Film FILM OF THE WEEK
DON’T MISS
WHAT IS IT… A Woody Allen-ish New York relationship comedy.
WHY GO… It might restore your faith in the romcom.
à Director Rebecca Miller (15) 99 mins.
Still on and still great
THE NICE GUYS
It’s been a quiet couple of weeks for new film
releases. Opening soon: Spielberg’s ‘The BFG’, ‘Jason Bourne’ and ‘Ghostbusters’. In the meantime, catch up with
RyGos and Russell Crowe’s magnificently sardonic buddy comedy.
Maggie’s Plan
DECENT ROMANTIC COMEDIES are an endangered species. It’s getting harder to spot one that isn’t clichéd and contrived, and doesn’t have you digging your fingernails into your palms with embarrassment. Which makes ‘Maggie’s Plan’ the snow leopard of romcoms: intelligent and screwball-funny with clever and complicated female characters. Hipster goddess Greta Gerwig plays control
freak Maggie, a New Yorker who has decided to have a baby on her own. But just as she’s about to do the deed with a DIY insemination kit she meets John (Ethan Hawke), a frustrated novelist. He’s married to a superstar academic, the glacial and terrifying Georgette (Julianne Moore, hilarious with an eccentric Danish accent). At this point, director Rebecca Miller cleverly
ditches the love triangle dramatics and leaps ahead two years. Maggie and John are married
and have a delicious toddler. But marriage is not the happy-ever-after ending Maggie dreamed of. In her fantasy of the relationship, she was rescuing John from selfish Georgette so he could write his masterpiece. In reality, John is fannying around failing to finish his novel, while she is working, looking after their daughter and taking care of the kids from his first marriage. Maggie hatches a plan: why not give him back to his ex? Miller is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller
and is married to Daniel Day-Lewis. She totally nails the world of arty New York intellectuals (you might find some lines a bit precious). Finally, here’s a film that understands that out here in the real world the rule book has been rewritten. Relationship dynamics have changed: women don’t rely on men financially and have babies on their own. Maybe we need a new movie category? The split-com? The singlecom? ■Cath Clarke
TIME OUT MEETS Rebecca Miller
The director of ‘Maggie’s Plan’ talks love and women directors.
Did you want to make a film about modern relationships? ‘Maggie’s Plan’ tackles divorce, single parenting and friendship. ‘Definitely. My best friend is a professor. At 31 she had a baby with someone she knew was a temporary relationship. That was part of the inspiration. I wanted to think about how women live now, trying to make our way through a world that is still rigged against us. How are we figuring it out?’
Time Out London July 5 – 11 2016
What is it going take to get more women directors? ‘Women need to be seen as human beings. Directing is a physically and mentally demanding job. But anybody who doesn’t think women are up to it should try childbirth.’
You’re married to Daniel Day-Lewis. How have you influenced each other?
‘We’re both nerds. We do a lot
of research. We like being prepared. I think he’s drawn me into my better self in that sense.’■ Cath Clarke
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BLINDNESS
NOTES ON This profound, thought-
provoking documentary is based on a series of audio diaries (later turned into a book), recorded by the academic John Hull as he lost his sight.
TALE OF TALES
Sea monsters, giant fleas, witches, kings, queens and trolls… This fairytale
freakout might just fill the ‘Game of Thrones’-sized hole in your life, now that season six is over.
ME BEFORE YOU
The smash hit adaptation of Jojo Moyes’s weepie gives Emilia Clarke
(aka Mother of Dragons) a big-screen role to sink her teeth into. She plays a carer looking after an angry quadriplegic.
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