Tinā review – a feelgood choir drama that follows a winning formula

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A huge hit in Aotearoa New Zealand, this film follows a teacher who transforms an elite private school with music, played beautifully by Anapela Polataivao Ah yes: the inspirational high school movie! This formula is an oldie but a goodie: a thinking-outside-the-box teacher profoundly inspires their students while restoring something broken inside themselves. Such narratives view education as a “school of life” in which everybody – irrespective of age and circumstance – is always in a state of learning and growing. The teacher’s unconventional methods are inevitably questioned; various triumphs and tragedies ensue. And in musically themed productions such as the Aotearoa New Zealand drama Tinā, momentum builds towards a rousing final performance. Tonally, Miki Magasiva’s film is less School of Rock than Mr Holland’s Opus: middle-of-the-road stylistically and not so much tugging the heartstrings as giving them a right royal yank. There’s no ambiguity in his script, which puts its emot...
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Isabelle Huppert: ‘I was never the woman behind the man… the only place I could take was the main place’

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As brings to London a 90-minute monologue about Mary, Queen of Scots, the celebrated French actor talks about her extraordinary career, and why she’d love to make a film in the UK – or play a Marvel villain. Below, Guy Lodge chooses her finest screen appearances

Isabelle Huppert is a force of nature. Two days before we meet, she has arrived in Stockholm from New York via Paris. Two hours after she touched down, she was on stage rehearsing. The next evening, she opened in Mary Said What She Said, an extraordinary one-woman portrait of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Then she walked back to her hotel in high heels, through five inches of snow.

Now, she is sitting opposite me in an empty rooftop bar, especially reserved for our conversation. Drinking citron pressé, as the Scandinavian light seeps away through the early afternoon, she looks tired when she arrives but soon relaxes: her face is full of life.

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