Savage House review – Claire Foy and Richard E Grant sell it hard in bewigged 18th-century caper

The leads are the most watchable thing in this raucous period yarn about a grimy pair of status-obsessed nobles Black-belt performances from Claire Foy and Richard E Grant put some vim and vigour into this haranguingly one-note and unidirectional period romp of the raucously bewigged and be-poxed 18th century. It’s written and directed by American film-maker Peter Glanz, who gives us candlelit interiors like a knockoff Barry Lyndon, and periodic deafening orchestral stabs with a touch of Amadeus as furious people in costume storm down corridors. But Grant and Foy are always there, selling it hard and there are one or two nice lines. They play Sir Chauncey and Lady Savage, who are living in a vast crumbling country estate: he’s a parvenu, an adventurer, a lover of the new Hanover dispensation who loathes Jacobites, but fundamentally a social alpinist who married for money and took his wife’s noble name. She was entranced by his roguish ways and she forgave him everything but is, however...

Mia Hansen-Løve: ‘I’d rather not film sex scenes than have virtue police on set’

The French director on making the closest thing to an autobiography, stripping Léa Seydoux of her glamour and dating fellow film-makers

French screenwriter and director Mia Hansen-Løve, 42, was born in Paris to parents who were both philosophy professors. She studied German at university, then had stints as an actor and film critic before making her directorial debut in 2007 with All Is Forgiven. Her subsequent films include Father of My Children, Goodbye First Love, Eden and Bergman Island. Her new film, One Fine Morning, is about a single mother caring for her ailing father while embarking upon a new romance. She lives near Paris with her partner, film-maker Laurent Perreau, and their children.

How closely was your new film, One Fine Morning, inspired by your own late father’s illness?
All my films, in one way or another, use autobiographical elements. Or I should say biographical, because the majority are not inspired by my own story but those of people dear to me. But this one is probably the closest to a self-portrait. The character of Georg has the same disease my father had – a rare degenerative condition called Benson’s syndrome. When I was writing the screenplay, he was still alive and I was visiting him, like Georg’s daughter Sandra in the film. So those scenes were inspired by very fresh memories. I had the intuition that if I didn’t write about it right now, I never would. If I’d waited, I wouldn’t find the courage to turn back and look at these painful moments. But that’s only half the inspiration. The other half is a new love, the rediscovery of happiness, and how to balance those simultaneous feelings of grief and joy.

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