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A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino)

🇺🇸🇬🇧🇮🇪 VOD 🇨🇦 PlutoTV, VOD 🇳🇿 SBS on Demand, Fetch (VOD) 🇬🇧 Studio Canal Presents (Channel) Find it in your country​

Almost a decade ago, Luca Guadagnino made this sexy film about four romantically and sexually entangled people, starring Ralph Fiennes (stealing the show), Matthias Schoenaerts, Tilda Swinton, and Dakota Johnson.

The film makes for a great double feature with Challengers. Plus, Ralph Fiennes dances to the Rolling Stones in a scene you'll want to rewatch endlessly.

Back when the film was released, we put together a Special Issue on the film, featuring essays on the film and performances, plus an interview with Guadagnino.

Mothering Sunday (Eva Husson)

🇺🇸 Starz, VOD 🇨🇦 Prime, VOD 🇳🇿 Foxtel Now, SBS on Demand, VOD 🇬🇧🇮🇪 VOD Find it in your country​

This post-WW1 film by Eva Husson features one of Josh O'Connor's best performances in a supporting role as Paul, the tragic posh paramour of Jane (Odessa Young), the film's protagonist. Jane works as a servant next door and is in the process of becoming a writer.

The film takes place in three time periods to show the progress of Jane's writing career and romantic relationships. In the earliest segments, O'Connor is remarkable as a man who lost his generation in the Great War, who is kind and sensitive but whose class position means he can't offer Jane a long-term relationship.

La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)

Now in cinemas in the US/Canada! Coming soon to the UK!

Alice Rohrwacher's (Happy as Lazarro, The Wonders) latest film stars Josh O'Connor as Arthur, a British archeologist carving out a meagre existence in Italy as a professional graverobber, seeking out Etruscan treasure. He's also mourning the loss of his deceased girlfriend, trying to decide whether he wants to join the land of the living or chase after a woman who now only lives in his dreams.

I don't usually feel like Rohrwarcher's films are for me, but this portrait of a lonely outsider worked for me. Rohrwacher's tremendous blocking helps us understand how Arthur is and isn't part of a community. Cinematographer Hélène Louvart uses natural light to bring a dreamy quality to the film. Josh O'Connor adds layers of depth to a character who isn't quite as complex on the page.

It's also O'Connor's second film of the year where we meet him in a scene where one person calls him charming and hot, and another counters that yes, but he smells.

Homesick (Anne Sewitsky, 2015)

🇺🇸 VOD 🇨🇦 Rent/buy on GooglePlay/YouTube 🇬🇧🇮🇪 Netflix 🇳🇿 Plex

​Find it in your country​

Anne Sewitsky's second feature, Homesick, was one of my favourite films at Sundance 2015 and persuaded me to pay attention to the festival's World Dramatic Competition (where films like God's Own Country and The Souvenir would later premiere). But it's been unavailable in North America for over nine years...until now!

Ine Wilmann gives a terrific performance as a dancer dealing with her crappy relationship with her mother and her newfound discovery that she has a biological brother that she's never met before. Incest-y vibes ensue, but this is a psychologically thoughtful and complex film.

​Read my review​

​Read my interview with Ine Wilmann and Anne Sewitsky​

As In Heaven (Tea Lindburg)

🇨🇦🇬🇧 ViaPlay 🇨🇦 Kanopy 🇺🇸 VOD (Amazon, Apple TV)

​Find it in your country​

Tea Lindburg's feature debut takes place over a single day in 1880s rural Denmark. Teenage Lise’s carefree childish pursuits will continually be interrupted by adult responsibilities over which she has little control. Whether it’s taking care of her younger siblings or something else, Lise is expected to act more and more like a grown-up without gaining access to any of the privileges of being an adult, including being admitted to the room where her mother is going through a difficult labour.

“I’d never read anything where the [mother’s] labour is actually the frame of the story,” first-time writer-director Tea Lindeburg told me. It’s that fateful labour that will, over the course of one intense and stressful night, change the course of Lise’s life.

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The Tragedy of Macbeth

🇬🇧 Streaming on the BBC iPlayer until May 11

In 2021, London's Almeida Theatre staged an amazing production of The Tragedy of Macbeth starring Saoirse Ronan and James McArdle. It's surprisingly hard to find excellent productions of Shakespeare's tragedy, and this is one of the few where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are a fantastic dynamic duo.

Fortunately for those of us who missed it, there's a recording! And it's beautifully done — a cinematic rendering of a play that makes you feel like you're in the theatre seeing the show.

Need more convincing? Listen to a preview of our episode on The Tragedy of Macbeth.

Or head to your Premium Podcast Feed (Members Only) to listen to the full episode.

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