PICK OF THE WEEK
BLINK TWICE
General release
Plutophobic drama has become a flourishing subgenre in recent years: consider, for instance, the satirical bite of The White Lotus (2021-), Triangle of Sadness (2022), The Menu (2022) and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022).
In her riveting, often shocking directorial debut, Zoë Kravitz also shines a light upon the entitlement, mind games and (in some cases) outright psychosis of the extraordinarily wealthy, connecting these themes to the power dynamics of the #MeToo era. Blink Twice could have been a by-the-numbers thriller about a bedazzled catering waitress, Frida (Naomi Ackie, terrific), out of her depth and in danger on the private island of tech mogul Slater King (Channing Tatum, never better), seeking rehabilitation from an unnamed scandal. But it is so much more.
That this is so owes a great deal to the first-rank ensemble cast that Kravitz assembles: Alia Shawkat as Jess, Frida’s best friend; Adria Arjona as Sarah, a reality-show contestant who sees Frida as a threat; Haley Joel Osment as the goofy Tom; Christian Slater as senior executive Vic; Simon Rex as the gratingly obsessive chef Cody; Kyle MacLachlan as Rich, King’s therapist; and Geena Davis as his assistant, Stacy.
The island is an oasis of indulgence for tech bros and their guests: gourmet cuisine, fine wine, a limitless supply of MDMA and pot, identical white clothing supplied for the women (“I don’t think it’s weird, I think it’s just, like, rich,” says Frida).
But there is a dark side to King’s choreographed Bacchanalia that slowly reveals itself, initially in unexplained details (why does Frida find dirt under her fingernails? Why is there a spooky maid, straight out of The Shining or Don’t Look Now, who keeps addressing her as “Red Rabbit”?) When Jess disappears and everybody else acts as if she has never been on the island, Frida grasps that she and the other women are in mortal peril.
Kravitz’s script, co-written with ET Feigenbaum, is pin-sharp, and Adam Newport-Berra’s sumptuous cinematography evokes perfectly the sensuality of luxurious leisure shading into psychedelic nightmare. It would be wrong to reveal more about a movie that delivers so many sleights of hand, jump scares and twists – except to say that Blink Twice is a multi-layered exploration of power, memory, patriarchy and trauma. “Forgetting is a gift,” insists King. But a gift to whom?
BOOK
THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY by Elif Shafak
Viking
“Water remembers. It is humans who forget.” Elif Shafak’s magnificent 13th novel begins as the biography of a single drop of water (“no bigger than a bean and lighter than a chickpea”), its trajectory through time and space traced in a fiction that is often breathtaking in its scope and ambition.
Shafak, who is Turkish-British, structures her story around three principal personalities. First, in 19th-century London, there is Arthur – loosely based on the Assyriologist George Smith – who rises from indigence to pursue a scholarly obsession with ancient Nineveh.
Fast forward to 2014 and we meet Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris in south-east Turkey, in a village that will soon be consumed by water; rumours of the rise of Islamic State loom over her community.
Four years later, enter Zaleekhah, a young hydrologist who is going through divorce and lives on a houseboat on the Thames – near to Arthur’s birthplace.
The novel contains multitudes, both in its thematic reach (environmental crisis, migration, violence, memory) and because of Shafak’s encyclopaedic knowledge. In the latter respect, she reminds me of Umberto Eco – though her fiction has much greater emotional depth and soul.
To achieve such maximalism without surrendering the human touch that suffuses all of her novels is quite an accomplishment. One of the must-reads of 2024.
CINEMA
ALIEN: ROMULUS
General release
Fede Álvarez’s taut thriller is the best instalment in the 45-year-old franchise since James Cameron’s Aliens (1986). After the baggy philosophy of Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), it’s back to basics as a group of young runaways from a grim mining colony, 65 light years from Earth, break into a space station in search of the precious cryopods that will enable them to complete their escape.
You can guess what awaits them, and it is nastier than ever – HR Giger’s savage Xenomorph restored to the central position in the Alien saga from which it should never have been displaced. Yes, there are plenty of Easter eggs and callbacks to other movies in the series – one pointed reference to Ridley Scott’s original Alien (1979) has already proved divisive – but Alien: Romulus works as a standalone sci-fi thriller. Cailee Spaeny as Rain and David Jonsson as her adopted android brother Andy are especially good.
MUSIC
FRANK CARTER AND THE SEX PISTOLS
Touring in September
Earlier this month, three of the surviving Sex Pistols – Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock – teamed up with younger punk vocalist Frank Carter to perform their classic 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols in its entirety at Bush Hall.
The three gigs, to raise money for the legendary west London venue, were a storming success (reader, I pogoed), and the cross-generational quartet has signed up for five further performances around the country next month.
