin addict, Lee, as he wrestles with love for a young man (Drew Starkey) who ‘obliges’ him with sex, Guadagnino puts his particular swoony stamp on Burroughs’ raw, explicit prose. 

Divided into chapters and crafted from Queer and other Burroughs’ works as well as aspects of his real life, Queer begins with Chapter 1: How Do You Like Mexico? – a portrait of crumpled, mezcal-swilling ex-pat Lee as he looks for love in gay scene bars alongside his unlucky friend Joe (Jason Schwartzman, a rumpled delight) and the so-called ‘green lantern boys’. While outwardly he seems to be having fun as he lurches from bar to bar and picks up men, Lee searches for something more profound. As he listens to the hapless Joe’s misadventures with hook-ups, Guadagnino has him flicker transparently like a ghost, becoming insubstantial, incomplete. He wanders the streets in slow-mo soundtracked by Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’ (linking Lee’s sensitivity to Cobain’s as well as their shared drug of choice) and takes one night stands back to a seedy motel that looks like a Hopper painting.

daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

It’s during these boozy wanderings that his eyes meet over a cock fight (of course) with handsome ex-US serviceman Allerton. An experienced cruiser, Lee is tilted off-balance by Allerton – a man whose sexuality he struggles to read and who makes him a blushing, awkward, giggling suitor. The duo hang out, watching Jean Costeau’s Orpheus and drinking until Lee can bear the tension no more. In a speech lifted directly from the text, Lee confesses his ‘proclivities’. Allerton, as slinky as a big cat, agrees to accompany him home and a complex love affair begins that starts with an erotic sex scene and travels to Ecuador and the Amazon jungle for hallucinogenic drug trips and dark nights of the soul.

That Daniel Craig can do more than Bond is well established but his performance here might startle those most comfortable with him in impeccable suits seducing women – and Guadagnino gives him a couple of cheeky vodka martinis to sip on in a nice nod to his famous role. But this is Craig flexing all his career muscles; sozzled and soulful, vulnerable and nuanced, he paints a universal portrayal of the lovelorn, the disconnected. There’s a delightful pathos and humour he brings to scenes where he begs Allerton to meet him halfway in running headlong into love and lust. And in sexual moments he radiates a tenderness and yearning that gives greater depth to scenes tabloid newspapers will no doubt have a field day with.

daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

Building out on Naked Lunch’s centipede as a motif, the drugs trips of The Yage Letters and the author’s thoughts from his Last Words, as well as incidents from his real life (his wife’s accidental shooting is represented in party tricks and dream sequences), screenwriter Justin Kuritzes and Guadagnino create a lurid study of one man’s interior life. Filmed entirely at Cinecittà Studios, the locations are rendered in a vintage postcard feel that’s like a memory and the anachronistic soundtrack takes in Prince and New Order to give further elasticity to the idea of reality. This is a just a version of a fifties moment in time, intended to be like the magic mirror in Cocteau’s Orpheus or the high promised by Lesley Manville’s feral botanist who provides Lee and Allerton with the yage cocktail deep in the jungle; a reflection. ‘It’s not a portal’ she tells them. The same is true of Queer – it’s a comedy, a love letter, a travelogue, a heroin withdrawal account, a trip, a study of an artist… depending on your own proclivities.

daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Queer is in cinemas now

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR

September 2, 2024

alessandro nivola, esther mcgregor, john tuturro, julianne moore, tilda swinton, the room next door

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature length film boasts his expected vibrant reds, strong female performances and a discourse on life/death; but in transposing his signature style to a chilly New York there’s a fresh austerity and overt Sirkian sensibility also at play. The result is a vibrant and life-affirming treat as well as a battle cry against climate change. 

alessandro nivola, esther mcgregor, john tuturro, julianne moore, tilda swinton, the room next door

Inspired by Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, Almodóvar explores our relationship to death (both personally and environmentally) via two old journalist friends who once painted the town red as magazine writers and who reconnect when author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) learns war reporter Martha (Tilda Swinton) is terminably ill. Suffering from stage 3 cervical cancer, no-nonsense Martha has tired of her gruelling treatments and is now at peace with the idea that she ‘deserves a good death’. Ingrid, by comparison, has just written a novel exploring her terror of dying, so when Martha asks her to be in ‘the room next door’ of a gorgeous rental house when she commits euthanasia, she’s both honoured and horrified. 

alessandro nivola, esther mcgregor, john tuturro, julianne moore, tilda swinton, the room next door

Within a soaring melodrama score and colour-pop production design, Moore and Swinton discuss the pleasures of life (books, writing, birdsong, movies), shared experiences (John Tuturro plays the eco-warrior lover both women have shared) and the depletion of self caused by the ravages of illness. As Martha reaches her end, she looks back to her past – to the war experiences that have shaped her and the conception of the daughter she’s estranged from, told in flashbacks with a luminous Esther McGregor playing young Martha.  
There are moments of great visual beauty as expected from an Almodóvar film; pink snowflakes drifting over a Manhattan skyline, Moore and Swinton lying side by side on pistachio-green and cherry-red sun loungers, the lush tones of an autumn garden. And in the hands of such accomplished actors, the emotional magnificence also gleams; Swinton reciting poetry and the dialogue to John Huston’s The Dead as a tear slips from her eye, the way Moore reacts to a closed red door. Though Swinton playing her own daughter may jar for some, it works in a film that champions the idea of leaving the world with the next generation in mind, and reminds us all to be grateful for the small wonders of everyday life. After watching this the world may look all the more vivid on leaving the dark of the theatre…

alessandro nivola, esther mcgregor, john tuturro, julianne moore, tilda swinton, the room next door

Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Room Next Door releases in cinemas later this year

WOLFS

September 1, 2024

amy ryan, austin abrams, brad pitt, george clooney, jon watts, wolfs

Words by JANE CROWTHER

When a married New York DA (Amy Ryan) finds herself in a sticky situation – a dead hook-up in a penthouse suite – she calls the number of a man whose function is clean-up jobs. As the body of the boy she’s picked up in the lobby lies among shattered glass after bedroom hijinks, the voice on the line assures her he’ll take care of her problem. 

Enter George Clooney’s nameless lone wolf, an anonymous man with a body bag and a grumpy demeanour. ‘Nobody can do what I do,’ he insists. As he sets about his task, there’s a knock at the penthouse door: Brad Pitt’s fixer has also arrived. Dressed similarly and touting the same skill set, it seems Clooney’s not the only hitman in town – and now both of them are mixed up in a mess that reaches further than the luggage trolley of a high end hotel.

amy ryan, austin abrams, brad pitt, george clooney, jon watts, wolfs

The whys and wherefores of plot are immaterial in a film that understands the main attraction is seeing real-life buddies zing off each other as two grouchy middle-aged mystery men forced to work together when a standard job takes an unexpected turn. Suffice to say, drugs, cartels, shootouts, gangster weddings and a dopey business student (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams) are involved as the duo try to unravel a conspiracy overnight and in the process discover a grudging respect for each other.

Written and directed by Jon Watts as an amiable Ocean’s II, the appeal of Wolfs is the built-in chemistry between Pitt and Clooney as they banter and bitch through Chinatown foot and car chases, Croatian dance routines, and an interrogation in a hideous rent-by-the-hour hotel room. Their overlapping chatter plays like jazz, the result of years of off-screen friendship and the experience to inhabit these roles effortlessly.  Both actors have fun with their age, leaning into gags about bones cracking, needing Advil after some strenuous gunslinging and struggling to read pager messages without their glasses. Clooney’s car playlist is also a nice boomer dig; he listens to Sade’s Smooth Operator as he drives to a job.

amy ryan, austin abrams, brad pitt, george clooney, jon watts, wolfs
amy ryan, austin abrams, brad pitt, george clooney, jon watts, wolfs

It’s a tough gig for Abrams to steal any focus as the third wheel, a daffy teen who fancies a bit danger and ends up with the equivalent of a two killer dads (who might ice him but will also tell him to eat with his mouth closed), but he makes a lively impression – not least in a practical effect when he leaps over a moving car in tighty-whities and tube socks.

Clooney and Pitt clearly had a hoot making the film and the door is left open for more of the same if audiences also have a laugh. Abandon plot logic and Wolfs is daft fun with a rat pack vibe..

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Wolfs releases in cinemas 20 Sept before transferring to Apple TV+

THE ORDER

August 31, 2024

justin kurzel, jude law, nicholas hoult, tye sheridan, the order

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Justin Kurzel adds to his cinematic rebel poems with another gorgeously-lensed look at a real-life disruptor and his skewed ideals. After tackling outliers in The True History Of The Kelly Gang and Nitrum, the director turns his attention to Bob Mathews, an eighties white power leader whose rhetoric in Reagan-era America threatened to metastasize to civil unrest and polarisation. Like his previous historical films, Kurtzel’s latest boasts a disquieting pertinence to current events and cultural leaders…

justin kurzel, jude law, nicholas hoult, tye sheridan, the order

Focusing on Mathews (Nicholas Hoult) as he tries to build a white supremacy army in 1983-4 via bank robberies, bombings and assassinations as well as the broken FBI agent, Terry Husk (Jude Law) tracking him, The Order shows two men who are only divided by the law in their obsessions. The radical offspring of a hate-preacher, Mathews is charismatic, unfaithful and blinkered in his pursuit of an Aryan America as he recruits and seduces. His wife and mistress are secondary to the excitement he feels carrying out his six-step to domination, his bank robberies (thrillingly executed in nail-biting interludes) a high. Husk is damaged goods – a chain-smoking, gum chewing blunt instrument with a drink problem, he’s survived an incident in New York and has transferred to the quiet of Idaho in the hopes of ‘putting back the pieces’. His wife and children are secondary to his quarry, silently admonishing via unanswered phone calls he makes as he digs into white power in the state. When the local nous of a deputy sheriff (Tye Sheridan) links a couple of leads, Husk realises he has a bigger case on his hands and brings in a bureau former colleague to start a manhunt. As the film toggles between Mathews and Husk, it becomes a cat-and-mouse thriller – with Mathews getting sloppy and Husk getting (literally) messy as old injuries plague him. 

justin kurzel, jude law, nicholas hoult, tye sheridan, the order

It’s a retro presentation; the eighties production design, costumes and lensing recalling numerous previous examples of the genre. And that’s no bad thing. Law’s Husk is straight from the Popeye Doyle school of big swings and delicious to watch, even his constant gum-chewing informs his characterisation. Sheridan is the heart of the picture providing an emotional moment that hurts, and Hoult nails the blue-eyed fanaticism of a man who may tell his mates to stop burning crosses but can’t see the inevitability of his actions. Jed Kurzel’s thrumming score soars as high as the camera, swooping above stunning Idaho and Washington state vistas to show the beauty of the country Mathews is fighting so hard to control.  

End credit notes tell us that the text used by Mathews has been utilised repeatedly since by far-right groups as a blueprint for their activities – including the most recent storming of the Capitol. It’s a stark reminder that though this picture plays like a slice of vintage filmmaking, the beliefs at the centre of the story are very much still relevant. As an audience, Kurzel asks us which side of the ideological line we choose to stand on. Powerful stuff.

justin kurzel, jude law, nicholas hoult, tye sheridan, the order

Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Order is in cinemas now

BABYGIRL

August 31, 2024

antonio banderas, halina reijn, harris dickinson, nicole kidman, sophie wilde

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Halina Reijn’s erotic drama has caused a stir at Venice thanks to its frank, female-gaze portrayal of desire and the nuances of power. Though it shares some similarities with Secretary, Fatal Attraction and even Fifty Shades Of Grey, Babygirl is buzzy because it unflinchingly explores the ‘orgasm gap’ between men and women, and paints a picture of a complex, contradictory middle-aged woman’s lust without anyone’s bunny being boiled.

Nicole Kidman stars as tech CEO Romy who has it all together: a loving theatre director husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas), two lovely daughters, two sprawling houses (a Manhattan apartment and a country mansion), the respect of her colleagues and pots of money. A glass ceiling breaker and ballbuster, Romy has no problem asking for what she wants in boardrooms or cosmetic clinics but struggles to do so in bed. Opening on her climaxing astride her spouse, Romy sneaks off to another room post-copulation to masturbate over Daddy kink porn. There, in the darkness, on the floor, her feral orgasm is different and real compared to the performance she has put on for her partner. What Romy presents to her family and the world is very different to what she wants, and even then she’s not entirely sure what that is. Which is why new intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson) intrigues and shocks her when he seems to instinctively sense exactly what she might need. A bold, self-assured young man who can control a raging dog in the street and tells her ‘I think you like to be told what to do’, Samuel whispers ‘good girl’ to her in a restaurant when she glugs a full glass of milk that he sends over to her table. 

Romy is a strong, powerful woman who loves her husband, but she’s also a product of her commune upbringing, horny and looking for validation of some of her darker fantasies. Both personas coexist, the spectrum of sexual need explored as the CEO and the intern embark on a push-pull affair tinged with BDSM but is also vulnerable, protective, needy, greedy, bashful and silly. Romy may kneel to lick a sweet from Samuel’s hand or milk from a saucer at his feet, but she will also cling to him as they sway to George Michael’s Father Figure and cuddle like family in a hotel suite bed. When he gives her her first non-masturbatory orgasm the growl she lets out into a grubby carpet is one of liberation and discovery.

The traditional assumption in this kind of cinematic trajectory is that someone will lose their life (literally or figuratively), that danger is associated with such unfettered hunger. But Reijn confounds expectation by metering out no punishment. Rather the protagonists discover something of themselves and use their individual power to move forward – whether that’s the ambitious exec assistant Esme (Talk To Me’s Sophie Wilde), a collaborative Jacob or Romy herself. The only person getting shafted in this tale is a predatory exec who tries to leverage his power for sex. As Samuel says at one point to another character; ‘that’s an outdated view of sexuality’.

Modern, sex-positive and optimistic, Babygirl is sure to prompt post-credit discussion and possibly even small revolutions in marital beds.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Babygirl is in cinemas now

DISCLAIMER

August 30, 2024

cate blanchett, leila george, sasha baron cohen, kodi smit-mcphee, louis partridge, alfonso cuarón

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Alfonso Cuarón’s dark seven-part thriller exploring victim blaming, the madonna/whore complex and the toxicity of trauma gives audiences a warning straight off the bat that they should question what they see. As feted documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) receives another award to add to her collection, the host of the ceremony touches on narrative and form and warns that they can be used for manipulation. Narrative and form are certainly used to skewed and smart effect in this elegant adap of Renée Knight’s 2015 bestseller as three stories are interwoven across decades. 

cate blanchett, leila george, sasha baron cohen, kodi smit-mcphee, louis partridge, alfonso cuarón

In one strand we follow Catherine Ravenscroft as she receives a parcel from an unknown source containing a book that seems to unravel carefully held secrets from her past. The story at the heart of the novel sends her spiralling, impacting her marriage to stuffy lawyer Robert (Sasha Baron Cohen) and estranging her even more from her 25-year-old wastrel son, Nick (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Meanwhile Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline pulling off a perfect befuddled Englishman in the vein of Jim Broadbent) is mourning the loss of his son two decades previously, as well as his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville) more recently. Bereft, Stephen has nothing to live for but embittered revenge. And in a third story, horny inter-railing teen Jonathan (Louis Partridge) can’t keep his eyes off a beautiful young mother (Leila George) on an Italian beach. Grief, betrayal and brutality are bound for all the characters – but the how and why is disquietingly spun across the episodes to a gut-punch denouement that will make audiences question their own assumptions, gender bias and acceptance of narrative. The truth at the heart of this bleak tale is something that is lost repeatedly in the retelling of it, depending on who is crafting the story and what information (or lack of it) they are working with.

cate blanchett, leila george, sasha baron cohen, kodi smit-mcphee, louis partridge, alfonso cuarón
cate blanchett, leila george, sasha baron cohen, kodi smit-mcphee, louis partridge, alfonso cuarón

It would be churlish to provide any more narrative detail – the pleasure really is in the unpackaging of it – but this onion-layered story of perspective is delivered beautifully by Cuarón as writer/director, and his cast. Blanchett is a known powerhouse but she is immense here; by turns frantic, self-absorbed, rageful and ultimately incandescent as a woman being judged. George as a younger version of Catherine is a revelation in a star-making turn as both a vamp and a victim. She and Partridge generate serious heat in explicit scenes that cleverly make viewers complicit in judgement, while Kline and Manville create a blindsiding and heartbreaking portrait of grief that is hard to see past. Each of their narratives twist and turn to a barnstorming final episode that will likely prompt audience introspection about personal and public perception, society and social media’s hurry to punish without due diligence and the way we castigate women for being sexual beings. Knowing what we know at the end might also inform repeat viewing to understand the clues that were there for us to see – if only we weren’t so blinkered. A masterful binge watch that asks pertinent and uncomfortable questions.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Disclaimer premieres on Apple TV+ on 11 October

MARIA

August 30, 2024

angelina jolie, kodi smit-mcphee, maria, pablo larraín, pierfrancesco favino, valeria golino, hollywood authentic

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Pablo Larraín’s latest portrait of a woman struggling under a media lens (completing the triptych with Jackie and Spencer) is his most linear and conventional approach to teasing out the pain, trauma and self doubt intrinsic to being a famous female figure in the 20th century – but it’s also his most emotionally resonant. That’s perhaps because Angelina Jolie, as opera diva Maria Callas, brings her own life experience of press obsession to the role in a performance that will certainly be in the awards conversation.

angelina jolie, kodi smit-mcphee, maria, pablo larraín, pierfrancesco favino, valeria golino, hollywood authentic

Written by Spencer scribe Steven Knight, Maria follows a 53-year-old Callas in the last week of her life in 1977 Paris, wrestling her artistic and romantic demons as her diet-ravaged body fails. An imperious, self-confessed ‘tiger’ who has weathered scandal (her affair with Aristotle Onassis), and criticism (from her mother and the media), Callas pops pills and sees visions from her life as her faithful butler (Pierfrancesco Favino) and housekeeper (Alba Rohrwacher) watch on. Split into four distinct acts, Callas explores the guilt, shame, pride, triumph and sadness that has coloured her career from being a shy girl in Athens singing for German officers for cash to the feted beauty ‘La Callas’ who has lost her magnificent voice. Hooked on sedatives, Maria invites a film crew into her life to document her last interview led by Kodi Smit-McPhee (pulling double duty at the Venice Film Festival on this and Disclaimer). ‘Is the film crew real?’ Maria’s butler asks doubtfully, gently, as he dutifully heaves her grand piano around her apartment on her daily whim. Maria is, at this stage, a glacial, imposing primadonna experiencing hallucinations who claims that ‘there is no life away from the stage’ yet tells a fan of the pain – both mental and physical – of performing. Taking her last bow, she crafts an emotional autobiography of sorts, a ‘human song’ of her life.

Knight carefully plots a path that allows opera buffs to enjoy parallels between Callas’ life and her roles while also informing the uninitiated of the key beats of the star’s career – taking in other famous faces including Onassis, Marilyn Monroe and JFK. In a pleasing full-circle moment with Jackie, Callas and Kennedy have a breakfast table conversation about love that elegantly illustrates the commodifying of famous women and Maria’s sharp wit that netted her a reputation as ‘difficult’.

angelina jolie, kodi smit-mcphee, maria, pablo larraín, pierfrancesco favino, valeria golino, hollywood authentic

Beautifully filmed and costumed, Maria is as operatic as any of the arias sung during the runtime and the supporting artists are a delight (Valeria Golino shines in a key moment as Callas’ sister who suggests that her sibling closes the door on the pain of letting music so destructively into her life), but the main event in every way is Jolie. The way she inhabits any space, moves with the elegance of a cat and talks in Callas’ precise, cool diction is mesmerising. And when she sings – the older Maria moments are mostly her own voice while the younger Callas is the diva’s real vocal – the emotion, drama and effort she brings to the music is genuinely impressive. Jolie trained for months to inhabit Callas and the results recall the lived-in performance of Cate Blanchett in Tar – a Volpi cup winner at the festival and gong magnet throughout the year. Jolie will likely be on the same trajectory.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Maria is in cinemas now

ISSUE 6 – 2024

August 28, 2024

greg williams, andrew upton, cate blanchett, glastonbury, hollywood authentic, greg williams photography

In 2020, Cate Blanchett and I sat in the back of a car at a locked-down Venice Film Festival – where she was president of the jury – and discussed the idea I had for a magazine. She suggested a shoot with her chickens and I imagined what that would look like on the cover of Hollywood Authentic.

It was 2022 when we published our first issue; Sean Penn kindly agreed to be on our cover. Since then, I’ve continued to imagine that shoot with Cate and her chickens. Six months ago, my wife Daisy designed a gown inspired by Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep for our fledgling Hollywood Authentic clothing range. We knew who we wanted to see in it and announced to the team that our dream was that Cate would wear it in a pair of muddy wellies holding a chicken in her potting shed. We got on with manifesting it. Fast forward to a serendipitous encounter at Glastonbury and hey presto…

greg williams, andrew upton, cate blanchett, glastonbury, hollywood authentic
Greg Williams and Andrew Upton by Cate Blanchett

This issue represents another example of artists showing their generosity in inviting me into their lives to show an unseen side of themselves. Generosity and motion is what links all our subjects in this issue; they’re driving kid’s electric jeeps (Cate), vintage tractors (Josh Hartnett) and Ferrari race cars (Nicholas Hoult) while talking about what propels their passions and careers. 

For this issue we also invited more collaborators into the Hollywood Authentic family. I met portrait photographer Charlie Clift at BAFTA a couple of years back and was immediately impressed by his work – he captures Lennie James for “a little nonsense”. We’re also thrilled to have Stephen Merchant guest-write his love letter to a Hollywood classic, Double Indemnity. Our now regular contributors are back: Gary Oldman and Gisele Schmidt write about the work of legendary Hollywood photographer Sam Shaw, Abbie Cornish gives us a review of Toronto Mexican restaurant Quetzal and Arianne Philips interviews veteran costume designer Albert Wolsky. Mark Read is also back turning his masterful lens to the Marin County Civic Center.

We’ve come full circle from that chat in Venice 2020 as we bring this issue to Venice 2024. I can’t wait to see what we take to the floating city in years to come…

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Greg Williams, Founder, Hollywood Authentic

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