3 to see at LFF: sex and violence

A reimagining of May el-Toukhy’s celebrated Danish film Queen of Hearts (2019), this edgy erotic thriller focuses on successful lawyer Anne (Léa Drucker) who impulsively begins a sexual relationship with her teenage stepson Théo (Samuel Kircher). But when the affair threatens to come to light, Anne will stop at nothing to hide it. 

It’s directed with characteristic frankness, formal elegance and dark humour by French auteur Catherine Breillat, the fearless filmmaker behind sexually explicit films Romance (1999), À ma soeur! (2001) and Anatomy of Hell (2004). Leads Drucker and Kircher give fearless performances, handling tricky scenes and dynamics with sensitivity and wit. 

What begins as a nuanced and refreshing character study of a bored, successful middle-aged woman grappling with perverse desires, slyly morphs into something more sinister as we learn more about the implications of Anne’s actions and the ruthlessness of her world. 

Knotty, frank and often darkly funny, Last Summer wrestles with its moral complexities and undeniable eroticism, finding no easy, pat conclusions to its thorny ethical dimensions, while also providing breathless, edgy entertainment. In short, here is an ideal counterpoint to a risk-free, sexless cinema. 

Jeune et Jolie (2013), Elle (2016), Custody (2017)

Co-adapted by acclaimed novelist Ottessa Moshfegh and her husband Luke Goebel from Moshfegh’s 2015 book, this lurid and atmospheric 1950s-set thriller centres on timid prison worker Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie), bored by her humdrum job and miserable home life with drunken father Jim (Shea Whigham). But the arrival of glamorous prison social worker Rebecca (Anne Hathaway) will change everything. 

Following his striking debut Lady Macbeth (2016), William Oldroyd delivers another cool, calculated and sumptuously designed thriller centred on a complex, unpredictable young woman in crisis. Three stunning central performances, mind-blowing twists and a canny feel for place and time power this expertly staged film full of tension and brooding violence. 

With its wintry locations, vivid production design and hypnotic score, Oldroyd’s film pays homage to a certain kind of noirish American cinema while bringing a bracing frankness to its exploration of repression, desire and intimidation in apparently normal smalltown America. 

McKenzie and Hathaway are both terrific, but the film’s crowning achievement is the staging of a critical, plot-shifting sequence (with a scene-stealing turn from Marin Ireland) and a gut punch of a reveal, driving an already supremely intense film into mayhem. Get ready for the thrills of classical Hollywood combined with thoroughly modern psychological realism and staggering violence.  

The Grifters (1990), The Killer Inside Me (2010), Carol (2015)

This stylish, transgressive thriller follows laconic hacker Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), perversely obsessed with a notorious child killer on trial. Spending her days in court among press and disturbed fans, and her nights gambling online and bidding on mysterious dark web artefacts, Kelly-Anne’s motivations are the film’s tantalising mystery to unravel.   

Bringing the same assured feel for character and unnervingly strange sensuality demonstrated in his second feature – Nadia, Butterfly (2020) – French Canadian director Pascal Plante turns to altogether darker, more disturbing and violent material with a formally rigorous and uncompromising genre piece powered by an electric central performance by Gariépy. 

With its sense for the fascination of serial killers as well as unflinching psychological realism, Plante’s film shares something of the DNA of fellow messed up Canadian David Cronenberg and the appealingly crisp cutting, hyper stabilised cinematography and agile pacing of David Fincher, whose The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo (2011) is a key influence here. 

To say the film is not for the faint of heart is an understatement, and half its pleasures lie in the discovery of shocking reveals and the question of just how far the film will go in its exploration of the blackest worlds of sex and violence. Trigger warnings notwithstanding, here is an absolute treat for fans of the darkest side of cinema. 

The Vanishing (1988), Tesis (1996), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)