Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, Mike Newell (Four Weddings and A Funeral, Mona Lisa Smile) offers cosy romantic drama in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Juliet Ashton (Lily James) is a young, established author, but not under her own name. In a post-WWII London, she receives a letter from a stranger looking for answers and in exchange she learns of a community brought together by books in the bitterness of Guernsey’s German occupation. Intrigued, she invites herself to the island to learn more about this unusual society.

Upon her arrival, Juliet meets the misfit members of the book group and discovers the powerful community they have built for one another. This chorus, each with their own quirks and foibles are written with great wit by Don Roos and Thomas Bezucha. Amongst them are the eccentric gin-brewing Isola (Katherine Parkinson), the slow but compassionate post-master Eben (Tom Courtenay) and the stubborn mother-hen Amelia (Penelope Wilton).

Juliet’s pen pal, the stereotypically rugged but tender Dawsey Adams (Michiel Huisman) is foiled by the growing condescension of her teeth-grindingly smug American love interest, Mark (Glen Powell). The film explores our relationship with the ‘other’; how in light of war, one woman sees humanity transcend political labels, yet another man fails to understand even the limitations of wealth.

Juliet befriends and determinedly questions each character regarding the society’s elusive founder Elizabeth (Jessica Brown Findlay). What she uncovers, relayed through flashbacks, increasingly becomes her most compelling story to date, but Juliet is forced to question the morality of writing about other peoples’ lives.

Filmed in South West England, the movie is largely set on the idyllic island of Guernsey. Juliet flits along coastal paths, between quaint stone cottages and up cobbled streets on her quest to uncover the real costs of the German occupation for this channel island coterie. The stunning yet somewhat bleak landscape shots, respectively act as respite to and a solemn reflection of the darker narrative points.

Newell’s story-telling plays on familiar romantic tropes. These predictable, fairy-tale moments will warm some cockles and burn others with their gratuity. However, the film does stand alone in it’s refreshing portrayal of the lasting effects of war. The themes of community and loss, the romanticism of landscapes and relationships alike, presented through a drip-fed, genuinely mysterious narrative, come together to produce a film well worth watching.

Eve Jones

The post Film Review: Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, “…refreshing portrayal of the lasting effects of war” appeared first on Plymouth Arts Cinema | Independent Cinema for Everyone | located at Arts University Plymouth..

Todd Haynes, saw huge success with his 2015 drama, Carol, but as his first directorial foray into family film, Wonderstruck is a cinematic delight. The 1927 film, The Jazz Singer was the first feature length movie with audible dialogue and revolutionised the way many of us consume film. However, for Rose (Millicent Simmonds), the deaf protagonist of Wonderstruck, this change throws her world upside down. No longer able to engage in the media that she loves, Rose sets off on a life-changing journey in search of a silent film actress (Julianne Moore) and the escapism her films once provided.

Alongside Rose’s adventure, the movie tells the story of pragmatic 11 year-old Ben (Oakes Fegley), on a similar quest to find his enigmatic father 50 years later. He too becomes deaf in a freak accident and both children end up independently navigating New York in their respective time periods, undeterred by their lack of hearing. The tenacious characters share an awe for the bustling city and the Natural History Museum. Haynes portrays the transcendence of a child’s wonder across time through his shot for shot parallels between the two narratives.

The black and white colouring of Rose’s story firmly sets it in its earlier era and, without dialogue, reflects the silent films that she so admires. Haynes substitutes ambient sounds with close-up visuals – we see horses’ feet moving, bells ringing, shoes being shined, to allow audiences an insight into Rose’s sensory experience.

This is not to say that the film is aurally uninteresting. Ben’s viewpoint alternates between the hearing environment he so recently left behind and the relative silence he now experiences. Unlike Rose, Ben converses aloud with other characters, but in both parts of the film the soundtrack is eclectic and atmospheric. It jumps from orchestral numbers to ‘70s funk to David Bowie’s Space Oddity, as much as the style of the film changes from silent film, to more conventional framing and then animation. Haynes manages to find unity amongst this idiosyncrasy where other directors could have lost their way.

By casting Moore as both the silent film actress (in Rose’s narrative) and an older character (in Ben’s narrative), the two stories begin to mysteriously intertwine. Acting a deaf character as a hearing actor requires nuance and both Moore and Fegley execute their roles well. The real breakthrough however, comes from Simmonds, who is herself deaf. Directed by Haynes via an American Sign Language interpreter, she creates emotive interactions with characters through facial expression and movement alone.

There are a few plot flaws where minor characters are abandoned without conclusion, but this could be attributed to the single-mindedness of the children to reach their goals, the stories told from their viewpoints. Ultimately, Wonderstruck offers a refreshing perspective of the world from a minority often overlooked in film.

Eve Jones

The post Film Review: Wonderstruck, “…a refreshing perspective of the world from a minority often overlooked” appeared first on Plymouth Arts Cinema | Independent Cinema for Everyone | located at Arts University Plymouth..

A film packed with incendiary ideas, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story endeavours to put Lamarr’s accomplishments back in the spotlight.

A film-star at her peak during the 1940’s, Vienna-born Hedy Lamarr came to the attention of Hollywood when she starred in controversial film, Ecstasy, in 1933. Appearing nude in several scenes, Lamarr’s notoriety catapulted her to fame. She signed a contract with MGM, and quickly became Hollywood’s latest It Girl.

Her brand of beauty, dark curls and perfectly sculpted features, was tailor made for the silver screen. Lamarr’s look read beautifully in black and white. She worked with industry greats Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy in the 1940 hit Boom Town, and became a beauty icon in her star-crowned role in Ziegfeld Girl.

But behind the scenes, Lamarr was no run-of-the-mill starlet. Interested in science from an early age, Lamarr became an inventor. Blessed with an originality that allowed her to think without constraint, Hedy’s big idea came in 1941. Working with friend George Anthiel, she created the concept of ‘frequency hopping’.

The concept is easy to understand. By changing radio frequencies at random intervals, that frequency becomes an unbreakable code, therefore unreadable by enemy personnel. The applications for military use are quite obvious. Lamarr and Anthiel took out a patent in 1941 and offered it to the US Navy.  Their invention was rejected.

Decades later, Lamarr and Anthiel’s invention came to light. The patent had expired, so the idea was free to be used without the inventors being reimbursed for their work. Lamarr’s initial idea of frequency hopping spear-headed the development of digital communications.  

The decision to ignore Lamarr and Anthiel’s invention is one of those classic ‘what if’ moments, and its use now, both in military and civilian life, shows how on the money Lamarr really was.  It is no exaggeration to say that Lamarr helped to invent WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth. It is an achievement that should have ensured her place in modern science, and yet we still refer to her as Hedy Lamarr, film star. Bombshell attempts to explore what went wrong.

Telling the story through interviews with Lamarr’s family and friends, also included are interview tapes from journalist Fleming Meeks. In a 1990 interview, Meeks talked directly to Lamarr about her childhood, her glamorous life in Hollywood and most crucially, how she made her scientific breakthrough. Lamarr’s voice is rich with experience, and director Alexandra Dean wisely uses it liberally throughout the documentary.

Bombshell is, as you might expect, forensic in its analysis. Not only does it lay bare the questionable choices Lamarr made in her private life; it also highlights her troubled later years. Nearly broke, hooked on pills given to her on-set, Lamarr’s mood swings made her extremely difficult to live with. She become more and more isolated, even to the extent of ostracising herself from her family. Particularly poignant is the story from her granddaughter, who received signed glamour photos from Lamarr, but had no real connection with her.

The documentary’s narrative is threaded through with missed opportunities. Some of these are due to the era Lamarr was living in, but others, the film makes clear, are Hedy’s responsibility.  A good documentary should be impartial, and Bombshell excels on this point. You may enter the cinema with an image of a star, but you leave with a portrait of a woman. Lamarr’s achievements should be better-known, and hopefully this documentary will go some way to repaying the debt we owe her. Lamarr’s frequency hopping idea is now worth $30 billion. Lamarr never saw a penny of it, thanks to the intricacies of patent law. Her idea, if properly applied, would have made Lamarr’s name as ubiquitous in the tech industry as Gates or Jobs. It is an oversight of astonishing proportions, and the US Navy’s decision to ignore Lamarr’s invention is justly ridiculed.

“Her idea, if properly applied, would have made Lamarr’s name as ubiquitous in the tech industry as Gates or Jobs.”

We think of beauty, especially feminine beauty, as being a passport to all the desirable things in life; fame, success, adoration. But Hedy’s story directly challenges that idea. Her beauty, while giving her plenty of screen time, limited people’s perception of her. She could only be the one ideal: goddess, not inventor. A beautiful woman cannot be both. It is a flip side to beauty that most of us don’t even consider. Lamarr’s progress as a scientist would have been exponentially greater had she been born plain. It is an uncomfortable truth, but at its core is the old narrative – a woman showing promise and potential must be regarded with suspicion. Lamarr’s ideas met with opposition, not just because she was beautiful, but because she was a woman.

Education’s current level of interest in STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) proves that there is still a need to promote this area, study and career, to girls. I would argue that screening Bombshell in schools would be a great place to start. If they can’t get excited about a woman who was the model for Disney’s Snow White, inventing WiFi, there’s no hope.

Bombshell not only reframes Lamarr’s story, it proposes a fundamental shift in how we look at her. We are not asked to see past her beauty, but to sideline it altogether. For a culture where the worship of beauty is so embedded, this is no simple task. Bombshell asks us, like Hedy, to think radically. See the person, not the face. Lamarr had many faces, but her reality was invention, her ability to create what was not there before. A mind not only of prodigious power, but of true originality, Hedy Lamarr has transformed the way we communicate with each other. It is only now that we are beginning to hear what she had to say.

Helen Tope

@Scholar1977

The post Film Review: Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, “A film packed with incendiary ideas…” appeared first on Plymouth Arts Cinema | Independent Cinema for Everyone | located at Arts University Plymouth..

The word charming doesn’t necessarily spring to mind when watching a film starring a pack of flea-ridden, scabby, sneezing, filthy dogs living in a canine displacement camp called Trash Island, but it perfectly describes Wes Anderson’s latest offering.

The film, Isle of Dogs, is set twenty years in the future in a fictional, dystopian Japanese city called Magasaki. Various diseases, including the dreaded “snout flu”, have ravaged the canine population and, as a result, the city’s corrupt mayor has banished all dogs to a bleak, off-shore island that serves as the local rubbish tip. The dogs live and fight and survive among the rubbish on Trash Island along with the rats and the ticks and the mosquitoes.

Grim and bonkers as it sounds, this stop motion feature recalls Anderson’s 2009 feature Fantastic Mr Fox, and is anthropomorphism in its most exhuberant form. The dogs are brought to life with wisps of fur moving in the breeze and fleas running through their coats, and when tears well up (of course dogs can’t really cry) all disbelief is suspended, even though suspension of disbelief is a prerequisite here: At the very start we are informed that, for the purposes of the film, “all barks are rendered into English”.

The plot follows Atari, the mayor’s 12 year-old ward and the search for his own canine protector, Spots, who has also been banished to the island. Crash landing his “Junior Turbo-Prop” rocket ship on Trash Island, Atari teams up with a pack of self-styled “indestructible alpha dogs”, a band of battle-scarred, sneezing misfits led by Chief (Bryan Cryanston). Their hunt for Spots takes them across the industrial wasteland of the island via a series of mechanised, eccentric and sometimes menacing modes of transport. Meanwhile, a pro-dog group led by aspiring investigative journalist and foreign exchange student Tracy (Greta Gerwig) leads a revolt against the mayor with the help of research scientist Yoko Ono (voiced by Yoko Ono). Just like Fantastic Mr Fox, the sometimes tenuous plot here revolves around a sense of kinship, meticulously-detailed capers, missions and escape plans.

The cast list alone should give you an indication of what deadpan fun and outright kooky treats you are in for. Along with Cryanston, Gerwig and Ono, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton and Jeff Goldblum are all up for some zany fun.

But unlike Fantastic Mr Fox, which was based on a children’s book, Isle of Dogs feels more demanding in nature, more grown up. The film doesn’t shy away from adult themes and has a prominent message about oppression and discrimination and what happens when corrupt governments work to silence a population. While the use of animated dogs makes its appeal more universal there are other aspects that make it more impenetrable for children.  While the dogs “speak” English, the human characters speak in their native tongue, but there are no subtitles for the Japanese and only some of it is translated by interpreters.

Despite this and despite the group of sometimes fidgety pre-schoolers at the screening we went to, I am happy to report that we all loved it, including the ten and twelve year-olds (the story is, after all, about a 12 year-old boy’s search for his dog). Saying Isle of Dogs quickly enough turns it into “I love dogs”, and the love for four legged fleabags of all shapes and sizes on screen here is palpable –  but you don’t have to love dogs to love this film; just cinema and the power of imagination.

Monika Maurer

The post Film review: Isle of Dogs, “…deadpan fun and outright kooky treats…” appeared first on Plymouth Arts Cinema | Independent Cinema for Everyone | located at Arts University Plymouth..

Andrey Zvyagintsev has a growing reputation not just as a director but as modern Russia’s conscience. Just as Vladimir Putin has now secured a fourth term in a landslide victory, Zvyagintsev appears like Banquo’s ghost to remind us of the poisons currently afflicting his home country.

His last film, Leviathan (2014) won armfuls of accolades and awards the world over. Yet at home it was harshly criticised by the government (who part-funded the film) and sought to subject it to a new law that could see it banned for “defiling the national culture.” It certainly was an eye opener, full as it was of vodka swilling apparatchiks crushing the spirits and (literally) the homes of anyone standing in their way. At its centre was a monolith, a huge whale carcass (the leviathan of the title) that stood as a symbol of Russia’s massive and insurmountable obstacles.

That image could be argued to be pretty on the nose – it’s certainly difficult to miss. Loveless pretty much suffers from the same problem (insofar as it is a problem) – it’s fair I think to say that Zvyagintsev is not really a dealer in great subtlety. He may believe the issues he is communicating are too urgent to waste time with anything less than the starkest of images. Loveless does at one point feature a main character stuck on a treadmill, wearing a Lycra top with “Russia” actually emblazoned on the front of it. Hm.

But for all that the film does not lose any of its emotional punch. We start out by seeing the awful marriage of Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey Rozin) on its very last legs. When at home they argue furiously in front of their child, Alexey (Matvey Novikov) and away from home they both have their bit on the side. The only reason they are keeping the sham together at all is, at least in part, due to a bizarre and ultra-conservative rule at their work where they must be proven to have a family. Then, one day, Alexey does not come home. When it becomes clear that this is not a simple case of playing truant, they alert the authorities, who do not seem at all bothered (runaways are at epidemic levels in Russia, apparently). The matter becomes desperate and Zhenya and Boris must find some way of collaborating, despite their animosity. They dig right through the ruins, including old buildings, family homes and Russia’s crumbling institutions, in their increasingly frantic search.

Loveless is, like a form of surgery, painful but necessary. As matters escalate in that part of world we have, in Zvyagintsev, a real insider feeding us knowledge about what life is like there, from his point of view. We should all be keeping an eye on what he’s up to.

Ieuan Jones

The post Film Review: Loveless, “Loveless is, like a form of surgery, painful but necessary.” appeared first on Plymouth Arts Cinema | Independent Cinema for Everyone | located at Arts University Plymouth..

So, the golden statuettes have all been handed out, the corks have all been popped and it’s the morning after the night before.  Since the venerable Academy have decided that Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is the year’s best film, are we to make the same of it?

Well, it certainly was an interesting choice. It has many of the hallmarks of a del Toro fable. It is both grounded in a real world – in this case Cold War Baltimore – and also adrift a world of fantasy. This particular one looks like it’s ripped straight from a vintage copy of the classic comic ‘Amazing Stories.’ You can even imagine a tagline like “Forbidden Love of the Sea!” set on the cover, among the other splashes of space aliens and giant bugs. (The next-door neighbour here, Giles (Richard Jenkins), who is an illustrator pimping his art, feels like a conscious nod to this idea.) And The Shape of Water really is comic book to its core – from its bold primary colours, all sea greens and raspberry reds – to its plot, which juxtaposes real monsters who feel with human monsters who don’t.

Del Toro has form with comics (sorry, graphic novels) of course – he directed the Marvel adaptation Blade II (2002) and was behind the two Hellboy films (originally Dark Horse comics) made to date. But The Shape of Water feels immediately different to these, perhaps closer to the dark imagination of his Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Sally Hawkins plays Elisa, a mute cleaner of a government facility, where the incredible discovery of a merman is wheeled in inside a tank. Elisa’s intrigue is piqued and she sneaks in to steal glances of the mysterious fish man, then leaves out some food for him, and then … well, you don’t need me to tell you what happens next. Suffice it to say that before long the danger becomes all too real, from the military, in the form of Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon, at his most Michael Shannon) and those they are pitted against, namely the Russians. The misfits become pawns in the game of the power hungry, including the humble scientists such as Dr Hoffstetler, played by Michael Stuhlbarg (who by law must be in every Hollywood film going right now).

The Shape of Water’s broadness sometimes gets the better of it. Elisa’s friend at the facility, Yolanda (Allegra Fulton) felt a little too close to type and without any shade. And one scene in particular, where Giles is made to feel most unwelcome at his favourite lunch spot, was pretty on the nose – making explicit what had been made abundantly clear elsewhere. But when it hits, it really does – right down to a musical number sprung from nowhere and right out of golden age song and dance routine. Maybe it was the perfect choice for an old Hollywood backslap after all!

Ieuan Jones

The post Film Review: The Shape of Water, “The misfits become pawns in the game of the power hungry…” appeared first on Plymouth Arts Cinema | Independent Cinema for Everyone | located at Arts University Plymouth..

Writer-director Greta Gerwig’s solo debut is a wincingly funny and wistfully sentimental bildungsroman comedy. Unique experiences of teenage isolation and traditional coming-of-age tropes combine to create a modern ode to teenage hometowns; to loving yet restrictive mothers; and to the ubiquity of adolescent yearning, the yearning of all senses.

The piece can be considered a bildungsroman in both senses, with Saoirse Ronan playing the titular Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, a spunky and obstinate teen attending Catholic high school, portraying both some of the first years of true personality and final years of spiritual education. Although confident and willing, Lady Bird is undiscerning and almost snobbis, with her self-given nickname appealing holistically to all of her characteristics. Overwhelmingly, Lady Bird is alienated- by her fluxing relationship with Catholicism; by her town, “the Midwest of California”; by her overt sense of class in a strikingly post—9/11 American suburbia; but mostly by her intensely pragmatic and pessimistic mother who dismisses her dreams to study at “cultured” and bohemian East Coast colleges. This lack of maternal communication is the crux of the film, with dialogues (or lack thereof) that all viewers will find simultaneously comforting and authentic; both Lady Bird and her mother are unable to make the self-sacrifices needed to maintain the parental bonds forged in childhood.   

Gerwig doesn’t view her work as a truly autobiographical piece, instead commenting “it has a core of truth that resonates with what I know.” One of the most interesting aspects of the film is its time period, with the depiction of high school boredom circa 2002 inviting questions of class, societal inequality and the ‘war on terror’. Young people today are often blanketed by their addiction to ever-general ‘social media’ by the media, but Lady Bird emphasises that the passionate hedonism and determination of youth (with almost every scene beginning in media res and continuing at this intense speed) fosters the same emotions and relationships regardless of technology or setting- characters truly are the focus of this film, and not their status or family situation (although it’s reported that Gerwig did ban mobiles phones being used whilst on set).

Ultimately, Lady Bird is a film that will make you laugh but also consider both your coming-of-age and your parenting (if applicable, naturally). Subtle and poignant dialogue is complemented with a lightning-fast plot to successfully portray all aspects of youth, and its age-defying qualities of independence, isolation and love. If Conan Gray and Jeffrey Eugenides were to come together and make a film, Lady Bird would almost certainly be the end point.

Additionally, the £4 under-25s tickets at Plymouth Arts Centre really are fantastic. Myself and friends often enjoy contemporary, classic and independent cinema for such brilliant prices here in Plymouth. I think it is massively important that art is open and accessible to all, and £4 tickets really are testament to this.

Beau Waycott

The post Film Review: Lady Bird, “…wincingly funny and wistfully sentimental” appeared first on Plymouth Arts Cinema | Independent Cinema for Everyone | located at Arts University Plymouth..

It is quite surprising to learn that the hugely popular Wonder Woman super heroine was created by Professor William Marston. He was a psychologist and the inventor of a prototype lie detector machine and is not the type of person you would associate with scripting frivolous comic books.

This film explores how this came about when William is brought before the Child Study Association of America in 1945, to justify the violence and blatant sexual imagery depicted in his Wonder Woman stories.

By means of flashbacks, William who is charmingly played by Luke Evans is revealed to be a popular professor at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded as a liberal arts college for women as a counterpoint to the all-male Harvard College, Radcliffe was the ideal setting for William to articulate his support of feminism and liberation.

William is married to the worldly and cynical Elizabeth portrayed by Rebecca Hall who is angry that even with a PhD the opportunities for her are restricted, because she does not have a ‘cock.’

At first, the couple observe one of his students, Olive Byrne played by Bella Heathcote, as if she is a laboratory subject. William and Elizabeth agree that her beauty is like a handicap that attracts her to men and makes other women jealous. Both of them are fascinated by her and want to discover more about her.

The Marston’s relationship with Olive becomes more intense when she agrees to be William’s laboratory assistant. Olive inspires them to make improvements to his lie detector machine, and her input enables it to work properly. As part of William’s DISC theory studies Olive is persuaded to join in the activities of ‘The Baby Party’ where freshmen girls at the college have to dress like babies and be punished for any form of disobedience.

Based on his observations, William believed that so-called normal people displayed four primary behavioural traits: Dominance, Inducement, Submission and Compliance (DISC). How people perceive, and are influenced by these factors, determines how they relate to their experiences and relationships.

Self-effacing Olive is shocked by Elizabeth’s outspoken behaviour, but soon becomes attracted to her and to William as well. After Olive helps them fix the lie detector machine, they test it out on each other causing its twitching recording arm to indicate all three are in love with each other. Upon this realisation, William, Elizabeth and Olive set up house as a polyamorous relationship.

When rumours circulate around the college about their unusual relationship, they are fired. Forced to start over again, the threesome must find ways to assimilate their unusual lifestyle in a ‘normal’ neighbourhood and in average Joe jobs. Despite his quest for normalcy, at least in appearance, William accidentally discovers the pleasures of bondage at a costume shop run by Charles Guyette, who famously introduced fetish art to the USA. William buys a collection of sadomasochistic images from Charles and proudly shares them with Olive and Elizabeth. He says the pictures show different aspects of his DISC theory. Elizabeth is not impressed and calls it pornography.

As William continues to struggle to make a living as a writer of self-improvement books, he comes up with the idea of a Wonder Woman heroine who can be an inspiring role model for children. In these stories, he incorporates elements of his own life into his female superhero. For example, the image of Wonder Woman is in fact based on Olive, her ‘invisible’ aircraft is based on a glass aircraft model given to him by Olive and Elizabeth, and he incorporates his beloved DISC theories and how they relate to bondage into the mix.

Rather than being about the creation of the comic book Wonder Woman, Angela Robinson’s film deals with how William celebrates and embraces Wonder Women, specifically Olive and Elizabeth, who like all women are dominated by a masculine society that has rigid social barriers.

Robinson uses the essential message of William’s Wonder Woman (and Wonder Women) to explore the pleasures, pains, boundaries and freedoms in the theatre of life. Indeed, his lie detector machine shows that what we say is not what we unconsciously believe or feel. We have to conform and act to be accepted in society or in close personal relationships; whereas in the act of creation or play acting, we can explore who we really are. Underlining this we are shown the three of them dressing up and embracing each other for the first time, on the theatre stage at Radcliffe College.

The film is not meant to be a drama-documentary designed to give us factual information about William’s life, theories, inventions or writing. Instead, Robinson uses their story as a useful starting point to address the issue of sexual desire and relations beyond the standard perceptions of the heterosexual society and the ‘nuclear family’ that dominated the US in the 1940s and is still in many quarters regarded as the norm.

The actors give a sympathetic portrayal of people coping with a world that does not understand them. They can only deal with the situation by living secret lives or through the despised medium of the comic strip, with the hope that future generations will be more understanding.

Robinson depicts the story in a sensitive manner that is never gratuitous or exploitative, like the film’s characters, it draws us into understanding non-conformist love and desire.

Nigel Watson

The post Film Review: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, “…a sympathetic portrayal of people coping with a world that does not understand them” appeared first on Plymouth Arts Cinema | Independent Cinema for Everyone | located at Arts University Plymouth..