A beautiful pair of spectacles is usually enough to make me fall for a film—this one has two, though I doubt it will endure the passage of time as have the iconic frames whose stories it tells. If it will continue to be seen, it will likely be within the shadow of the oeuvre of one of the brightest directors of our time—an in-between title.
Yet, I don’t think that Pablo Larraín’s metaphysical tragedy is quite as bad as Mark Kermode described it in his scathing review¹. While the script often feels contrived and affected, the aphoristic wit of its dialogues comes across more as a deliberate if questionable mannerism than a vain artifice—a literary gravity that somehow evokes Paolo Sorrentino’s criticised lyricism, whose influence on the Chilean director might perhaps extend beyond the writing.
Although Angelina Jolie’s rigorous preparation to sync with Maria Callas’s voice led to hardly believable results, her portrayal conveys a sense of aristocratic stoicism that I personally enjoyed. Rather than her performance, the real issue may lie in the casting—as it does for the entire leading ensemble.
What remains a moment of personal fascination in any of Larraín’s films, is his raw and instinctive directing method, apparent even in less convincing projects like this might ultimately be—no readings or rehearsals, no storyboards or shot lists, just a few takes per shot, and utter creative freedom on set. All this relying, of course, on the irreplaceable collaboration with a cinematographer of Ed Lachman’s uncommon stature.
In conclusion, flares of cinematic and thespian beauty do arise throughout the film, but, partly sharing Kermode’s disappointment, without giving the same exaltation and intoxication the stage used to give to Maria Callas (‘Sometimes I thought the stage itself would burn,’ makes her continue Steven Knight)—a feeling I kept on longing for, until the end credits ungracefully dashed my hopes.

It is hard a life, surrounded
by people who constantly
worry about you when
everything you need, is—
something
silence
help.

1. Kermode and Mayo’s Take, 10 January 2025.

It is within the eerie prologue that Robert Eggers hints at what could have been his most valuable contributions to the much-frequented material. I say could, because establishing Ellen as the protagonist from the start, emphasising sexual repression as a central theme, and giving an even more explicit form to the idea of vampires as carriers of fatal diseases are intriguing premises which do remain somewhat unexplored. Not entirely devoid of other notable intuitions and flashes of striking imagery, Eggers’s Nosferatu ultimately comes across as an over-produced bore lacking the artistic emancipation of his earlier works. The nicely orchestrated narrative flow those possessed, here feels broadly stiffened by repeated visual and sound solutions, and often upstaged by contrived—at times inelegant—camerawork. Contrary to what Eggers stated in various interviews, my immediate impression was that the film’s photography attempted to use an analog camera as if it were digital, rather than embracing its intrinsic characteristics.
However inappropriate, it is difficult to elude comparison with Murnau’s original enactment or Werner Herzog’s Sturm und Drang reincarnation. Of the latter particularly, Eggers’s seems as an almost pedestrian revisitation deprived of mood and humanity, and dulled by mainstream sensitivity. If there’s a veiled irony about Hutter becoming increasingly worried about meeting Count Orlok over the decades—he was euphoric in the twenties, wary in the seventies, and so anxious in the latest Nosferatu that I wonder whether in the next adaptation he will finally have the good sense to cancel the trip—the Count himself goes through an even more significant evolution. Compared to Max Schreck’s relatively sober portrayal and Kinski’s unearthlier presence, Eggers externalises the lonely nobleman’s torments into a far more explicit form of monstrosity, seemingly reflecting the struggle of the modern audiences to use their imagination and the emphasis on appearance that is so idiosyncratic of our times. Just speculative reflections, or maybe not.
Regardless, this emphysemic Nosferatu and his copiously drooling adepts will hardly be redeemed by the production’s superb artistry, the many finely written and performed pages, or the palpable passion for the subject that permeates every single frame. So, for now, while I genuinely hope that a second round will make me reconsider these notes, I shall pretend that this and The Northman never happened, and look forward to Eggers’s next, his third after The Witch and The Lighthouse.

While The Apprentice may not be as unconventional a biopic as intended, it did exceed the expectations that my aversion to the genre, my reluctance to devote two hours to what seemed an irrelevant and unattractive subject, and—however marginally—the negative comments I had intercepted in the ether since its Cannes premiere had fed. On my second attempt after buying and returning the ticket within a few hours on the day of its release, both lead performances made me soon realise it had been worth giving it another chance. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong imbue their roles with a disturbingly convincing sense of humanity without shying away from the most contemptible facets of their characters’ personae, nor yielding to the temptation of rendering farcical events even more so, thereby reducing the film to a redundant political scorn.
Splitting the story in two distinct parts, each identified by an iconic presidency and look—the first following a more structured narrative logic, the second being looser, messier, and slightly out of control, quite metaphorically so indeed—is per se a pretty interesting idea. It’s a shame, though, that technical impossibilities eventually led DP Kasper Tuxen to shoot digitally, faking both 16mm and analog video effects in post to largely perfectible results. A more stoic approach wouldn’t have changed the film, but would have at least added consistency to its aesthetics and artistic value to the project as such.
On another note—minor for most—the portrayal of Andy Warhol left me a little sceptical, but a clumsy young Trump not recognising him at a time when he was well into stardom, felt like a fairly paradoxical yet fitting touch of comedy.

The walls of the narrow corridor that leads to the loo at the Curzon Soho are papered with posters that have become not only familiar over the years but, insofar as filmgoing and urinating are two strictly connected biological needs, somehow part of the experience of watching a film there. Among those, the one of Les yeux sans visage has always made me linger and engage in fleeting contemplations. I just couldn’t avoid being hypnotised by that woeful gaze buried behind the mysterious white mask. Having finally watched the film, I now understand why it has earned its place as a classic, and such a coveted spot in a public bathroom. Franju’s famed horror serves as a brilliant case study of narrative exposition, both in terms of explicit versus implicit storytelling and timing. The opening is deliberately ambiguous. Hints of an eerie plot are hardly flashed, leaving us blind in the thrilling obscurity. Yet, only shortly thereafter, the conundrum is surprisingly unravelled, shifting the focus from the what to the how, and somehow elevating the genre from mystery to drama. The film cleverly paces its unfolding by using a measured approach to the most unsettling material. In the first part, any graphic depictions are ingeniously spared, allowing our imagination to conjure the most frightening images. Yet, just when we think we’re not in for a certain cinematic type of gruesome spectacle, we are plunged into a painstakingly long sequence of surgical horror that exposes us to everything we had hoped not to see. The misery of the unwilling protagonist is transfigured into the flesh of the unaware victim, imbuing both fates with a physical weight that persists as a dire shadow throughout the film, only to be revived in the horrific climax and ultimately resolved into a different, more poetic form of freedom.

As I get out of the screen I keep the door for an elderly lady so hunched that she doesn’t reach my hips. A tall gentleman in his nineties whom I assume to be her son, or perhaps her grandson, holds her hand. As they pass in front of me, she looks up, gives me a tender smile, and with an accent I can’t quite place, says thank you. While I slowly follow them down the corridor towards the exit, I hear them conversing—she is Polish. My heart sinks to an even deeper level than the film has taken it, and it continues to fall as I write this note on my way home. And if the chilly wind outside has got my eyes wet with shy tears, is not quite for any of the obvious reasons, but for the beauty that art and life just made experience.
By the way, the only thing that doesn’t work in Jonathan Glazer’s long-awaited The Zone of Interest is the green glow of the emergency exit. Everything else is a marvel—exclamation mark.

Taking a considerable aesthetic departure from his previous works, Yorgos Lanthimos transforms the screen into the site of an art installation—and if this time he seems to rely more on the visuals than the contents, it is to a no less piercing ultimate result.
Although the relentless zooming in and out got me a little woozy, other bold stylistic choices such as fisheyes and the combination of colour and b/w, did feel convincing and perfectly synergistic to the narrative—all the more as shot on vibrant Kodak stock.
Echoing scattered if vivid traits of the architecture of Mackintosh, Gaudí, Horta, as well as reminding me the romantic surrealism of Tim Walker’s fashion stories, production designers Shona Heath and James Price put together a colourful theatre of contaminations that never feels dull or inconsistent—and provide the perfect sound box to Jerskin Fendrix’s fantastic score.
Whilst I particularly loved the dancing skills of Mark Ruffalo and everything Kathryn Hunter did, and does in general as an actor, it is indeed Emma Stone’s Bella the true driving force of the film—the baffling purity of her logics, her straightforward attitude to life, her roaming without intent, but a clumsy yet somehow extremely elegant and seductive gait, through a world that feels much stranger than the freakish past that created her.

As bestas establishes a particularly fleshly eeriness from the incipit. In a long, slow-motion sequence a couple of men tame a herd of wild horses. It’s almost a dance, masculine and muscular, that forebodes the sordid events to come. Here is how we deal with things around here, it seems to express—physically. Cut to a wonderful dialogue scene in the local bar, to which the Galician cadence confers the elegance of a recitative despite its uneasy tone. In just a few minutes, a gloomy mood is set, where at every beat something darker is perceived beneath the surface. Jokes become unsettling as friendly conversations seem more and more to disguise threats. Even the subtle whispers of nature make us wary of an unspoken yet palpable danger.
Funny coincidence that the Galician for the beasts should sound so close to asbestos, suggesting perhaps the best adjective to describe the atmosphere—toxic. Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s rural tragedy kept me on the edge in the same way Matteo Garrone’s Dogman did, and left me equally shaken. But whereas the latter had a mostly psychological focus, As bestas delves into themes as current as xenophobia and gentrification reminding us that the problems, up there among the forgotten, are not as straightforward as they might seem—thus unveiling a much deeper reflection on our time.

However stumbling into at least one of the cinematic features that normally put me off—namely, the uncountable montages, because they always feel like a facile narrative trick that only succeeds in pushing me away from what interests me the most, the characters, especially these, which are brilliant—there’s a certain charm to Priscilla’s candid sincerity that didn’t leave me untouched or, for that matter, not entertained.
Where another director would have probably fallen into the temptation of shooting scenes of sex, excesses, or various abuses, Sofia Coppola finds her story elsewhere, with taste and discretion, allowing her voice to be stronger than the canon as to both the subject, the themes, and the genre. Not only she refuses to embrace the myth. She deconstructs the perceived sense of exceptionality of both the protagonists and their story into common terms of normality, to then chase and eventually find a truer, more human, and profound essence.
Almost forgot, the gigantic and charismatic Jacob Elordi plays the best Elvis I remember having seen on screen. Ignoring size and physiognomy—haven’t checked, but I doubt that Elvis was so statuesque—he has just the controlled, understated demeanour and intriguing shyness, whether genuine or faked, the King used to exhibit off-stage and during interviews.

There’s something I can quite put my finger on to the introductory sequence of Anatomy of a Fall that immediately shattered the slight scepticism I had to overcome in order to go and see it. Justine Triet’s Palm d’Or is a stunningly written piece that digs with dramaturgical mastery in the remotest places of the human nature, cynically exposing both its fragility in the face of possible misinterpretations, and its perverted inclination to give in to them.
When Miloš Forman’s Mozart is summoned by the Emperor and questioned about his work on the politically feared figure of Figaro, the young and boisterous musician pitches a scene in which a duet turns into a trio, then a quartet, and so on. ‘Guess! Guess, Majesty. Imagine the longest time such a thing could last, then double it.’ Triet’s—and partner/co-writer Arthur Harari’s—joint bravura doesn’t live too far from that picture. Their naturalistic way of looking behind both institutional and domestic walls gives an exhilarating sense of truthfulness to passages you’d want to last forever.
One peculiar expedient Anatomy of a Fall resorts to, somehow managing to expand time to a quasi-transcending effect, is repetitions. The same facts are run through over and over again in different contexts while the central incident itself is either enacted or recalled multiple times and in all sorts of fashions. On location, within private conversations, deep inside the eyes of the characters—all phenomenal performers—and in our minds alike.
Cleverly picked to reflect and emphasise that trait, and a greatly defining element for the film in their own right, are the music tracks. The wonderful instrumental version of 50 Cents’s misogynistic classic P.I.M.P. (witty and bitter in-joke) by Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band almost conveys a state of trance while setting an interesting—and far less than obvious—dialogue with the cyclic flamenco structure of Albéniz’s Asturias.
I wonder, in retrospect, if the authors’ creative process has anything in common with those of their characters, if the film itself may have sparked from their own conversations about functioning as a couple while living through art and surviving success, the one thing in life that seems to be a problem regardless of its presence or absence. Apart from love, of course.