Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Within the first few minutes of her 19 th Century drama, Emily , writer-director Frances O’Connor commits a crime against literary history. Thirty-year-old Emily Bront ë (Emma Mackey) faints and collapses onto a chaise longue. She glimpses at a trio of volumes. They read ‘Wuthering Heights – a novel by Emily Bront ë’. Most students of English literature are taught that the novel was first published under the name ‘Ellis Bell’, as the Brontë sisters all used pseudonyms to disguise their gender. In her desire to indicate that the young woman of failing health is the author of one of the greatest (doomed) romances of the last two centuries, O’Connor cheats. It’s an own goal that almost robs us of the desire to watch any further. Next filmmakers will present a first edition of ‘The Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath, rather than by Victoria Lucas, Plath’s pseudonym. What O’Connor could have done is just shown the title of the book. We know Emily. We know ‘Wuthering Heights’. The majority of...

  Some call it ‘colour blind’ casting. The late Peter Brook preferred the term ‘colour rich’. This is the selection of actors of different ethnicities to play roles that according to the setting would have gone to white Europeans. British-born, Los Angeles-based director Emma Holly Jones has opted for the ‘colour rich’ approach in her feature debut, Mr. Malcolm’s List , screenwriter Suzanne Allain’s adaptation of her 2010 Regency-era novel. Jones filmed a short, Mr. Malcolm’s List: Overture with many of the same cast, but also Gemma Chan, in 2019 to prove the concept. The resultant feature benefits to some extent from its multi-ethnic cast but suffers from a fatal absence of chemistry between its leads. Did I wish for vicar’s daughter Selina Dalton (Freida Pinto) to win the heart of wealthy bachelor Jeremy Malcolm ( Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù)? No, reader, I did not. Set principally in 1818, after the defeat of Napoleon, it stars Zawe Ashton as eligible London bachelorette, Julia Thistlethwai...