Wild times…
★★★☆☆ OUT 31 MAY CINEMAS
Spanning two continents, three eras and who knows how many genres, this unwieldy sci-fi drama from French auteur Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama) fully commits to its title. Loosely inspired by a 1903 Henry James novella, it stars Léa Seydoux and George MacKay as two people whose paths keep crossing through the ages.
In Paris, 1910, she’s a pianist, he’s her suitor; in LA, 2014, she’s an actor/model, he’s her stalker; and in an unspecified location in 2044, she undergoes a mysterious procedure to purify her DNAthe reason, perhaps, for all the time-shifting. In each period there are common elements: pigeons recur, as do clairvoyants, nightclubs, dolls and works of art such as Madame Butterfly. And throughout, Seydoux’s character is terrified of an unspecified disaster: the eponymous beast. So we experience a flooded Paris and an LA earthquake and hear of an off-screen Armageddon averted by AI. It is, to use 2024 parlance, a lot.
Seydoux is reliably luminous in a demanding role, but MacKay seems a little rudderless. There are some stunning moments, such as the eerily green-screened opener, and an unsettling underwater sequence up there with the renowned sequence in Dario Argento’s Inferno. But after 145 increasingly indulgent minutes, you may find yourself agreeing with one character’s assessment of a piece of classical music: ‘It’s very inventive, but it’s hard to find emotion in it.’
THE VERDICT An elegant, elliptical film that’s equal parts impressive and infuriating.
RIDDLE OF FIRE 12A
★★★☆☆ OUT NOW ICON FILM CHANNEL 7 JUNE CINEMAS
A trio of scampish kids set the all-over-the-place pace for writer/director Weston Razooli’s winningly distinct, if wayward, feature debut. In Wyoming, a poorly mum tasks her three BMX-riding charges to fetch a blueberry pie; in return, they’ll get the TV password so they can play their (ahem, stolen) game. The quest unfolds like an Americana fairy tale, involving witches and a ‘woodsy bastard’ who steals the kids’ speckled egg. The unruly plot stretches patience, but it’s hard to deny Razooli’s Goonies-ish commitment to the kids’ over-excitable POV. KEVIN HARLEY
WILDING PG
★★★☆☆ OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS
Award-winning nature-film maestro David Allen turns this leisurely, animal-packed account of Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell’s 20-year rewilding project into a gentle, golden-lit hy
