Tag: nanny

Leonora
in the Morning Light

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 29 May 2026
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in the Morning Light
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©Mirjam Kluka, Dragonfly films, Alamode Film

Directors – Thor Klein, Lena Vurma – 2025 – Germany, Romania, Mexico, UK – Cert. 15 – 103m

In Mexico, France, Spain and the England of her childhood, Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington confronts her personal demons – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, May 29th

Deserted hillsides, a sliver of a road, eventually a tiny red car moving along it, to the accompaniment of a pulsating electronic score suggesting the present day. Another stretch of road: the car drops off the woman, in stylish trousers and blouse, who smokes observing the landscape. The driver gets out to photograph her, much to her displeasure, but he’s run out of film.

An illustrated title card: Death. Xilitla, Mexico, 1951. The man takes her to the rooming house of Edward (Ryan Gage), leaving her as he promises to look after their son. Outside the window, she can hear the two men discuss all that has happened to her. Her madness.

She and Edward are riding with others in the back of a lorry on a road. In Spanish, she asks a woman on the lorry (Yasmira Escárrega) about her amulet – “a sacred stone that illuminated the path through the underworld”.… Read the rest

Tags 1938, 1939, 1940, 1951, adaptation, Alexander Scheer, amulet, André Breton, animal spirit, arrested, art, art history, artist, Cassandra Ciangherotti, Cat Jugravu, Chiki Weisz, consulting room, Dali, death. Xilitla, delirium, Denis Eyrley, doctor, drawing, drawing room, electric shock therapy, Elena Poniatowska, England. childhood, family, fathers and daughters, field, France, Garden of Eden on Earth, gates of hell, gendarme, German alien, German invasion of France, Germany, Heaven, holocaust survivor, horse, hospital, hunt, hyena, Irish, journey, jungle, key, lake, Las Pozas Gardens, Lena Vurma, Leonora Carrington, Leonora in the Morning Light, locked door, lorry, lover, Luis Gerardo Méndez, madness, marketplace, Max Ernst, memory, Mercedes Bahleda, Mexico, mural painter, nanny, novel, Olivia Vinall), painter, painting, paradise, Paris, path through the underworld, Peggy Guggenheim, photography her, Remedios Varo, Romania, Ryan Gage, sacred stone, San Martin D’ardeche, Santander, shoot, South Of France, spider’s web, sprite, staircase, Surrealism, Surrealist, Surrealist gathering, Thor Klein, title cards, UK, viewing platform, Vivienne Soan, Wren Stembridge, writing, Yasmira Escárrega

Features Live Action Movies

The White Ribbon
(Das Weiße Band)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 13 June 2024
1 Comment on The White Ribbon
(Das Weiße Band)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2009 – Austria, Germany – Cert. 15 – 144m

*****

Reviewed for Third Way magazine to coincide with UK release date 13/11/2009.

Plays in Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 6th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025.

Haneke’s first period drama for the big screen is set in 1913-14 in a Northern German Protestant village where strange accidents befall the community. A doctor (Rainer Bock), out riding a regular route, is brought down and injured by a wire between two trees. The wife of a farm labourer is killed when factory floorboards give way beneath her. Children are abducted. A baby’s window is left open in Midwinter. A building burns. But who is – or are – responsible?

The film sets out its cast of characters in terms of the social hierarchy. The landowning classes are represented by the local Baron (Ulrich Tukur), his wife (Ursina Lardi) and their child; the professional classes by a widowed doctor, the midwife (Susanne Lothar) “who has made herself useful to him”, the Baron’s steward (Josef Bierbichler), the village Pastor (Burghart Klaussner) and the local teacher (Christian Friedel) – also as an old man the narrator (Ernst Jacobi) – who is courting the nanny of the Baron’s son; the working classes by numerous agricultural labourers who generally feature less prominently in the story.… Read the rest

Tags 1910s, 1913, 1914, abduction, accidents, agriculture, aired in public, Austria, baby. window left open, baron, black and white, bring down, building burns, Burghart Klaussner, cane, child abuse, children, chils abduction, Christian Friedel, closed door, community, Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, corporal punishment, corruption, crime, cruelty, death, declaration of war, deduction, dirty laundry, doctor, Ernst Jacobi, factory, factory floorboards, facts, fallen world, farm labourer, Germany, half-truths, hearsay, horse and cart, ineffectual, injury, insidious, Josef Bierbichler, killed, kitchen, labourers, landowning class, Leonie Benesch, malevolence, Michael Haneke, midwife, Midwinter, misinterpretation, mortality, motive, nanny, narrator, Northern Germany, organised religion, outsider, pastor, picnic, powerlessness, professional class, Protestant, punishment, pure intentions, puzzle, Rainer Bock, riddle, riding, social class, social hierarchy, steward, Susanne Lothar, teacher, town, tree, Ulrich Tukur, underpinning, Ursina Lardi, village, widowed, wife, wire, working class

Animation Features Live Action Movies

àma GLORIA

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 13 June 2024
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Director – Marie Amachoukeli – Co-Director (Animation) – Pierre Emmanuel-Lyet – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 84m

Live Action **** / Animation *****

After her beloved nanny returns to Cape Verde, six-year-old Cléo visits her for the Summer – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th and on BFI Player from Monday, July 22nd

Six-year-old Cléo (six-year-old Louise Mauroy-Panzani) lives with her dad (Arnaud Rebotini) in France, but is mostly cared for by her nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). One day, Gloria gets a phone call informing her that her mum has died, so she has to return to her home island in Cape Verde. Cléo is distraught, and makes Gloria promise that they will see each other again.

Gloria makes arrangements for the little girl to spend the Summer with her on her island. She meets the family from whom Gloria was separated by being in France – the pregnant Fernanda (Abnara Gomes Varela), the alienated ten-year-old César (Fredy Gomes Tavares) and, in due course, Fernanda’s baby Santiago. Gloria spends some considerable amount of time mothering the newly-born Santiago, causing Cléo to experience extreme sibling rivalry for Gloria’s attentions. Eventually, these emotions come to a head in the little girl…

This is one of those sadly all too rare films which in the process of telling a story from a child’s point of view completely gets inside their head.… Read the rest