SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
Film round-up: October 24, 2024
Colonial plunder goes home, chilly euthanasia, transsexual drug baron and venom’s end: The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Dahomey, The Room Next Door, Emilia Perez and Venom: The Last Dance
PAUL FOLEY recommends an extraordinary double bill that packs a punch and leaves you reeling
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play about AI that results in a deadening disconnect for its audience
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
MATTHEW HAWKINS pays tribute to the performance artist and costumier, Leigh Bowery
SIMON DUFF reviews a new composition by German composer and pianist Florian Weber that blurs the line between where improvisation ends and composition begins
New releases from The Jim Mullen Quartet, Caroline Kraabel/John Edwards, and Matthew Muneses/Riza Printup
Dahomey (PG)
Directed by Mati Diop
★★★
WINNER of the coveted Golden Bear award at this year’s Berlinale, Dahomey is an immersive and haunting work from co-writer director Mati Diop which explores the effects of colonisation, appropriation, self-determination and restitution.
It follows the return in November 2021 of 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey by the French government. They were among thousands of others plundered by French colonial troops in 1892.
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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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