Anora – no shock as to why it's won big

A rom-com that takes a darker turn, director, writer, producer and editor Steve Baker’s mega award-winning Anora tells the story of the titular character, who prefers to be known as Ani. A stripper at a club in Brighton Beach, an American-Russian part of Brooklyn, she is introduced to a young Russian, Ivan ‘Vanya’ Zakharov, the 21-year-old son of a Russian oligarch, because she can understand Russian.

He is supposed to be in the US studying, but this spoiled brat spends most of his time partying and playing video games. When he and Ani hit it off, he asks if he can pay her to be his girlfriend for a week. She agrees and, with some of his friends, they fly to Las Vegas.

While there, Vanya expresses disdain for his parents and Russia, and then impulsively asks Ani to marry him. Despite her initial disbelief, she agrees and they wed before returning to New York, to the mansion Vanya has been living in.

But word gets back to his parents and they set off from Russia, having ordered his Armenian godfather/US babysitter, Toros, to arrange an annulment and hold Vanya for return to the motherland. Ani, on the other hand, has no intention of simply quitting.

This is not Pretty Woman. For one thing, it’s no happy-ever-after fairy tale – it’s a lot grittier and doesn’t play with tropes about ‘poor’ sex workers who need saving. It’s Baker’s second feature about sex workers after Tangerine and he never treats them with any sense of moral judgmentalism. On top of that, it never makes sex work look sleazy/pornographic.

Also, Ani can do charming, but she’s not afraid to spit venom, use violence and not simply acquiesce to the demands of others.

Filmed with a nod to 1970s New York crime dramas, Drew Daniels’s cinematography has a look that entirely matches its subject. It rolls in at 139 minutes (long for me), but never feels over-stretched. The final scene is a wallop to the guts.

Mikey Madison won the best actress Oscar a week ago – and it’s not hard to see why. She gives this everything she’s got and is spiky, funny and charming by turns. It’s a nuanced performance that leaves us wondering – at least to a degree – about her motivations.

Mark Eydelshteyn is very good as the spoiled Vanya, as are Karren Karagulian as Toros, and Yura Borisov and Vache Tovmasyan as two hoods that he hires.

Absolutely no surprise that this has done so well on the awards circuit – and well worth a watch.

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Capote – another grown-up film worth watching

In November 1959, in Holcomb – a place that apparently even most Kansans don’t know of – the Cutter family (farmer Herb, wife Bonnie and their teenage daughter, Nancy, and son, Kenyon) were murdered in their farmhouse.

Seeing a report about this in the New York Times, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, actor and socialite Truman Capote is instantly fascinated by the case and tells New Yorker magazine editor William Shawn that he’s going to write about it.

He travels to Kansas with childhood friend Harper Lee as both company and to help facilitate contacts. Shortly after they arrive in town, police arrest two suspects. Perry Smith and Richard Hickock stand trial, are found guilty and sentenced to death.

Capote decides that his work will be a book – a non-fictional novel – and he finds ways to gain contact with the men in prison, particularly Smith, gaining his confidence and finding out about his life, not least by finding a better lawyer for their appeal than they had for their initial trial. But what he really wants to know is what happened that November night and Smith won’t say.

\Released in 2005, Capote is based on Gerald Clarke’s 1988 book of the same name, is directed by Bennett Miller from a screenplay by Dan Futterman and enjoysh cinematography by Adam Kimmel that beautifully contrasts the glistening New York that Capote inhabits with the wide-open spaces of rural Kansas.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won an Oscar, a Bafta and a Golden Globe for his performance, has Capote’s voice and mannerisms down pat, with his narcissism clear and his motivations far from it. There is a cynicism to his Capote, but also a vulnerability – perhaps partly down to his homosexuality and effeminism.

Clifton Collins Jr is very good as Smith, as is Catherine Keener as Lee. Bob Balaban gives a nice turn as Shawn, as does Bruce Greenwood as Capote’s long-time partner, John Dunphy.

Coming in at an unrushed (but never dragging) 114 minutes, the pace allows the characters and relationships to develop. The violence is minimised in terms of what you actually see on screen, but never otherwise. This is more very good, grown-up drama, and currently available on Amazon Prime in the UK.

Doubt is a superbly acted, intelligent, grown-up drama

Popping up on Netflix as I looked for something to watch this afternoon, Doubt is a 2008 film that was written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, adapted from his 2004 Pulitzer and Tony-winning play, Doubt: A Parable.

Set in 1964, a year after the assassination of JFK and not long after Vatican II pledged that it would drag the church into the 20^th century, it takes place in a predominantly Irish-American parish in the Bronx, where cheerful Father Flynn is the priest of St Nicholas’s Church.

As he preaches about a community of doubt – particularly in light of the previous year’s assassination – Sister Aloysius, the principal of the connected school, prowls the aisles, admonishing children who aren’t paying enough attention.

This sets up the central confrontation in the piece – that of the modernising priest who wants to be friends with the children and their families, and the nun who entered the convent after being widowed in WWII and is very much of the old order.

But after witnessing a fleeting encounter between Flynn and one of her pupils, Aloysius tells her fellow nuns to be on the watch for anything suspicious and report it to her. Some days later, naïve Sister James eventually tells her that a week earlier, Flynn had called her in class to ask for one of the boys – Donald Miller, the school’s sole black pupil – to be sent to see him at the rectory.

When he returns to class, he is acting strangely and has alcohol on his breath. Aloysius has no doubts about what is happening. James is full of them.

The film’s is quietly paced and gives great time to flesh out the characters. It ultimately leaves the audience to decide whether Aloysius is correct. Do we have doubts too or her certainty?

The central cast is superb. Meryl Streep is a fierce Aloysius, Philip Seymour Hoffman a charming Flynn who can be threatening too, and Amy Adams takes the naïve James and gives her some real complexity. With only a single scene, Viola Davis is outstanding as Mrs Miller, Donald’s mother.

All four gained Oscar nominations: Streep for best actress and the others in the best supporting categories.

A seriously intelligent, grown-up drama, it’s well worth 104 minutes of your time.

The Great Escaper – gentle and powerful

Back in 2014, the year of the 70^th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Royal Navy veteran and care home resident Bernard Jordan hit the headlines because he had left it too late to get included on an official trip to the commemorations in Normandy. So he decided to make his own way there – encouraged by his wife Rene.

This is the film of his ‘great escape’, written by William Ivory and directed by Oliver Parker.

Without the knowledge of anyone – except Rene – he left the care home they lived in together and made his way to France on his own. On the way, he was ‘adopted’ by Arthur, an upper-class RAF veteran with his own bucketload of personal demons from the war.

Initially reported missing, with police and others alerted, Bernard’s story caused a media hoo-ha and saw him dubbed a ‘hero’, with newspaper headlines across Europe.

‘The great escapee’ was how the mainstream news media dubbed him – but it is not indicative of what this film version of the story reveals.

There are arguably issues about how well all the flashback sequences of Brendan and Rene’s relationship work, but there can be no complaints about how the contemporary relationships are portrayed.

Though personally, I think that Will Fletcher and Laura Marcus, as the WWII versions of Bernard and Rene do really good jobs.\This is a really sweet film – not least because Michael Caine as Bernard and Glenda Jackson (in her final role) as Rene – are simply fabulous, but because it really catches at the sense of grief and PTSD suffered by veterans of all generations.

Shout outs also to John Standing as Arthur and Danielle Vitalis as a care home worker.

It is, in the second half, a blubathon. But not in an exploitive way. Just so moving – not least in a scene where Bernard, who wouldn’t buy German produce at the beginning of the film, encounters a German veteran from the D-Day landings.

When I say it’s a “blubathon”, it’s not mawkish. It addresses, in a nuanced way, the trauma that those young men suffered then – and in the years after.

This is a gentle, yet very powerful film. Streaming now on Sky.

Going on a bear hunt with Paddington in Peru

The Paddington ‘threequel’ sees the Browns and Paddington travel to Peru to visit Aunt Lucy at the Home for Retired Bears, after the Reverend Mother in charge there writes to Paddington to tell him that Aunt Lucy is seriously missing him.

But when they arrive, it’s to the news that Aunt Lucy has disappeared. Paddington persuades the family to mount a search for her, which they do by hiring a riverboat owned and skippered by one Hunter Cabot, along with his daughter Gina, and head into the jungle.

Of course, this being Paddington, this bear hunt doesn’t go smoothly.

With Paul King once again at the helm, having also co-written the screenplay – along with Mark Burton and Jon Foster for this outing – it is a charming watch, though feels a little flatter and shorter on the gags than for Paddington 2. That said, the second film set an incredibly high bar.

There is fun to be had spotting nods to other films – not least The Sound of Music and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Where it is significantly helped is in the involvement of Olivia Colman as the Reverend Mother and Antonio Banderas as Cabot, both of whom turn in delightfully arch performances.

I was surprised that I didn’t feel it ‘wrong’ seeing Emily Mortimer as Mary Brown, with Sally Hawkins not wanting to reprise the role again. Otherwise, Hugh Bonneville is back as the risk-averse Henry Brown, along with Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin as Judy and Jonathan Brown, and Julie Walters as Mrs Bird. Carla Tous catches the eye as Gina.

A very pleasant way to spend a gloomy Saturday afternoon – and make sure you watch ALL the way to the very end.

If you only see Heretic for Hugh Grant, that's more than good enough

I don’t mind a spot of on-screen horror – just not the slasher variety. Give me the likes of Peter Medak’s 1980 The Changeling, Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Silence of the Lambs, Mike Flanagan’s 2019 Doctor Sleep, Jordan Peele’s 2019 Us or last year’s Parallel from Kourosh Ahari.

To clarify further – I don’t mind a bit of violence on screen, but in-your-face gore and slasher stuff is a no-no for me, whether it’s horror or not. It’s not limited to that genre either. I entirely understand that the likes of Deadwood and The Sopranos are top-notch, serious TV dramas, but I could only ever watch them in small amounts because the violence (both spoken and enacted) was too much for me – and that was before I’d even heard the word ‘triggered’!

The trailer for Heretic, from joint directors and writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, had intrigued me, but I wasn’t sure enough that it wouldn’t descend to a degree of slasher mode, so didn’t catch it at my local cinema, where it only seemed to have a quite limited run.

Last weekend, I decided to give it a go via streaming. I’m very glad I did, because it absolutely fits into what I can enjoy.

Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes – confident in her faith and her evangelisation – and Sister Paxton (rather less so) are following up leads on potential converts and, as a winter storm breaks, visit the home of one Mr Reed, who has expressed an interest.

A middle-aged Brit living in a slightly remote – and very weird house that appears to combine both an Escher reality and a 1940s (or earlier) aesthetic – he assures them that (vital for female Mormons) his wife is baking blueberry pie in the kitchen so they won't be alone with a man, which covers the church’s rules of what company a female is allowed to be in.

When he goes to the kitchen, the women find that the front door is locked and that they have no phone signal.

Reed slowly ensnares them into a discussion of religion in general, within which he becomes increasingly aggressive. He then offers to show them a ‘real resurrection’.

Heretic is good because it takes its subject – religion – reasonably seriously in a philosophical sense. It doesn’t belittle the missionaries or their religion (or religion as a whole) and it allows them to stand up for it. Now I’m not religious, but I appreciate that.

The script allows for some really interesting looks at how you stay true to a belief – days later, I am still analysing the ending.

Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes and Sophie East as Sister Paxton are excellently played, nuanced characters, but Hugh Grant is sublime as the demonic, yet-suave, Mr Reed.

Really worth watching this, in my view.

Inside Out 2 is another joy

A bit of a film-watchy day to mark the end of the year, and the opportunity to catch up on Inside Out 2. I’d only seen the first film in August, but it resonated, so I was always going to watch the sequel.

Riley is now 13 and guess what – puberty! So new emotions – led by anxiety and including embarrassment – step in to try to take over her new teenage life.

 

Really sweet, but also full of things that even I, as a 62-year-old can recognise. Th cringe was huge.

 

Is Joy right … or is Anxiety right?

 

A great screenplay from Pete Doctor, Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley, with Doctor also at the director’s helm, this is a really good sequel (there may be a third film), which illustrates the mental and emotional difficulties facing young people.

Beautifully realised and with a great voice cast, it’s well worth watching.

The Man with the Answers is utterly charming

The Man with the Answers is writer and director Stelios Kammitsis’s quirky and charming 2021 film that combines being a gay romantic drama with a beautifully photographed road movie.

It opens in Greece, where Viktorias, a former champion diver, is now working in a furniture factory. His mother left Greece some years before to go and live with her new partner in Bavaria and, when her mother dies, she doesn’t bother to either return for or contribute to the funeral, leaving Viktorias to sell his diving medals to pay for the send-off for his beloved grandmother.
 
Grieving and depressed, he decides to take his mother’s abandoned Audi and drive to Germany to visit. On the ferry from Greece to Italy, he encounters Mathias, an eccentric German student who persuades Viktorias to let him join the trip – and from there, to guide him away from the motorways and into a more scenic route as they head north, in what becomes a much more enlightening trip.
 
It's a gentle film that uses its 80 minutes to delicately plot the development of the relationship between the two men, which is often fraught – and perhaps particularly the development of trust.
 
Vasilis Magouliotis and Anton Weil as Viktorias and Mathias respectively are thoroughly engaging and convincing. Stella Fyrogeni as Angeliki, Viktorias’s mother, gives a nice performance in the late stages of the film.
 
Antonis Kataris as the funeral director is worth a mention as for being quite effectively creepy at seeing the death as a way of mounting up the profit.

And Thodoros Mihopoulos’s cinematography is excellent.
Really enjoyable – and currently streaming on Sky.

Evil Does Not Exist – or perhaps it does, in Hamaguchi's enigmatic eco-parable

Single father Takumi – we’re led to believe he’s a widower – lives with his eight-year-old daughter Hana in the peaceful village of Mizubiki, not far from Tokyo. Takumi is an odd-job man, who primarily acts as a woodcutter, and as the collector of water from a pristine stream for a local restaurant to cook its noodles in. He also spends time teaching Hana about the environment – how to identify trees, plants and animal tracks.

But his life – and those of the rest of his community – is suddenly disrupted when a Tokyo company plans to create a glamping site in the area, for Tokyoites to chill.

 

The company is racing against time to get construction started, so that it can claim a post-pandemic financial grant, and it sends two members of a talent agency that has branched out into PR to go and address a meeting in the village and smooth the way and be able to claim, in a totally perfunctory way, that it has undertaken a consultation.

 

But the villagers are not impressed. Top of their list of concerns is that the planned sceptic tank is not remotely adequate and will, given where it is to be sited, pollute the water for the village itself and for villages further downstream.

 

The two company apologists are taken aback both by the level of objection to the scheme and the sophistication of those objections, but essentially deflect the questions.

 

However, we learn that, while their direct bosses fit the bill of rapacious capitalism, they are both deeply discomfited by it – and their roles within it. But when they head back to Mizubiki, ostensibly to offer Takumi the job of caretaker at the glamping site, events take a series of unexpected turns.

 

Writer and director Ryusuke Hamaguchi has produced an absorbing, meditative film that both engages and, ultimately, confuses. The ending is an enigma squared and then squared again.

 

The lengthy opening has the camera looking upward toward the trees as it moves through a winter woodland. Yoshio Kitagawa’s cinematography is superb: wonderful, lingering shots of nature are beautiful and make clear what we are (ultimately) looking at, while Eiko Ishibashi's score adds to the sense of something haunting.

After this opening, the film focuses on Takumi’s work and routine. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the first part of Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days. There is something almost hypnotic about it.

 

It’s a slow film, but that is not bad, because it has meditative qualities. The cast is excellent. Hitoshi Omika as Takumi manages to combine gentle and dark. Ryo Nishikawa as Hana gives a remarkable performance.

 

Ryuji Kosaka as Takahashi and Ayaka Shibutani as Mayuzumi the corporate employees, are very good.

 

Hamaguchi does not provide easy solutions. But this is an eco-parable that will live long in the mind – whatever the ending means and however you personally interpret it.

Just who is the Monster?

Saori Mugino is a widow, raising her young son Minato and working in a laundry in a small city in the Nagarno region of contemporary Japan. When the boy starts behaving oddly – and returns home from school one day with an injury – she grills him until he says that his new teacher, Mr Hori, had inflicted it.

Saori goes to the school, demanding action against the teacher, but only receives overly deferential apologies, particularly from the principal, who herself seems oddly distant.

But when Hori himself claims that Minato is bullying sensitive classmate Yori, she becomes ever more determined to get at the truth and the situation escalates.

Written by Yuji Sakamoto and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, the story is told three times. First from Saori’s perspective, then from Hori’s and finally, from that of the two boys.

It is subtle, affecting and very sensitive. Kore-eda himself has denied that it’s an example of the Rashomon effect – storytelling centred on the unreliability of witnesses – and certainly it’s more of a jigsaw than an enigma.

There are manifold themes here: respect, acceptance – not least of self-acceptance – bullying, grief and loss, the concept of rebirth in Japanese Buddhism, and the problems that can be caused by overly strict structures.

Kore-eda’s direction is excellent – not least of his child actors. He coaxes an extraordinary performance in particular from Soya Kurokawa as Minato, who won the best newcomer at Japan’s Blue Ribbon Awards, as well as from Hinata Hiiragi as Yori.

Sakura Ando as Saori, Eita Nagayama as Hori and Yuko Tanaka as the school principal also produce fine turns.

The film includes the last music for film written by legendary composer Ryuichi Sakamoto – delicate piano pieces that add to the poignant atmosphere.

Monster’s world premiere was at Cannes last year, where it competed in the Palme d’Or. It won the Queer Palm and the award for best screenplay. It’s not difficult to see why. It is a very special film.

Brighton Rock – brilliance all the way through

In Brighton at the beginning of March for a few days away – the first time I’ve been there when it didn’t involve work – I suddenly decided to revive my holiday habit of ‘themed’ reading.

A visit to Waterstones ensured that I left the shop in possession of a copy of Grahame Greene’s novel, Brighton Rock.

It was by far the greyest, dampest day of the visit, so I took myself off to the cinema to see Wicked Little Letters, sipping coffee for over an hour beforehand as I started the book. Later, the weather was so much better that, wrapped up, I could sit alongside the beach and read more, surrounded by much of the architecture that features in it – including hotels I’d stayed in previously.

It's an excellent read. After I’d finished, I wanted to see the Boulting brothers’ 1948 film, with a screenplay by Greene himself, alongside Terence Rattigan. Streaming makes this easier (and usually cheaper) than buying a disc these days – it’s currently to be found on Amazon Prime.

Set in 1935, it tells a story of rival gangs who clash over a protection racket involving local bookies. Kite, the leader of one, has already been found murdered after a newspaper investigation into the violence. When his fellow gangsters discover that Hale, the reporter responsible is in Brighton for work, their new, self-appointed leader, teenage thug Pinkie Brown, decides to seek revenge for his late mentor.

But before Hale can be despatched, he comes to the attention of Ida Arnold, a brassy, outgoing entertainer, who realises he’s terrified. Later, when an inquest declares that he died of natural causes, she sets out to investigate.

Initially drawing criticism for its portrayal of crime and violence – the Daily Mirror declared: “This film must not be shown” – its reputation has grown with time. In the BFI’s 1999 list of the 100 best British films, it was listed at 15. It’s not difficult to see why.

Some baulked at the changes to the book, but having read it so recently, it’s easy to compare, and the screenplay made it tighter for a 92-minute feature. If I complained about on-screen infidelity to a literary source, The Late Other Half used to note that films of books are “adaptations”, so of course they are not going to be exact.

This maintains all the spirit of the book, but dispenses with some of the novel’s more complex plotting, including simplifying the themes around Catholicism. The only controversial change, in my opinion – and one made without Greene’s permission – was to the ending, which was turned into a sentimental one. The filmmakers felt that the book’s ending would potentially alienate the censors – presumably aware that the representation of crime and violence in the film already had them treading on thin ice.

John Boulting’s direction is excellent (brother Roy produced). Harry Waxman’s cinematography is very good indeed. There’s a really classy noir feel about the film, and the scenes of the chase of Hale through the street early on were shot on hidden cameras, with Brighton’s residents and visitors going about their business, unaware.

And whoever thought of having someone moving among the racegoers and gangsters at the meet, wearing evangelical sandwich boards and placards, was a genius – a brilliant touch.

Combined with the writing, directing and production talent, the cast reads like a bit of a who’s who of British cinema of the mid-to late 20^th century.

While she doesn’t quite make that list, let’s start with Carol Marsh – a newcomer at the time – who turns in a lovely performance as Rose, the teenage waitress that Pinkie exploits in his attempts to evade justice.

Harcourt Williams as the very dodgy lawyer Prewitt is delightfully slippery and slimy, while Doctor Who No1 William Hartnell as Dallow, one of Pinkie’s gangsters, is very good indeed.

Richard Attenborough, who had already played Pinkie in a stage adaptation, is outstanding in the role. Totally believable as the teenaged, psychopathic killer with a deeply-ingrained set of religious beliefs. I love the detail that the film adds, of him frequently seen with a circle of string, doing frantically paced cat’s cradles. It’s a 1930s fidget toy.

The intensity of his performance – the iciness of it – is pitch perfect. In so many ways, it feels like a rehearsal for 10 Rillington Place.

And Hermione Baddeley (left) is every bit his equal in the deliberately contrasting role (perhaps her greatest?) as Ida. Her working-class warmth, her concern for Rose, her unflinching belief in an idea of ‘right and wrong’ (as opposed to a Catholic conception in the book particularly, of ‘good and evil’) are wonderfully served here.

All in all, a film that should be seen and a book that should be read. Never mind streaming – I’ve ordered it on disc, because it should be in my library.

 

Victim: Dirk Bogarde helps the UK turn a corner on LGBT+ rights

This evening wasn’t the first time I’ve watched Basil Dearden’s 1961 noirish suspense film Victim, but there was so much more that I ‘saw’ and appreciated on a second viewing.

Melville Farr is a successful London barrister, married – apparently happily – to Laura. But he is drawn into a scandal when Jack ‘Boy’ Barrett, a young man he had had a secret romantic relationship with (not consummated) is arrested for stealing from his employer and hangs himself in a police cell rather than risk naming Farr under interrogation.

It emerges that Barrett was one of the victims of a gang of blackmailers targeting gay men – the reason for the thefts.

Yet ironically, when he’d tried to contact Farr for help, the barrister had refused his calls, assuming that they were attempts at blackmail.

When Farr learns of Barrett’s suicide, he decides that, whatever the personal cost – and there will be a large one – he will ensure justice is served on the blackmailers.

As with any form of culture, film has the power to change minds and inform debate, but with a wider reach than, say, theatre, its potential power is increased.

The influence of Victim can hardly be overstated.

It was written by Janet Green and John McCormick, after the former had read the 1957 Wolfenden Report, which had recommended that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence”.

Green already had ‘form’ for screenplays about social issues: the 1959 film Sapphire dealt with racism in London toward West Indian immigrants. She’d also penned the excellent 1950 thriller (which sadly seems to have been almost forgotten) The Clouded Yellow, starring Trevor Howard and Jean Simmons.

Victim, however, was of a different order – explicitly proselytising against the law, not least on the basis that, as Wolfenden had stated, the law as it stood was a “blackmailer’s charter”. It was to be hugely influential in changing attitudes so that homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967.

The film faced problems with censors in the UK and US. Yet it is not remotely voyeuristic or sensationalistic. It is, however, clearly sympathetic to its gay characters – and it is equally important in another context, in that they come from more than one social class and transverse that in their relationships.

Sylvia Syms turns in a really fine performance as Laura. In an indication of how difficult the subject was, the role had been turned down by a number of actors. But Syms had worked on stage with John Gielgud – an experience that had enlightened her about the impact of the law at that time – while she had also known a family friend who had ended their own life after being accused of being gay.

Peter McEnery gives a great turn as the vulnerable ‘Boy’ Barrett. As does Denis Price as the – closeted bisexual? – theatre star Calloway.

But this ultimately belongs to Dirk Bogarde as Farr. Gay himself – but never out – he apparently leapt at the chance, after several other stars had turned the role down (including James Mason and Stewart Granger). It transformed him from a matinée idol who had played romantic, comedy and action leads, to an art-house, European and intellectual film star.

It is a searing performance. If you have only ever seen Bogarde in one of the Doctor films, alongside the likes of James Robertson Justice and Leslie Phillips, then this will be a revelation.

While remaining silent about his own personal life, it was not the only gay role Bogarde played. In Luchino Visconti‘s 1971 adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novella, Death in Venice, he held centre stage again as the gay Gustav von Aschenbach.

Victim is not only a genuinely good film – it is also a very socially significant film. If you haven’t already, check it out.