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| Personal Shopper Photo: Carole Bethuel |
This left-field ghost story from Olivier Assayas is built around a pitch perfect performance from Kristen Stewart. Reteaming with the French director after Clouds Of Sils Maria, she plays clothes-buying gofer Maureen to insufferable A-lister Kyra (Nora Von Waltstätten), while also trying to come to terms with the death of her twin brother to a genetic condition she may share. Assayas maintains a cool and steady mood as Maureen begins encountering what she believes is the ghost of her brother. The writer/director employs that most commonplace of modern tools - the smartphone - as an unexpected conduit, while Stewart delivers a performance that takes you to the edge of your seat. Speaking after the Cannes premiere, Assayas said, "It's the closest I can get to a happy ending."
The Souvenir, 12.10am BBC2, Monday, March 4
Joanna Hogg's autobiographical story of a young film student's potentially destructive relationship with a charismatic but flawed older man is notable not just for the psychological complexity of its storytelling but also for the central performances. Although Honor Swinton Byrne understandably received plaudits for her debut role (her mum Tilda also plays her on screen mother), Tom Burke is arguably the real revelation here, displaying the sort of impervious to his own failings posh-boy charm that became the stock-in trade of Hugh Grant and Rupert Everett. The film's less emotional, more intellectual sequel sees Swinton Byrne really come into her own but this first instalment works perfectly as a self-contained watch. Read our full review and about what the stars and director said about it.
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, 6.15pm, Film4, Tuesday, March 5
In a show of proof that the Oscars never quite fall how you think they will, Richard Dreyfus was not even among the film's nominees for Steven Spielberg's tale of allen first contact, although his co-star Melinda Dillon was. In fact, he received a nod for a different role that year, winning for Herbert Ross' The Goodbye Girl. Dillon, meanwhile, lost out to Vanessa Redgrave in Julia. Here Dreyfus plays Roy Neary, a man whose sighting of a UFO acts as a sort of epiphany - the irony being that he can communicate with aliens more easily than his family - and who encounters Jillian Guiller (Dillon), who is searching for her son. Somehow, Spielberg manages to retain Dreyfus’ everyman quality despite his obvious flaws, while also touching on one of the director's favourite themes, suburban anxiety in Middle America, fuelled by family breakdown to job loss. The visuals have stood the test of time and hover at the sweet spot between awe and horror. John Williams’ five note sequence has long passed into collective memory as a short-hand for spookiness.
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, 11.15pm, Film4, Thursday, March 7
Documentarian Anna Hints has been singing her way around screenings and awards ceremonies of the world, ever since her engrossing and intimate film about Estonian smoke saunas premiered at Sundance and took home the top prize in the World Documentary Competition. Her film, which puts a spotlight on the miraculous shifting and elemental nature of water, invites us to step into the steam confines of a cabin in the woods to share the secrets, hopes and traumas of the women who come together there. Beautifully shot and spiritually wholesome without ever feeling forced the end result feels both primal and a reflection of modern emotions.
Lady Bird, 10.15pm, BBC Three, Friday, March 8
Jennie Kermode writes: Greta Gerwig's deftly scripted drama, cruelly overlooked by the Oscars, picks up where Atonement left off in recognising Saoirse Ronan's ability to surrender herself to characters who don't know what they're doing. Her young heroine, rebranding herself with the film's title, leaves home to embark on college life while her mother panics and her father tries to soothe the escalating tensions between them. Lady Bird is naïve and may come across as fickle but she's fierce and emotionally true to herself, with a big appetite for life even though she hasn't figured out what she likes yet, stumbling through the social minefield of things that are and are not perceived as cool. Nothing much happens but everything is reshaped by experience, the same landscape painted in different colours. Mother, her perception coloured by her generation as well as passing time, really can't understand, but despite a succession of small heartbreaks the kid is alright.
Death Proof, 12.30am, Film4, Sunday, March 11
Jennie Kermode writes: Every good stunt provides a learning opportunity and car films have traditionally built upon one another’s bones, so while Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 opus may be derivative – and owe a lot to genre-changing 1979 TV movie Death Car On The Freeway – it’s very much in keeping with the genre to which it pays tribute, and the Pulp Fiction auteur certainly knows his stuff. While most critics focus on the sexual aspects of the film, in which Kurt Russell’s sleazy Stuntman Mike deliberately targets and flirts with the women whom he plans to kill in subsequent crashes, there’s also a theme which comes into play in the second half, in which Mike – who has made his car as safe as possible for dangerous driving – unwittingly goes up against another stunt performer (played by Zoe Bell), who enjoys risk and likes to improvise. The result feels like a comment on a genre that increasingly plays it safe. Everything here is for real and even though you really shouldn’t try it yourself, you’ll be left wanting to.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always, 11.40pm, BBC2, Sunday, March 11
Eliza Hittman's restrained and affecting consideration of teenage pregnancy and abortion feels, if anything, even more relevant in the wake of changes in US law than it did when it premiered in Sundance in 2020. We follow 17-year-old Autumn (Sidney Flannigan) as she travels from a small town in Pennsylvania to New York with her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) after finding she is pregnant, to try to get an abortion. Hittman zeroes in on the almost casual dangers that Autumn and Skylar face on their trip, with both young actresses impressively communicating the complexity of their characters. HIttman'sclear-sighted and unfussy approach helps her point to hit home all the harder. Read our interview with Eliza Hittman and Sidney Flannigan.
Having started this week's Stay-at-Home on a spooky note we're sticking with that for our short selection. You'll have to pop over to Vimeo and log in to watch Ghost Train. Its director Lee Cronin has since moved on to features, making the impressive Evil Dead Rise last year.
