GORDON PARSONS is bowled over by a skilfully stripped down and powerfully relevant production of Hamlet
Film round-up: November 21, 2024
A bucket-list of visuals, the unsung heroine of IVF, queer love in the City of London, and half a musical: The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Blink, Joy, Layla and Wicked
In which we accompany the Bard into Cymru to meet his musical accomplices, young and old
SUE TURNER is inspired by the example of a librarian’s struggle to confront the book-banning movement
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes two exhibitions that blur the boundaries between art and community engagement
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews I Am Martin Parr, September Says, The Monkey, and The Gorge
RITA DI SANTO applauds a touching and witty opener that touches a hot topic in Germany: the future of the immigrant population
SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
Blink (U)
Directed by Daniel Roher and Edmund Stenson
★★★★
THIS beautiful yet heartbreaking film follows a Canadian couple who decide to take their four young children on a globe-trotting trip after they learn three of them are slowing going blind.
This awe-inspiring documentary begins with Edith Lemay and Sebastien Pelletier being told their daughter Mia (11) and their sons Colin (six) and Laurent (just four) have retinitis pigmentosa, an incurable and rare genetic disease. Their nine-year-old son Leo was spared.
A specialist advises the couple all they can do is to fill their kids’ visual memory by showing them images from books. Instead Edith says: “Let’s go all in and fill their visual memory with as many beautiful things as we can.”
More from this author
The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
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