Isabella Rossellini – There Ought To Be Clowns

**Written by Eileen Atkins, Vita and Virginia doesn’t quite capture the intensity of this iconic love affair**

“When was the moment of your greatest disillusionment?
‘The first time I saw a penis'”

I didn’t know that Eileen Atkins had written a play about Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf but given that it dates back to 1992 and hasn’t been much – if at all – revived, I could perhaps be forgiven. It is that play Vita and Virginia that she has adapted for the screen with Chanya Button, who also directs, and something of its theatrical nature remains.

Based on their copious letters to each others, Vita and Virginia is perhaps inevitably wordy and this isn’t always a great thing in a film. Set as it is in 1920s bohemian London, you might expect the vibe of a decadent whirl and for a while at least, thanks in large part to Isobel Waller-Bridge’s effectively anachronistic score, this is a most seductive party. Continue reading “Film Review: Vita and Virginia (2018)”

“Did you see how he combined misogyny with just blatant ageism”

A film that passed me by on its 2011 release (possibly as it’s a French film, though English-language), Julie Gavras’ Late Bloomers entertained me much more than the rather tepid critical response had led me to expect. I think this is mainly because the script, written by Gavras with Olivier Dazat, treats its protagonists Adam and Mary with equal importance.

Both heading into their sixties after thirty-odd years of marriage, a mid-to-late-life crisis hits the couple in different ways. He’s an architect who throws himself into working late nights with young associates rather than design retirement homes and feeling neglected, she focuses on her doctor’s advice to keep active after an incident of memory loss leaves her shaken. With three adult children watching haplessly, their parents’ different responses to the reality of ageing threatens to shatter all their worlds. Continue reading “DVD Review: Late Bloomers”