Thursday, May 29, 2025

In The Salt Path, Gillian Anderson plays Raynor Winn, whose 2018 memoir documented her and her husband Moth's hike along the 630-mile South West Coast Path, which stretches from Minehead in Somerset to Poole Harbour in Dorset. Played here by Jason Isaacs, Moth had been diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration (or CBD), a rare and progressive neurodegenerative disease. Then, the very same week, the Winns lost their home. It's a story of extreme choices in the face of extreme circumstances.

It's those circumstances, and those circumstances only, that we see etched on Anderson's face. It's the shame and exhaustion of someone whose security net has been ripped from under their feet in a way they never could have imagined – who went from living blissfully on a family farm with two kids off at university, to having an elderly man smacking at the side of her tent and screaming that it's "disgusting" to be camping out so close to the public path. The actor presents those emotions studiously. As does Isaacs, who has the added responsibility of sensitively reflecting how Moth's CBD fluctuates, the ebb and flow of trembling hands and stiff muscles.

Read the full review here. 

Out this week: 

Move over, Tom Cruise – the UK coastline is the silver screen's big star this week. Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs hike across it in The Salt Path (**), while Tom Basden, Tim Key, and Carey Mulligan make sweet music next to it in The Ballad of Wallis Island (****).  

Written by Clarisse Loughrey

The Ballad of Wallis Island serves up Stephen King's Misery with a mug of tea and a lemon scone on the side. Here, parasocial fandom might cause the odd faux pas, but everyone's feet stay nicely attached – and, ultimately, it comes from a pure place, with the potential even to transform both the obsessee and their target into better people.

Former folk-rock star Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden), who's since shifted into a hollower, more commercial space, turns up in a rickety boat to Wallis Island expecting an intimate, rural festival-type gig. Only, his hotel is actually the home of Charles (Tim Key); the audience is, well, Charles; and, unbeknownst to him, he'll be reuniting for the first time in a decade or so with his ex-musical and romantic partner, Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan). Director James Griffiths, Basden, and Key have here expanded on their 2007, Bafta-nominated short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island. Key, a poet and comedian, has worked with Basden since their days in the Cambridge Footlights.

The time lapse serves them well. McGwyer Mortimer, it's explained, were popular back in 2014, when indie-folk and unabashed sincerity were in their heyday (it's worth noting Mulligan is married to the lead vocalist of Mumford & Sons, exactly the kind of band this film is reminiscing about). And the film's original songs, all written by Basden and performed by him and Mulligan, are a perfect recreation of the era's decorative yearning.

Key and Basden avoid turning their film into a nostalgic pat on the back for smug millennials convinced they lived through artistically superior times – the sense of loss here is strictly personal. Herb wonders whether he left his integrity behind with the woman whose contributions he never respected. Nell wonders whether she let all that belittling destroy her chance at a creative life. She makes chutney now in Portland, with her cheery and handsome husband Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), who happily shuffles off for a portion of the film to look at puffins. Charles mourns the love that first inspired his dedication to McGwyer Mortimer. Does he truly love the band, or does he just love the memories he made listening to them?

Read the full review here. 

A document of where I've gone and the things I've seen 

Thursday, 22 May
The crowd went wild once again when Pedro Pascal turned up unannounced at the premiere for Ballerina. Don't discount this man's star power. 

Friday, 23 May

It was MCM Comic-Con weekend at London's Excel centre. I stopped by a fascinating panel with comic book artist Christian Ward, whose next project is a comic series prequel to the 1997 classic Event Horizon. 

Tuesday, 27 May  

It was a quick trip into the city for an evening screning of The Ballad of Wallis Island. 

Pedro Pascal at the UK premiere of 'Ballerina'

Back in 2022, I spoke to production designer Suzie Davies about the The Electrical Life of Louis Wain's colourful, whimsical look – one worthy of artist Louis Wain himself.

On connecting back to Wain

He was our storyboard. That was our starting point to try and enhance the world around [Wain] with his own work, what he was influenced by, what we thought would be in his own house. Especially because both his parents were designers – a wallpaper designer and a fabric designer. So that enabled us to turn the dials up, really, and go a bit further down those dimensions within the paintings that he did. You can see the influences – particularly the yellow, jaggedy wallpaper that we had in the main part of the house. We found a reference in that and then we found some great French wallpaper that we then manipulated to slightly change the colorway to suit our palette, basically.

On when to stay "period accurate" and when to deviate

The great thing about this, and one thing I'm quite keen on is – I'm not necessarily doing a documentary recreation of the era. It's still a storytelling cinematic piece. I know this era quite well, and there's quite a big team, with my set decorator Charlotte Dirickx, who's an absolute find on knowing what's right for each period. We delve into the research, but then you almost just let that influence and inspire you rather than being really strict about it. So, even, for instance, some of the fabrics we used probably aren't directly from that era, but they suit the storytelling process, and they don't jolt, you know, from my perspective.

For instance, we knocked out the walls between the front parlour and the back parlour and into the kitchen. Although people do that nowadays, perhaps they wouldn't have done that in the in the Georgian era and in the turn of the century, but we felt out characters would have done that because they lived in their own bohemian way. They sort of had their own way of living, they didn't live like a traditional Victorian family, you know? All the kids were always drawing, they learned to play fencing. We thought, well, they probably didn't really upkeep their house, they just made it work for them.

On the use of colour

We're used to seeing quite a lot of this era on film and TV, so I guess audiences know it and what was great with Will [Sharpe, the director] was that during the prep and planning of this we knew we were going to be able to turn the dial right up. Every colour that you see in Louis Wain's paintings we've tried to put into this film. And then, also, the colour blue actually becomes our colour of grief. As you watch the film, you'll see more blues pervade, especially when he's having moments of darkness or when he's, you know, recalling Emily. There are colours in the windows in that Hampstead house that are all colours when they move in. And, by the end of the film, there's only blue. It's subtle things that I think don't jar the audience and, if people spot it, it enhances the storytelling.

Martha Vickers (1925 - 1971) the stage name of Martha MacVicar, the American leading lady of the 40's.

(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Life Cinematic will be coming to an end on 12 June. To say goodbye, I'll be revisiting some of the interviews and pieces I shared exclusively on here. 

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