Richard E. Grant made his movie debut as the hilariously exasperating first half of Withnail & I in 1987, a movie that is a personal favorite to many, and the kind of actor-role match you might spend an entire career trying to equal, let alone top. Since then, he’s worked steadily, playing the usual British man-of-a-certain age parts—including ones in Downton Abbey, Gosford Park, Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, plus various historical figures and literary characters. Not to mention franchise villains and sidekicks, a lot of voice work, and many sorta “gay best friend” figures. (Does it qualify as stereotyping when by all appearances this recently-widowed-with-one-child performer is straight?)
For a screen presence idiosyncratic enough to be “difficult to cast,” at least in theory, he does get around a lot. Still, it seems rare that he gets an opportunity like he did in 2019’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, another gay BFF role—this time to Melissa McCarthy’s misanthropic forger—albeit one with enough depth to win him his first (and so far only) Oscar nomination. And even that was no Withnail.
But J.M. Sinclair in The Lesson is, rather. If Withnail, a failed actor turned to alcoholic delusion and grandiosity, had instead been a roaring success, he might well have aged into something like the vain monster Grant plays here. In Alice Troughton’s film from Alex MacKeith screenplay, our viewpoint is that of the initially worshipful Liam (Daryl McCormack, so good in last year’s Good Luck To You, Leo Grande), an as-yet-unpublished aspiring author who out of the blue gets an offer he cannot refuse: To tutor the son of his literary idol Sinclair.
Teenaged Bertie (Stephen McMillan) hopes to study English Lit at Oxford, and needs help prepping for the entrance exams. He automatically assumes Liam is really here to meet the old man, though the newcomer to this family’s impressive country manse tries to play it cool. Once he’s passed muster with Mrs. Sinclair—art dealer Hélène (Julie Delpy)—however, Liam duly begins scheming his way into the Great Man’s confidence.
It’s not that hard, really. After a long hiatus, Sinclair has a new novel completed, and is need of sympathetic input. Although that definitely does not mean he will reciprocate (Liam, too, has a manuscript he’d desperately like this luminary to endorse)… or that he isn’t an egotistical tyrant who frequently makes this household a misery.
Disapproving but stoic Hélène can hold her own. But poor Bertie is often the brunt of J.M.’s ill temper, his fledgling self-worth regularly eviscerated by “Dad.” it helps no one that an older son committed suicide not long ago, and rather than question his own degree of responsibility for that tragedy, the senior Sinclair takes every opportunity to remind the remaining offspring that he is inferior to the late model.
Between Liam’s ambitions, his famous employer’s volatility, Hélène’s more subtly manipulative behavior, and other factors, The Lesson is a sophisticatedly acidic comedy of privilege and striving, with an escalating load of intrigue. It is to the credit of Troughton (whose prior credits have been almost entirely on television, including much Doctor Who-related work) that this clever if schematic screenplay rolls out so judiciously, we don’t realize for a long time where it’s headed. The only giveaways are a somewhat clumsy framing device, and the conventional cavorting tone of Isobel Waller-Bridge’s score, which hits a “cozy murder mystery” note suitable for Agatha Christie.
It’s all almost a little too ingenious, as things wrap up. But getting there is all the fun, and everything is expertly handled—the performers skilled in their watchful restraint around the one performance that needs to dominate. We have no trouble believing Grant as a fearsomely talented author at an autumnal career point, his sore points even sorer than usual because he’s afraid the creative well may have finally run dry. He’s a celebrity of the type whose imperiousness (at one point we see him storm out on an interviewer) is part and parcel to a luxury-grade package. The public expects no less, even if in private it’s a bit hellish to deal with.
Does he love anyone but himself? Did he ever? The scenario here assures that when it comes to regrets… he’ll have a few. It is a measure of Grant’s perfection in the part that this gorgon has pathos; we’re always aware of Sinclair’s insecurities, even as we might wish he’d spend eternity in a slapping machine. There are aspects to The Lesson that can be quibbled over afterward. But I can’t imagine anyone suggesting that Richard E. Grant is less than spectacular in it. The film opens this Fr/7 at area theaters including the Kabuki and Opera Plaza in SF.
Other new movies opening this weekend:
The YouTube Effect
Grant’s figure in The Lesson is a famous person of the old school—enough such that he’s flummoxed by his own home computer technology. This new documentary directed by erstwhile Bill & Ted actor Alex Winter looks at a very 21st-century engine for public exposure (and the addicting hunger for it) that’s helped create a new kind of celebrity, one both more accessible and more empty-calorie. It’s also helped generate much worse things, including a disinformation epidemic fit to potentially tear down the whole “great American experiment.”
YouTube’s founders certainly didn’t have that in mind 18 years ago. As one says here, their initial goal was nothing more than putting a new, hopefully lucrative spin on a preexisting dating site’s concept. But after just 18 months or so, the video-sharing platform got acquired by Google for $1.65 billion. Really? the world asked. That much for stupid pet tricks and Jackass-style prank clips? Yet soon bigger things were flowing through YT, from K-pop going global to the domino effect of Arab Spring. Musicians and standup comedians used it as a career springboard. Even the dumber content was mostly harmless, including the rise of self-appointed influencers and “celebrities” able to reap (sometimes) considerable financial rewards from simply performing their lives on camera.
So how did we get from there to today’s wealth of videos drastically escalating the spread of QAnon, anti-vaxx, “white replacement theory,” and other conspiracy-theory crazinesses? To virtual recruitment tools for racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Muslim, et al. ideologies, and their linked violent extremist groups? To rabbit holes of online “dominance, fear, and hate” that have been amply documented as “grooming” factors in many a mass shooting? Why hasn’t somebody put a cork in what’s become a gallon jug o’ poison?
YouTube now generates over $20 billion annually, and has over 2.5 billion users. So…that’s why. While we hear some rote corporate PR blather about how YouTube takes its ethical responsibilities seriously, it’s clear no one is going to throttle the golden goose in any way that threatens shareholder value. Effect offers no clear solutions, but this dizzying overview does emphasize that sweeping reforms have happened in the past for the sake of the public’s well-being. Hell, we stared down Big Tobacco because it was killing people. Can we not stare down YouTube because it’s killing democracy? Don’t worry—the funny goat videos can stay. The YouTube Effects opens Fri/7 at SF’s Alamo Drafthouse, with Winter present for a live Q&A on Thurs/13.
En Francais: Revoir Paris, Scarlet
Two new French-language dramas offer more low-key takes on the eternal quest for personal identity, and perhaps some semblance of peace. The latter is lost for professional translator Mia (Virginie Efira) in Alice Winocour’s Revoir Paris after one fateful night. When dinner with her doctor boyfriend (Gregoire Colin) gets interrupted by his being called away for work, she decides to stop in another busy restaurant for a drink rather than going straight home. But as she’s about to leave, fellow patrons are trapped in a mass shooting she survives only by “playing dead.” Returning to Paris some months later following a long retreat, Mia remembers almost nothing of the attack. Yet it seems important to do so in order to work through lingering trauma. So she joins a group of survivors and mourning relatives, trying to piece together the fragments of her own experience from theirs.
Very well crafted, Revoir Paris is arguably a little too neat in the way it ultimately ties things together for Mia, as if such devastation were a puzzle one could comfortably lay aside after re-assembling its pieces. Some may also be bothered by the film’s avoidance of politics—it’s only hinted that the incident (which targeted multiple locations) was the work of terrorists. I wasn’t particularly fond of the device in which our heroine keeps glimpsing the dead around her, since the way its staged, it’s more like she’s seeing ghosts than recovering memories. Still, this is a powerful and thoughtful drama that (without being too grim) manages to weigh seriously into the psychological impact on those who survive mass shootings. It opens Fri/7 at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.
At least before the unthinkable happens, Mia lives the kind of independent modern urban life only dreamt of nearly a century earlier by the heroine of Scarlet. Juliette is just an infant when found by father Raphael (Raphael Thiery), a woodworker returned from WW1 military service. Her mother died in childbirth; she’s being raised by Mme. Adeline (Noemie Lvovsky), herself a widow, and that late wife’s now-impoverished former employer.
Raphael is offered a room and board if he’s willing to stay—eventually he finds some outside work as well. But this rural village is friendly towards none of them, its own dirty secrets eventually causing a serious rift between the farmhouse residents and everyone else. Nonetheless, Juliette grows up to be a strong-minded young woman (Juliette Jouan) who will probably make something of herself, to the extent that the times allow.
Director Pietro Marcello’s last narrative feature was Martin Eden, an uneven Italian translation of Jack London’s novel largely punched across by Luca Marinelli’s fine performance in the title role. This is another expansive period piece, albeit a quieter, smaller-scaled one, mercifully without the jarring deliberate anachronisms the director utilized last time. it does have its odd flights of whimsy (into song, even brief animation), perhaps the least of them being the late arrival of Louis Garrel as a romantic interest who literally drops from the sky. (He’s an aviator.)
In the end, there’s perhaps a little less substance here than one would like. Still, most of Scarlet is lovely, especially in literal visual terms, and its ample charm is given some measure of ballast by Thiery, whose craggy, hulking man of few words and simple ethics is a sorrowfully valiant figure worthy of Zola. Scarlet opens Fri/7 at the Opera Plaza and Rafael Film Center.
