In the Hand of Dante review – Gerard Butler is jaw-dropping in bizarre Renaissance mafia reverie

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Julian Schnabel’s combustible mix of lowlife cynicism and high art – along with cameos from Martin Scorsese and Al Pacino – powers this outrageous black comedy revolving around Dante’s Divine Comedy The worlds of Renaissance manuscript scholarship and organised crime come together like a mix of Umberto Eco and George V Higgins in this flawed but fascinating reverie from director and co-writer Julian Schnabel. Switching between monochrome and colour, and freely adapted from the Nick Tosches novel of the same name, it is hilarious and shocking, at least at first, with a quite extraordinary tough-guy role for Gerard Butler. It is a mysterious, scabrous and bizarre adventure in violent larceny and spiritual crisis which unfortunately unwinds in the end into sentimental fantasy. In the Hand of Dante amounts to an epic and self-aware jeu d’ésprit with amazing cameos from Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino and Franco Nero, beckoning its audience over to peep into the fathomless abyss of heaven and ...
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Behind the scenes with Sofia Coppola: memories from a life in film

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The celebrated director looks back at her career, sharing the inspirations and experiences that shaped films from Lost in Translation to her forthcoming biopic, Priscilla​. Words by Sofia Coppola, introduction by Kathryn Bromwich

There is a particular aesthetic that runs through Sofia Coppola’s work, whether she is turning her gauzy, feminised lens on the southern gothic of The Beguiled or urban alienation in Lost in Translation, the rococo excesses of Marie Antoinette or disaffected suburban youths in The Bling Ring. Coppola is adept at creating heady atmospheres and worlds that feel fully realised, her characters veering between emptiness, desire and repression; the frames in her films have a painterly quality, straddling the line between beauty and claustrophobia. Her singular style has influenced much of contemporary popular culture, from Lana Del Rey’s wistful music videos to Emma Cline’s novels about lonely and potentially dangerous young women.

Coppola’s first book, Archive, collects behind-the-scenes ephemera from her films, starting with her 1999 directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides, and ending with her forthcoming biopic of Elvis Presley’s young bride, Priscilla. Holed up at home in Napa, California, during the pandemic, Coppola started to go through boxes of old material: Polaroids, early scripts, clippings, letters, doodles. These discarded objects had taken on a nostalgic quality over the years, and so Coppola put together the most meaningful mementoes from each project, accompanying them with musings and personal recollections. Speaking to journalist Lynn Hirschberg in the book’s introduction, Coppola reflects on Priscilla, which premieres at the Venice international film festival next month. “Across all my films, there is a common quality: there is always a world and there is always a girl trying to navigate it. That’s the story that will always intrigue me.” Kathryn Bromwich

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