FAITHLESS (BFI Blu-ray). Scripted by Ingmar Bergman and directed by one of his favourite actresses, Liv Ullmann, this is an intense examination of an affair and its consequences. Marianne (Lena Endre) is married to world-famous conductor Markus but finds herself having an affair with theatre director David – a friend of the family and a man who she formerly saw as a brother. The film has a fascinating framing device: Marianne doesn’t exist but is a character dreamt up by an ageing film director who interviews her as he teases out the story we see dramatised. It’s a great conceit with the director as creator, if not Creator, bringing life into existence, listening to his creations whilst also putting up incredibly cruel obstacles to their happiness.
There’s one scene where Marianne sees the notes the director has written, literally the story of how her life will unfold, and from the director’s face we know what happens next is not going to be good. Perhaps the point of the film isn’t the human affair and rather Faithless is a critique of God himself. Ullmann’s movie is absolutely compelling from scene to scene, but the narrative is simply too focussed on veering towards darkness and tragedy, occasionally at the expense of believability.
Take popular song Kinky Boots (released in 1964 and made the top ten in 1990) which had actor Patrick Macnee singing about ‘sexy little school girls’ without any eyebrows being raised. Shorn of any context it’s hard to know if Savile’s on screen behaviour really was that much worse than his contemporaries.
Part two shows some harrowing testimony from a survivor but the programme doesn’t get close to answering the perhaps unanswerable question of how he got away with his crimes for half a century.
This is a brilliantly inventive drama with horror and perhaps supernatural undertones full of great performances from both the girls and their adult counterparts. Stand out favourite is weirdly sweet, and slightly sinister, Misty (Christina Ricci and Sammi Hanratty) whilst Juliette Lewis is great as the adult Natalie, a hard-as-nails cynic and a great modern noir character.
Fairly early on there are hints that there’s something occult going on (could a carved symbol on a tree near the crash site be a coincidence? Probably not!) and my only fear is this could turn out to be the equivalent of seminal ‘90s series Lost. Like Lost it slowly lets the mystery deepen and I hope that, unlike the earlier programme, Yellowjackets actually has some idea where it’s going and it doesn’t rack up incidents of head-scratching bizarreness without any attempt at resolution.
The set-up is Tate plays the governor of a prison, and various inmates, who are the subject of a TV documentary. Apart from being desperately unfunny its slavish use of The Office as a template is simply embarrassing. As the governor she’s basically a clueless Ricky Gervais whilst her second-in-command (Christian Brassington) has been directed to act exactly like Martin Freeman – even down to the intensely sardonic looks directed straight to the camera’s lens.
After 30 minutes of this abject failure I quickly switched to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s brilliant predecessor to Fleabag, Crashing, which is funny, touching and sexy and I felt my faith in the sitcom, and perhaps humanity itself, restored.