Genre: Drama – Page 14 – Wimbledon Film Club

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

High-schooler Greg is ordered by his parents to befriend a fellow student, Rachel, whom he knew as a child, who is now dying of cancer. This outline might sound conventional, even saccharine, and you might even expect the dying girl to survive, but the film is really about grief and how art is both a…

Hugo and Josephine

Josephine lives with her father, a priest, in an isolated spot. Hugo enters her life and together they spend the summer with the gardener finding fun. A gentle masterpiece re-released for new audiences. A film of deceptive simplicity and real beauty, outward and inward. New York Times. 3 major awards.

Youth

Sorrentino’s follow up to The Great Beauty sees an ageing conductor with his old friend in an Alpine spa. Together they reflect on life while fending off an envoy from the Queen to stage a royal gala. “A beautiful ode to music and cinema. … There are elements of Fellini and Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero…

Victoria

Shot in a snigle, continuous tahe, Victoria tells the tale of a Spanish woman, new to the city of Berlin, who meets two men at a club and gets mixed up in a bank robbery. There are echoes of the French New Wave in the premise, but the style of the film is much more…

Mustang

In a remote Turkish village five teenage sisters react to the growing constraints placed upon them by their guardians. Villagers gossip, marriages are arranged and the sisters’ voices remain unheard. Poignant examination of the place of young women in rural Turkish society, the strength of sisterly love and what it takes to rebel. Oscar nomination,…

Love & Friendship

Lady Susan, recently widowed and the subject of a scandal, looks for a husband for her daughter and herself. Based on an early Jane Austen novella, the story transfers to the screen as the wittiest of romps, meticulously realised and acted with relish. Beckinsale and Samuel stand out from a wonderful array of performances in…

Imitation of Life

Douglas Sirk’s iconic masterpiece about race, class and gender in the 1950s. An aspiring actress with a 6 year old daughter arranges to live with a black widow and her 8 year old light-skinned daughter. Voted 37th best US movie in 2015 survey of film critics, received 2 Oscar nominations in 1960. Among the most…

Embrace of the Serpent

The film delivers a spellbinding vision of the Amazon which focuses on a shaman – the last of his people – and his relationship with two scientists who journey to the rainforest 40 years apart to find the sacred healing plant, the Yakruna. Based on a true story, the film depicts the ravages of colonialism…

Le Week-End

A couple spend a weekend in Paris to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. Their relationship is flagging and they hope to rekindle it. Will the Parisian experience have the desired effect? ‘This is a beautifully executed, fearlessly truthful and droll film on the emotional politics of reinvention.’ The Telegraph

Son of Saul

At several camps the Nazis established units of Jewish male prisoners (sonderkommandos) picked for their youth and relative health. Those at Auschwitz-Birkenau lived in better physical conditions than other inmates and were divided into different groups, each with specialised functions including greeting new arrivals to the camp; sorting their suitcases and packages for shipping to…