Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 278: Tue Oct 6

The Girl Cut in Two (Chabrol, 2007): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6pm

This screening, which will be introduced by the director's daughter and the film’s scriptwriter, Cécile Maistre-Chabrol is part of the Claude Chabrol season at BFI Southbank. There is another screening on October 3rd (details here).

Time Out review:
‘French society may be drifting towards Puritanism or decadence,’ says deciduous, sixtysomething, Goncourt-winning author Charles Saint-Denis (a marvellously offhand François Berléand) in a mock-channel TV interview in this nonchalantly acidic, upper-class-baiting delight by approaching-nonagenarian director Claude Chabrol. Charles is clearly a fully paid-up member of the decadent party: holed up in splendid isolation in his modernist manse in the Lyon countryside, the old married roué, gourmand, aphorist and erotomane is dubbed affectionately ‘the Marquis de Sade’ by his well-preserved publisher Capucine (Mathilda May). He’s moved to join the despised Parisian ‘media circus’ having smelled fresh blood in Ludivine Sagnier’s honest-hearted, less socially favoured weather girl, who he subjects to a series of ‘free-love’ humiliations and abasements in his upmarket brothel. Meanwhile, the unfortunate woman is assailed, in the equally threatening second half of a destructive pincer-movement, by the manic attentions of idle, arrogant, unstable, fatherless – and puritan – millionaire Paul (Benoít Magimel) intent on marriage and possession. An immaculate script, written with his long-term collaborator Cécile Maistre, reinvents the celebrated 1906 White murder case as a barbed anti-French-establishment anti-fairy tale (Sagnier’s weather girl is named Deneige – ‘snow’). Beautifully lit and crisply shot by Eduardo Serra, and directed with a confidence and seeming ease that stems from (and quotes) some 60 years of post-New Wave cinematic mastery, Chabrol’s latest comedy of manners is a minor stylistic and tonal triumph. Eschewing explicit moral condemnation in favour of a scabrous Buñuelian cool, humanised by a marvellously affecting central performance by Sagnier, and surrounded intriguingly by satellite performances which play riskily and amusingly with the edges of self-parody, this is one of Chabrol’s most elegant, acerbic and heartfelt entertainments in years.
Wally Hammond

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 277: Mon Oct 5

Wake in Fright (Kotcheff, 1971): Prince Charles Cinema, 3.15pm

This screening is the theatrical English premiere of the new 4K Restoration, courtesy of Arrow Video.

Chicago Reader review:
Ted Kotcheff (First Blood, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) directed this forgotten Australian masterpiece (1971) about an arrogant Sydney schoolteacher (Garry Bond) who's slowly driven mad after a prolonged stay in the Yabba, a desolate mining town in the middle of the Australian outback. After gambling away every dollar he has, Bond succumbs to the aggressive hospitality of the locals, and they condition him to their brutish lifestyle, which seems to consist mostly of constant drinking, random fistfights, anarchic destruction of other people's property, and kangaroo hunting. A Conradian parable of a man succumbing to the wild, the film is remarkable for its raw, pointed depiction of human behavior. Push a man too far, Kotcheff suggests, and you'll find the beast concealed behind the mask of propriety.
Drew Hunt

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 276: Sun Oct 4

The Colour of Lies (Chabrol, 1999): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 3.10pm

This film is part of the Claude Chabrol season at BFI Southbank. The other screening of the film on September 26th is detailed here.

BFI Southbank introduction:
When a young girl is found murdered in a small Breton coastal town, suspicion falls on a local painter – a man of volatile temperament and uncertain alibi – as the community begins to turn on itself. Fans of Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt will recognise much here. However, Chabrol is less interested in identifying the killer than in capturing the poisonous social atmosphere that the crime unleashes: the rumour, the prejudice and the quiet savagery of village life.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 275: Sat Oct 3

The Bridesmaid (Chabrol, 2004): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 3.10pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Claude Chabrol season at BFI Southbank. The other screenings of the film, introduced by season curator Catherine Wheatley, is on October 5th. Details here.

BFI Southbank introduction:
A shy, somewhat passive young man falls into an all-consuming affair with a woman he meets at his sister’s wedding. Unfortunately, she’s a compulsive fantasist who will shortly ask him to prove his love in the most extreme ways. A Ruth Rendell adaptation, this is a heady tale of amour fatale, carried along by the charismatic performances of Magimel and Smet.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 274: Fri Oct 2

The Last Days of Disco (Stillman, 1998): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.40pm

This 35mm presentation also screens on September 25th at BFI Southbank. Details here.

Time Out review:
Manhattan, the early '80s. Recent graduates from an upper crust college, Alice (Chloe Sevigny) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) - flatmates and friends of a sort - pass their days working as trainee publishing editors, and most of their nights discussing social niceties at a fashionable disco where assistant manager Des (Eigeman) courts the boss's disfavour by admitting the wrong kind of clientele. The girls hang out at the disco with a preppy bunch of Harvard admen and lawyers; rumour, rivalry and falling-out is rife and relationships are frequently at risk. The third comedy of manners in Whit Stillman's loose trilogy about the 'doomed bourgeois in love' again highlights the writer/director's expertise with naturalistically articulate dialogue whose idioms, ironies and absurdities provide vivid insights into the delusions, desires and often ludicrous tribal rituals of the young, privileged and, mostly, pretty ineffectual. Like Metropolitan and Barcelona, it's a brittle, sporadically brilliant film, very funny but rooted in social, political, historical and emotional realities. Beckinsale, especially, is a revelation, making Charlotte smug, spiteful, sexy and, underneath, rather sad, all with a spot-on accent.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 273: Thu Oct 1

La Ceremonie (Chabrol, 1995): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.10pm

This film, featuring an extended intro on queer Chabrol by academic Kit Francis Bradbury Rance, is part of the Claude Chabrol season at BFI Southbank. The other screening of the film on October 6th is detailed here.

Time Out review:
When Catherine (Jacqueline Bisset) takes on Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire) as housekeeper, her family's impressed by Sophie's aura of quiet responsibility, even though they're not convinced she knows how to serve dinner correctly. Snobbish but liberal, they nevertheless treat her generously. Only when she starts to consort with postmistress Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), a gossip whom husband Georges (Jean-Pierre Cassel) suspects of opening the family mail, do they find real cause for complaint. But by then the women have a secret bond which excludes them from the safe cosseted world of Sophie's employers. Claude Chabrol's adaptation of Ruth Rendell's A Judgement in Stone benefits from the director's immaculate sense of social and psychological detail. The film's strong points are not mystery, suspense or even surprise, but Chabrol's flair for characterisation, careful pacing and solid evocation of bourgeois complacency and anti-bourgeois hatred creates a palpable sense of unease that fully justifies the shockingly violent finale. Ledoyen, the daughter of the household, is a discovery; Bisset returns to form; and Huppert, unusually vivacious, is terrific.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 272: Wed Sep 30

Beautiful Thing (MacDonald, 1996): Genesis Cinema, 6.15pm

This 35mm screening will feature a Q&A with director Hettie Macdonald, moderated by Reclaiam The Frame's Melanie Iredale.

Time Out film:
A real winner this, from producer Tony Garnett and Channel 4: an 'urban fairytale' set in darkest Thamesmead, South London. Jamie (Berry) is in love with next-door neighbour Ste (Neal), but he's terrified his mum will find out, and Ste has plenty of troubles of his own. It may sound like a feelgood movie, but throw in the timeless tunes of Mama Cass, a funny romantic screenplay by Jonathan Harvey (skillfully adapting his own play), and a formidable performance from Linda Henry as Jamie's independent-minded mother, and you have the likeliest gay crossover hit since My Beautiful Laundrette.
Tom Charity

Here (and above) is the trailer.