Film Shapes

It's been six years since Mike Leigh stepped behind the camera for the disappointing Peterloo but this film is a return to tip top form. In fact, by my reckoning, that 2018 historical record was his only career misstep. And in Naked , Secrets and Lies and Happy-Go-Lucky , he has written and directed some of the very best British films of all time. Hard Truths reunites him with one of the stars of Secrets and Lies , Marianne Jean-Baptiste. She plays Pansy, an angry, fearful misery guts who can't help but annoy her family (and members of the public) with her constant, nasty invective. At first, her moaning is quite funny until the realisation that this woman is suffering takes hold. Pansy is married to plumber Curtley (David Webber) and they have a son in his early 20s, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who doesn't say much and stays in his room playing flight simulator games. Both these guys deal with Pansy in their own way, in quiet despondency. Her only real friend is her sister,...

The Story of Souleymane was the media preview opening film of this year's Alliance Francais French Film Festival . This drama of frustrations, directed by Boris Lojkine, feels like a real story, probably not too far removed from the myriad other folk trying to find a better life in Europe (or other, more economically advanced countries than their own). Souleymane is a young Guinean bloke working as a fast food courier (ala Uber Eats) in Paris, but this is more complex than it sounds. For reasons soon made clear, he has to borrow the courier account of another guy to earn his bikkies. A simple request from the courier company to upload a selfie sees Souleymane dashing to the workplace of the guy who 'owns' the account, to get the pic. Just one of the many anxiety inducing trials this poor lad goes through.  The nugget of the story is that Souleymane is a couple of days away from his residency interview. For whatever reason, it's decided that he must lie to the authoriti...