Thursday, October 3, 2024

The story-within-the-story in A Different Man feels awfully familiar. Playwright Ingrid (The Worst Person in the World's Renate Reinsve) was once neighbours with a man named Edward. He had neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition that can cause benign tumours around the face. He was kind, if a little reserved. Then he was gone. Dead by suicide, she was told. So, she writes a play about the two of them in his honour, in which she characterises herself as a kind of benevolent manic pixie dream girl, and him as tragically naïve as possible.

She casts a man without facial differences in the role, who calls himself Guy. He's played by Hollywood dreamboat, Sebastian Stan. Guy insists that he's right for the role, that he can bring something essential to it. Stage makeup can achieve the rest. But here's the kicker of writer-director Aaron Schimberg's dark, chaotic, and tautly composed comedy: Guy used to be Edward, the man with neurofibromatosis. An experimental drug turned his tumours into putty, and he renamed himself Guy, while spreading rumours about the death of his old self.

Read the full review here. 

Out this week: 

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga are wasted talents in the aimless sequel Joker: Folie à Deux (**), while Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson fare much, much better in the dark comedy A Different Man (****). 

Written by Clarisse Loughrey

Is there a place on Earth remote enough for us to escape our own demons? Nora Fingscheidt's The Outrun, adapted from Amy Liptrot's memoirs, wrestles with what isolation does to the soul. It's laid out as a series of reflections, as uncharted as the recovery journey of the young woman at its centre, Saoirse Ronan's Rona. She's returned to her home in Orkney after an alcohol addiction sends her London ambitions into a downward spiral. Nature holds people and communities in its embrace. It can throttle them, too.

Fingscheidt's film is closely tethered to Liptrot's book, with both author and director having collaborated on the screenplay, and it's propelled by her observations on the island's history and folklore. Sometimes, Rona tells us, you can hear a low rumble in Orkney of unknown origin. Some say it's the sound of waves caught in the archipelago's subterranean caves. Others say it's a sign of secretive military experiments. Or, perhaps, it's the last stirrings of the slain stoor worm, a giant beast whose teeth form the islands themselves.

There's an unabashed romanticism to all of this. Rona sources her strength from the landscape, dreaming that she can control the weather. "Lightning strikes every time I sneeze and, when I orgasm, there's an earthquake," she says. The difference between the island and the film's London-set sequences is stark – the smoky, spotlit, industrial clubs she frequents most nights with her friends and boyfriend, Daynin (Paapa Essiedu), are the places in which she drinks until the world around her collapses.

The Outrun slips back and forth between these locations – and the different eras of Rona's life. The narrative here is slippery and loose, and only works because Fingscheidt and Liptrot stringently avoid establishing any kind of binary. London isn't hell. Orkney isn't heaven. Home has its troubles, too, as the peace and community that keeps Rona's father, Andrew (Stephen Dillane), relatively safe and content can turn dangerous when his bipolar triggers a manic episode. There are no resources for psychiatric care on the island, so he's always forced to leave. Rona, meanwhile, is gently pressured by her mother (Saskia Reeves), and her mother's friends, to seek solace in faith.

Read the full review here. 

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

Saturday, 28 September
As a salve to the week's bizarre Wuthering Heights casting news, I marathoned two adaptations, Andrea Arnold's 2011 and Luis Buñuel's 1954 versions, and 2022's Emily, Frances O'Connor's excellent biopic about its author. 

Monday, 30 September

I took an early trip into the city to see A Different Man. 

Tuesday, 2 October
The applause at the end of Joker: Folie à Deux's press screening was brief, and quickly stifled. 

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in "Joker: Folie à Deux" 

Secretary was never radical because of its scenes of spanking, bondage, or pony play – it was the fact it dares to present those things as the ingredients of a fairy tale romance. Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the hero of Steven Shainberg's notorious BDSM comedy, has a whiff of "manic pixie dream girl" to her. A kaleidoscope of cheap, plastic barrettes clings to her hair. Her bedroom is a pink-purple fever dream guarded by piles of stuffed animals. And when she speaks, her sentences drip with sugar syrup. The man of her dreams, a high-class lawyer named E Edward Grey (James Spader), is emotionally stunted but flummoxed by her charms. They're a perfect match. The way they blossom into each other just so happens to be through a mutual sexual kink, instead of mixtapes and picnics in the park.

The film won the Special Jury Prize for originality at 2002's Sundance Film Festival, but critics responded to its humour and sincerity with a level of trepidation. Reviews were good, but no one quite knew what they'd just watched. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw declared its love story "bafflingly" plausible. Though the conversation around romance, consent and BDSM would continue for the next two decades, few films – or series – have tackled the subject with Secretary's good-natured compassion. When Fifty Shades of Grey hit cinemas in 2015, Secretary was repackaged by the studio as the story of the "original Mr Grey", but the comparison felt unsavoury. More recently, Sally Rooney has come under criticism for her flawed portrayal of sexual kinks in Normal People.

We first meet Lee after she's left the care of "The Institute", a psychiatric hospital. She misses the sense of control a daily, clinical routine brought her. At home, her father drinks heavily and lashes out at her mother, who in turn smothers Lee under the guise of protection. The old, insidious cycles of self-harm loom over her – in her eyes, it's the only part of her life she has power over. A bid for independence sees her enrol in typing classes, followed by a trip to the office of Mr Grey for a job interview. He's a wild-eyed, jittery mess; his hair's been hastily smoothed into place (moments before Lee walks in), but his tone is entirely indecorous. The questions start to roll in: "Are you pregnant?" "Do you plan to get pregnant?" "Do you live in an apartment?" Next, he doles out humiliating tasks. Lee goes dumpster-diving for a lost folder, only for him to reveal that he's found another copy. She buys him doughnuts. He throws them in the trash. Grey insists typewriters are used instead of computers, so that he can circle each typo with a thick, red marker. No wonder the office has a permanent, motel-like "Secretary Wanted" sign, whose red-and-white bulbs spring into life whenever another woman storms out of his door.

Lee, though, remains undeterred. In fact, each of his commands sends an electric pulse down her body. At first, they communicate only in signs of covert pleasure – a smirk here, a glance there. Grey notices the cuts on her body and treats her with dignity, though he ends on the firm command that she never hurt herself again. For her, it's an epiphany: she's finally found control by surrendering it entirely to someone else. Soon, she's parading around the office in leather restraints like the cat who got the cream.

Secretary casually embraces the practices of BDSM, while presenting the world beyond Grey's doorstep as something vaguely absurd. Lee attempts a more conventional relationship with old flame Peter (Jeremy Davies), only for him to pitifully flop around on top of her for two minutes before whispering: "I didn't hurt you, did I?" Lee replies "no" with bitter disappointment. It's a wry and funny film, but never at the expense of its protagonists. Within Grey's office – a dark burrow of lacquered wood, exotic decor, and delicate orchids – these lovers find a personal Eden.

It's a provocative choice to focus on a boss-employee relationship. But, by diving straight into the most uncomfortable of power imbalances, screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson better exposes the precise boundaries of consent. Lee slowly learns to articulate her own desires. At first, she's left frozen and speechless on the doorstep of Grey's home. By the end, she's eager to commit to a three-day hunger strike to prove her love. Crucially, it's Lee who coaxes Grey out of his bubble of shame and self-hatred. Gyllenhaal and Spader's performances beautifully interlock here. She oozes quiet intelligence, playing Lee's innocence as entirely self-aware – a way to disarm the world around her. He, meanwhile, subverts his career-defining role as a voyeuristic creep in sex, lies, and videotape by adding a layer of panicked insecurity.

Lee's agency only highlights what a wreck of a character Fifty Shades' Anastasia Steele truly is. She's the woman who merely puts up with all the whipping and fisting under the illusion that her stalker billionaire boyfriend will magically turn into Prince Charming. In Normal People, Marianne's BDSM impulses are suffocated by guilt and shame. Secretary delivers the purer fantasy. As Grey whisks Lee away in her urine-soaked bridal gown, one line still seems to bounce up and down the halls: "Who's to say that love needs to be soft and gentle?"

Alicia Vikander poses for a portrait during the NRW Reception during day four of the 61st Berlin International Film Festival on February 13, 2011 in Berlin, Germany.

(Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

This month, I'll be revisiting the quarantine film club that started all of this and picking out some of my favourite entries. Next, it's Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. 

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