Vincent Colombe Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Coralie Fargeat – 2017 – US – Cert. 18 – 108m

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It’s a man’s world. Or is it? A predictable male fantasy switches gear to bloody thrill ride when a woman turns the tables on a group of men perpetrating violence against her – available on VoD from Monday, September 10th following UK cinema release on Friday, May 11th 2018

Flown in by private helicopter pilot, Frenchman Richard (Kevin Janssens) takes Jen (Matilda Lutz) to his luxury home in the middle of the desert for a day or so. He is clearly rolling in money, she appears to be in love with him, but perhaps she’s play-acting: something of the gold-digger in her, maybe. She wears skimpy clothing, emphasising sexual aspects of her body. She comes on strong to him. Passion ensures. All of which is a lot less fun to watch than it sounds: the male is little more than a caricature of the sort often found in the less carefully made end of French action and gangster movie production while the girl displays every patriarchal cliché in the book in the way she moves, dresses, acts and interacts.

Director Fargeat has a very different agenda, however.… Read the rest

Lee

Director – Ellen Kuras – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 116m

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Former fashion model Lee Miller, played by producer Kate Winslet, reinvents herself as a war photographer for London Vogue at the start of World War Two – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

It’s all too easy to assume (as per the ‘auteur’ theory espoused by the French ‘Cahiers du Cinema’ critics of the 1950s) that films are the works of directors. If one had to pick a single creative force behind this film, however, it would be the person who put it all together as producer before any director or writer were involved as collaborators.

That producer was the actress Kate Winslet who wanted to make a film about Vogue model turned photographer Lee Miller. Winslet doesn’t look much like the tall statuesque beauty that Lee Miller was in her younger days, and it didn’t occur to her to portray Lee Miller herself until some way into the process of putting the film together.

To direct the film, Winslet has chosen former cinematographer Ellen Kuras, an appropriate choice since Kuras has worked on documentaries shooting such musicians as David Byrne, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Neil Young, lensed narrative features on the such diverse cultural figures as Jane Goodall and Andy Warhol, and worked with unique film director Michel Gondry.… Read the rest