Songs of Forgotten Trees review – sensitive, ambiguous drama of female intimacy in Mumbai

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A sex worker and a call centre employee forge an ambiguous relationship in a film of strong feelings In a tiny crumbling Mumbai apartment two women move around each other, squeezing into the kitchen to cook, or past one another in the hallway. The cramped space hems them in – just as society limits their choices. That is surely the point first-time director Anuparna Roy is making in a gentle drama set mostly in the apartment about the closeness that develops between the two women. One of the roommates is Thooya (Naaz Shaikh), an actor and part-time sex worker. The apartment belongs to a client, Nitin (Bushan Shimpi), an arrangement that outrages the neighbours. Thooya doesn’t care what they think, and has rented the second bedroom to a stranger, Shweta (Sumi Baghel), who works from home for an IT call centre. There is an awkwardness between them at first that develops into … what exactly? Romance? It looks that way, although the film’s final scene is ambiguous. Continue reading... f...
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Golda review – lifeless Meir biopic hides Helen Mirren’s talent in a cloud of cigarette smoke

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As a drama about the Yom Kippur war, this film is bafflingly dull. As a portrait of Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister at the time, it’s even worse

Helen Mirren’s latexed and enhanced portrayal of Golda Meir, Israel’s “Iron Lady” prime minister during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, has been overtaken by a debate about “Jewface” casting because Mirren is not Jewish – addressing why Jews are casually excluded from the otherwise fiercely policed sensibilities about authenticity and identity on screen. (Would they get a white actor, for example, to black up as President Anwar Sadat?) It’s a valid and important question, but not exactly the problem in this stately, stuffy and at times almost comatose TV-movie-type drama about tension in Israel’s corridors of power as the Yom Kippur war exploded and the country faced off against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a battle for its very existence.

Mirren, normally such a sparkling performer, is lumbered with a grey wig, false nose and jowls, with occasional headscarf and handbag, making her look as if she is playing the Queen doing an impression of Richard Nixon. This Golda Meir impassively chainsmokes her way through wooden potted-history dialogue scenes with her military top brass, while everyone blows cigarette smoke at each other; occasionally she takes a break to lie prostrate on a hospital bed, stoically smoking and dying of cancer. Is she going to die? Why not? The film is flatlining.

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