Genre: Biography – Wimbledon Film Club

Benediction

A non-conventional film biography of the poet Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden), Benediction spans three distinct eras: the horror and waste of World War I, and the poetry it gave rise to; the interwar years of “gay” society (and covert homosexuality); and finally the 1960s, where we see the elderly poet, played by Peter Capaldi, attempt…
Vita and Virginia

Fascinating period drama/biopic from director Chanya Button (Burn,Burn,Burn) that brings a modern sensibility and excellent soundtrack to the relationship between aristocrat and author Vita Sackville-West (the versatile Gemma Arterton, Their Finest, Gemma Bovery) and literary icon Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki, hotfoot from Widows). The film charts the relationship’s impact on Woolf’s landmark work Orlando. Drawing…
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool

Touching biopic of Oscar-winning Gloria Grahame (Bening) and her relationship with Peter Turner (Bell), a struggling actor 28 years her junior. The couple meet as Grahame’s final days are played out in Liverpool. Director McGuigan brings a finely tuned balance of warmth, sadness and humour to the ill-matched relationship. A career-best performance from Jamie Bell…
Loving Vincent

“We cannot speak other than by our paintings,“ wrote Vincent van Gogh in the week before his death. This innovative biopic takes him at his word. Live actors mesh seamlessly with paintings in the style of the artist to illuminate the circumstances of his tragic demise. Reluctantly at first, the son of the local postman…
Tom of Finland

Award-winning director Thomas ‘Dome’ Karukoski, one of Finland’s most successful film-makers, brings to the big screen the life, work and times, from the 1940s through the 1980s, of one man who influenced a generation – homoerotic artist Touko Laaksonen, aka Tom of Finland (Pekka Strang). Respected critic Markus Maattanen has described Dome Karukoski as “the…
Neruda

Inventive constructed biopic – part fiction, part fantasy – of the Nobel prize-winning Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, from director Pablo Larrain (Jackie, No, The Club). A fictional inspector played by Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal (star of previous WFC films Motorcycle Diaries and Even the Rain) is caught in a cat and mouse thriller in…
Control

Control is far and away the better of the two 2007 films about Ian Curtis, eulogised lead singer of Joy Division, who killed himself at 23. Based on the memoir by Deborah Curtis, Ian Curtis wife, the film covers the singer’s troubled teenage years to his death. It moves away from the glamorous portrayals of…
Caravaggio

Not so much a faithful biography as an examination of the homo-erotic in the Renaissance artist’s work. Jarman’s film focuses on speculation about the relationships between Caravaggio and his models – a tale of a love triangles and scandals ensues, but what stands out is the directors signature artistic flourishes and theatrical tableaux. Some may…