petite maman

Petite maman, petite soeur: The Five Devils (2022)

Matt1 Comment

Léa Mysius’ mystery drama The Five Devils (in the original: Les Cinq Diables) is a frustrating film. It is beautifully made and features great central performance. Its ideas are intriguing, and it looks gorgeous to boot, if in a foreboding, even menacing way. (There are shades of the French series The Returned, and not just in the film’s aesthetics.) There is a lot to like here – but the film is weighed down by misusing a metaphysical conceit that, while it could work well in a different film, prompts the audience to focus on all the wrong things and ask all the wrong questions. What we end up with feels like an incongruous blend of Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman and the German Netflix series Dark.

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That was the year that wasn’t: 2021

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In early 2021, I started a draft blog post for the end of the year, in which I’d note down all the culture that had come out during the past twelve months that stood out to me: films that I loved, TV series that surprised me, books that I hated so much that they somehow defined 2021 for me.

I started that draft, and then I never touched it again. And here we are.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Vive la France!

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

For this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Alan wrote about the pitch-perfect performance of John Turner as Roderick Spode in the TV adaptation of Jeeves and Wooster and one of the most fitting quasi-Hitler moustaches in TV history. If you haven’t already done so, make sure to check it out! Sadly, it seems that the only trailers for the show available online are in German, which obviously won’t do, so here’s a six-minute excerpt to enjoy instead.

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The Child is Mother of the Girl: Petite Maman (2021)

Matt4 Comments

When I was born, my mother and father were 28 and 33 respectively. In my earliest memories they are in their mid- or late 30s. By the time my personality started to become what I recognise, more or less, as the person I am now, they were approaching 60. As a child, I knew my parents as middle-aged people with middle-aged concerns. As a young adult, I saw them moving towards retirement age.

When my mother died, on this day twelve years ago, I was 34. Technically, I knew my mother when she was the age I am now, but I was a different person then. I don’t really know who she was at the time, what she felt. I know that she wasn’t particularly happy. I rarely knew her to be happy. I don’t know whether she was happy as a child.

Sometimes I feel I can barely say that I knew my mother.

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