Is the modern age—let’s say it starts in 1969 when Withnail and I takes place—the age of hypersensitivity, or is it merely that actors are hypersensitive? The two out-of-work actors in this film seem to exhibit this trait, with, alas, happiness consistently beyond reach. They comfort themselves, however, with booze, pot and cigarettes, not so much with their friendship, though. Almost thirty, Withnail (Richard E. Grant) frustrates Marwood (Paul McGann) and probably vice versa when Marwood convinces Withnail to leave London for a while and spend time in the country. It doesn’t go well.

The film is an autobiographical one, from 1987, written and directed by Bruce Robinson, who co-starred in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet and Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H. Very adept at dialogue, he’s a literate Brit with a literate—and witty—movie. He is pleasantly inventive and some of his film’s incidents could have gotten gross but never do. ‘Tis a deserving work.

Tough-minded Klute (1971), directed by Alan J. Pakula, is one of those urban film dramas of the Seventies, working better than most of what Scorsese and Lumet did at this time. There is a psychological focus on the prostitute Bree, enacted by Jane Fonda, who is nothing short of great, of course. Her Bree is bright and borderline sassy and professionally nice, and corrupt. She never wants her self-confidence to slip. Thanks to Fonda, we believe she aspires to become an actress. We see how a small-town detective like John Klute could fall in love with her. Klute is played by Donald Sutherland, in too subdued a fashion.

An artistic thriller, Klute loses some plausibility in its last 25 minutes. It is worthwhile, even so, blessed with capital performances by Charles Cioffi and Roy Scheider. And with Michael Small’s chilling music.

A doctor, Massarel, living in a town called Canneville represents, in Guy de Maupassant‘s short story “An Affair of State,” the political radical whom events make gleeful. Post-Napoleonic France will again be a republic! In fact, Massarel is prompted to call a couple of his patients “stupid” when they interfere with his activist activity.

But the doctor is in the midst of “listless villagers.” They couldn’t care less about France becoming a republic. For them, affairs of state are not affairs of the heart—or of the ailing body. The Canneville mayor and, apparently, the curate support the Regime. The radical’s enthusiasms are not the enthusiasms of others. Maupassant shakes his head over the fanatical partisan, blind to opposing positions, in this wonderful, even amusing story.

As evidenced by Robert Bresson‘s 1962 Joan of Arc film, The Trial of Joan of Arc, the actual interrogation and testimony of Joan are fascinating in what is an always harrowing story. It makes the Church look bad while Joan is an enduring but also vulnerable Christian. Florence Delay, slight and not unattractive, does not really act in the part of Joan, but has been directed by Bresson for his purposes. This is par for the course. With its threatening air and spare power, this is, I believe, one of Bresson’s best pictures. Currently available on Max.

(In French with English subtitles, and in English)

Characterization in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) is not exactly ideal, but Martin McDonagh‘s film is spiky and probing and absorbing all the same. Here, on an isle off the coast of Ireland in the 1920s, Colm (Brendan Gleeson), chooses pragmatism over morality and good manners by suddenly dropping his close friendship with the “dull”—but usually inoffensive—Padraic (Colin Farrell). Padraic refuses to accept this and mopes a lot.

As with Madame Bovary, there is provincial boredom and disconnectedness. There is loneliness. The “banshees” of the isle, Inisherin, do not scream to herald the death of a family member, but they’re there. They’re represented by a disagreeable old woman called Mrs. McCormick. Death? Along with one literal human death, there is on the isle the death of hope. Colm tells the local priest he is still harboring despair. Indeed, clutching to himself a kind of pragmatism makes sense, but it is still a bad choice. Banshees is a painful tragicomedy from an artist who has come a long way since his limp play The Beauty Queen of Leenane.