Louise Lasser, star of cult sitcom Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Woody Allen comedies, dies aged 87

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The 1970s soap parody made a household name of Lasser, who was also known for her collaborations with ex-husband Allen and later films including Requiem for a Dream Louise Lasser, star of cult 70s sitcom Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and early films by Woody Allen (to whom she was married for four years), has died aged 87. The New York Times reported she died “at home in Manhattan” . Lasser’s role as a satirically conceived housewife in suburban Ohio in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, designed as a parody of daytime soap operas, made her a national star, landing her on the cover of People magazine and Rolling Stone. The series lasted a year and a half, between January 1976 and July 1977, but due to its five-days-a-week schedule squeezed more than 300 episodes out of its two season run. Lasser’s Hartman, with her signature pigtails, was preoccupied with domestic minutiae but found herself in unsettling and disturbing situations, including bizarre deaths. The show was intended to explore the ch...
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Drift review – beautiful yet undercooked character study

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Sundance film festival: Cynthia Erivo stars as a west African migrant who befriends Alia Shawkat’s American émigré in this too-quiet character drama

Save for its few flashback moments of horrific, haunting trauma, Drift, the mostly quiet story of a west African migrant reeling from the unimaginable on a Greek resort isle, is easy on the eyes. Director Anthony Chen’s film, from a screenplay by Susanne Farrell and Alexander Maksik, gives harried aftermath the sheen of tranquil nobility, resilience hiding in plain sight – the crowd of barely clothed, languid white bodies dotting star Cynthia Erivo’s opening walk down the beach, the bleached yellow of the Mediterranean sun, the way Erivo’s Jacqueline slowly, carefully washes her one set of clothes. Even Jacqueline’s night ritual, arranging plastic bags of pebbles for a makeshift beach cave mattress, takes on the lulling rhythm of a reverie.

It’s a lot of compelling aesthetic, anchored at most turns by Erivo’s committed, tense performance, that like many a Sundance movie can only cover so much undercooked structure. Drift, based on Maksik’s 2013 novel A Marker to Measure Drift, relies on Jacqueline’s trauma-fragmented memory to unfold the story too slowly. For the first half hour, Jacqueline is mostly a cipher, scrounging for money via beachside foot massages by day, flitting through shadows and dodging bigoted police by night. We catch tantalizing snippets of her clearly suppressed past in too-short flashbacks – a time when she had long braids and a white British girlfriend (Honor Swinton Byrne), a time when she lived in England, a joyful moment with her privileged minister’s family in militarized Liberia. The script’s spareness – what year is it? How did Jacqueline get here? Why is she so alone? – provokes equal parts mystery and frustration.

Drift premiered at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution.

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