Mark Kermode on… Kathryn Bigelow, a stylish ruffler of feathers

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From vampire noir to Bin Laden, Point Break to Detroit, the first woman to win an Oscar for best director has never pulled her punches Watching new Jeff Nichols release The Bikeriders , starring Austin Butler and Tom Hardy as 60s Chicago greasers, I was reminded of two other movies: László Benedek’s 1953 Marlon Brando vehicle The Wild One , explicitly cited as an inspiration, and The Loveless , the 1981 feature debut of Kathryn Bigelow , the American film-maker (b.1951) who would go on to become the first woman to win a best director Oscar with her 2008 war drama The Hurt Locker . A symphony of leather-clad posing (with just a touch of Kenneth Anger ), The Loveless was a staple of the late-night circuit in the 80s, often on a double bill with David Lynch’s Eraserhead . Sharing directing credits with Monty Montgomery, Bigelow playfully deconstructed masculinity and machismo in a manner that was one part wry to two parts relish. I remember seeing The Loveless at the Phoenix in East
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‘I love erotic thrillers, but this so isn’t one’: Damian Hurley on directing his mother, Elizabeth, in a ‘sensual mystery’

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At 22, Damian Hurley has made his first feature film, in which his very famous mum is snogged and fondled by her female co-star. He talks about being a nepo baby, finally getting to vote, and coping with the deaths of his father and stepfather

Orson Welles was 25 when he directed Citizen Kane. What took him so long? He should have pulled his finger out like Damian Hurley, son of the model and actor Elizabeth Hurley, who was just 20 when he called “Action!” on his own debut, Strictly Confidential. It was filmed on Saint Kitts and Nevis, and could double as a tourist-board commercial for those Caribbean islands were it not for the murder and skulduggery, or lines such as: “You’ve been fucking your dead sister’s boyfriend!”

In his journey to the director’s chair, Hurley, who has a lucrative modelling career, has faced few obstacles. He was given a camcorder at the age of eight. His early shorts starred his mother and her ex, Hugh Grant, who happens also to be one of his godfathers. (Elton John is another.) And he got the chance to make his first feature after a studio executive called him out of the blue to ask if he had any movie ideas. Hard yards these are not.

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