Magic Marmalade 3rd Aug 2020
| | Rated 8/10Post Period Punk Movie!
This is a film with a real sting in it's tail,
...On the face of it, it seems like just another set piece period drama / excuse to get bodiced up and visit a country mannor / Oscar opportunity (which it turned out to be!)
...But there's happily, more to it than that, as it is odd in both tone and style.
It probably sits comfortably on the shelf between the surreal Tilda Swinton movie: Orlando. Shot largely with fish eye lenses and having a dream-like hallucinatory quality, and also, having a caustic wit, is more in keeping with a kind of Withnail and I sensibility... lots of swearing, sex, and bad vibes as the chilling Rachel Weisz and the subtly scheming Emma Stone vie for the attentions of the tragically comic Queen's attentions in the shape of Olivia Colman.
It's a doomed lesbian love triangle tragedy, which once it has won you over by being very funny in it's nastiness and absurdity, drops these surreal tactics in the final third to play it straight, and become just plain tragic and awful... a cunning tactic from the film-maker, that works to devastating effect.
It has a modern punk-ish sensibility transplanted onto the period setting which jars and is refreshing to say the least.
Great film.
(In addition, this is capped off by a great end credits song, which sounds an awful lot like Elton John...Because it is! - I'd not heard this one before, but turns out, it's from his early album Empty Sky, and is called: Skyline Pigeon - However, this is not the version on that album it seems, but rather a Harpsichord version, which simply brilliant - don't know where that version is available on disc)
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