Skip to main content

Beast review – a dangerous liaison to get your teeth into

Fairytale meets psycho thriller as rising British stars Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn find that opposites attract

After the whimsy of last week’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and the real-life dramas of 2017’s Another Mother’s Son, the Channel Islands become home to something altogether more eerie in this Jersey-set debut feature from writer-director Michael Pearce. Charting a turbulent relationship between a cloistered young woman and the vagabond man who turns her world upside down, Pearce’s increasingly intense psychological thriller deftly overturns expectations as it dances between timeless fable, modern romance and murder mystery. Superb central performances from rising stars Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn provide the visceral spark that fires the story – a game of psychological cat and mouse in which desire and danger, innocence and guilt, are intriguingly intertwined.

Buckley is on phosphorescent form as flame-haired islander Moll, a twentysomething misfit who is still firmly under the thumb of her domineering mother. While her siblings have long since spread their wings, Moll remains trapped within the family home, helping to care for her ageing father, rigidly controlled by her choir-mistress mum, Hilary (Geraldine James). When Moll meets gun-toting woodsman Pascal (Flynn), his Heathcliff-like charms awaken passionate responses, encouraging Moll to break away from her suffocating home life.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Fq32Xf

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Degrees of separation: what connects Seinfeld to Steve Bannon?

From the US sitcom to the far-right rabble rouser, we go down the rabbit hole, thanks to the arrival of Jerry’s show on Netflix Seinfeld All 180 episodes of the 90s’ most misanthropic sitcom have arrived on Netflix, but not everyone is happy. Some viewers have complained that the new transfer puts Jerry Seinfeld ’s show in a different aspect ratio: from an older square format to widescreen … yada-yada … now the picture crops out some sight gags and just seems slightly bizarro . Motion impossible: fallout It’s not the first time modern technology has caused problems. HD TVs can make even visually stunning films look like cheap soap operas, through motion smoothing – a process to reduce blurring (good for on-screen sport). But Tom Cruise was there to save the day: in a slightly awkward 2018 video , he explained how to adjust TV settings to undo this flat fiasco. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3mr722c