victoria from 5 to 7 | fashion, film, lit, more

With the opening moments showing the film's desert setting reflected in the blue-green tint of French millionaire Richard's aviator sunglasses, Coralie Fargeat's directorial debut, Revenge , is clearly concerned with acts of looking and the lenses through which we do so. Screened at Picturehouse Central in London (and other locations) as part of the Reclaim the Frame influencer project by Bird's Eye View,  a mission to bring ever-greater audiences to films by women and build a more balanced film future by boosting the commercial success of said films, Revenge  is a rape-revenge thriller which first utilises and then re-purposes the male gaze.  The desert landscape is reflected in Richard's glasses (right) whilst Jen's lenses reflect nothing (left),  Revenge  (2017) Though Jen (Matilda Lutz) expects a romantic getaway with Richard ( Kevin Janssens)   all to herself (away from his wife and kids), their trip is interrupted by the early arrival of hi...

Personal Shopper is the latest collaborative effort from Kristen Stewart and director Olivier Assayas, following on from Clouds of Sils Maria in 2014, and it's confounding, infuriating, and exciting audiences both commercial and critical. Though I don't claim to understand this film any more than the next person - I still don't know if I actually liked it - I do think a significant thematic development is the relationship between the material and the immaterial throughout the film - that is, the stuff that Stewart's character, Maureen, a personal shopper and medium living in Paris, shops for versus the spiritual affirmation she seeks from her recently deceased medium twin brother. that Chanel dress though A significant portion of Maureen's daily life is spent at her job as a personal shopper for her boss, Kyra, whose penchant for designer fashion sends Maureen anywhere and everywhere, within and outside of the country, for the latest stylish wares. These se...

Now released in the UK after its release in South Korea back in June 2016, Park Chan-Wook's latest offering, The Handmaiden , is a period drama that is far more dynamic, fun and ferocious than it initially appears. Simultaneously mimicking the structures of an Austen-style Victorian drama and a luxurious, erotic thriller at the same time, the film also deconstructs the differences between masculine desire and feminine sexual fulfilment. The Handmaiden is a film you need to see - in your local arthouse cinema - to continue to support genuinely good, non-Western cinema.  Kim Tae-ri (left) and Kim Min-hee (right) as handmaiden and lady, respectively, in The Handmaiden Adapted from 'Fingersmith', a novel by Sarah Waters and set in Victorian England, The Handmaiden  lifts the plot and overall structure of the text and re-situates it in 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea. Such a shift is fitting between the two periods - both characterised by distinctions of class, gender an...

Get Out  is a sharp and humorous social thriller with a succinct plot and plenty of tension telling the story of Chris Washington who, on a visit to his white girlfriend's family home, finds himself in the centre of a kidnapping plot and must escape the overwhelmingly white country estate and return to freedom. The film is a particularly incisive criticism of the remnants of slavery and seemingly minute instances of racism amongst America's white liberals, exposing the ways in which America is anything but "post-racial". In line with the succinctness of the plot (hurrah for a film plot that doesn't overrun by approximately 45 minutes!), the film employs the symbol of the deer to quickly convey these differing relationships to race beneath the facade of acceptance and equality. Spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution if you haven't seen Get Out yet (and if you haven't seen it yet, why not?). Throughout the course of the film, the deer is a recurrin...

What is cinema but one big illusion? This is the question the   Now You See Me   franchise seeks to answer as despite appearing as a facile and flat-though-thrilling blockbuster it engages with the ideas of illusion and trickery at the core of cinematic history. Firstly, I wholeheartedly agree with the general critical consensus about these films: both of these films have excellent opening acts, full of rich visuals & excellent dialogue from a stellar team of actors, but ultimately fall apart in their final acts, which are underwhelming and often confusing. Secondly, however, I think there’s something more going on  – maybe there’s a card hidden up someone’s sleeve here. Woody Harrelson has a card up his sleeve in  Now You See Me 2 The whole point of these films, I would contend, is not some lofty ideal or critical approach to something – what they are is an intensely fun exploration of what cinema can trick us into believing, a depiction of the thr...

So, long story short: A Cure for Wellness was sickeningly awful. And not in a good, repulsive kind of way. But if you want some genuine reflections on what was wrong and what was right and what could have been, then read on. From  A Cure for Wellness  (Verbinski, 2017) shows Volmer twice reflected and refracted. Firstly, through the glass of a sensory deprivation chamber and further reflected in the water of said chamber To briefly summarise the plot, Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is sent by the company board to retrieve the CEO from a mysterious spa retreat come cult in the Swiss Alps. All is not how it seems, however, and Lockhart becomes embroiled in a rescue attempt/investigative mission to 1) retrieve the boss and 2) uncover the secrets of the retreat.  The primary problem with A Cure for Wellness is just how ambitious it is in its storytelling. After going to see the film, what became clear upon discussion was just how discordant all of the ideas and plots we...