When someone spotted Carey Mulligan in the Columbia Road Flower Market, and someone else told me she lived near it, I recommended to my daughter, who also lived near the Columbia Road Flower Market, that she should become good friends with Carey Mulligan. I was hopeful this would happen, because Carey Mulligan seems such a nice person to be good friends with. I’ve seen many of her films, and her true self always seemed to shine through. It ended up not happening, and then my daughter came back to New Zealand. But I am still a Carey Mulligan fanboy, and, in my alternate life, she and my daughter are the best of friends.
I mention Carey Mulligan, perhaps slightly obsessively, because she is in two movies currently on release. I haven’t yet seen Promising Young Woman, (next time) but she’s in a little charmer called The Dig, in which she plays Edith Pretty. Edith Pretty had been through a lot. Recently widowed, raising a young son, and with World War II about to happen, she had a lot on her emotional plate. She was also physically ill, and, in her 40s and 50s, had to walk with a stick and raise her son. Edith had a feeling there was something buried in those weird mounds on her property. She hired a self-taught excavator/archeologist (Ralph Fiennes) to find out what, if anything, lay underneath. What lay underneath was the treasure we now know as Sutton Hoo. It was quite possibly the most significant archeological find England has ever produced. Everyone assumed it was a dime-a-dozen Viking burial mound. In fact, it was from the much earlier Anglo-Saxon era and shed light on what, until then, had been called the Dark Ages. The scene in which the gold first emerges from the dirt, brushed off by a young student archeologist is electric. The Dig is a film that quietly interweaves mounting anxiety about whether the dig would finish before the war started, her deepening grief, and her fear that she would not live to see her son grow up. Carey Mulligan is possibly too young to play the real Edith who was 56 when Sutton Hoo was excavated, but I was very happy to willingly suspend my disbelief because, well, it was Carey Mulligan. On Netflix.
Next up is the similarly titled The Dry — a thriller starring Eric Bana, not reprising his role as the kick-boxing son-in-law in The Castle. Eric Bana plays Aaron Falk, an Australian federal police officer who returns home to a small town somewhere in the dusty back of beyond for the funeral of a childhood friend who apparently has murdered his wife and child, and then killed himself. What complicates his return is that many people in town blame him for the death of his childhood friend, Ellie, because he lied about his whereabouts at the time. Through quite a few flashbacks, the film reveals facts that may or may not link the two deaths. I won’t reveal whether or not the two deaths are linked, except to say all is explicitly resolved. Eric Bana is always good, but it is the Australian landscape that really steals almost every scene. It is flat, dry, and huge. I left the cinema tasting dust in my mouth. The dialogue is almost claustrophobically close, and is perfectly balanced by the openness of the landscape. A cracking good, and tough, whodunit. In cinemas.
Finally, it’s Bridgerton, an eight-part series on Netflix. Bridgerton has introduced me to a genre I didn’t know much about — romance novels. I’m a convert. They’re spicy hot! Bridgerton is based on a series of novels by Julia Quinn and reimagines London society of 1813 as a multiracial “Ton”. The series takes a debate about Queen Charlotte’s African ancestry (which is pretty much established, although several generations back), and runs with it. The main plot concerns the romance between Daphne (played by Phoebe Dynevor), the daughter of the late Viscount Bridgerton, and Simon Bassett, the Duke of Hastings, played by Regé-Jean Page. The sexual tension between these two crackles, and is reported on a weekly basis in a gossip pamphlet written by the mysterious Lady Whistledown, voiced by Julie Andrews. I say “voiced” because no one knows who Lady Whistledown is, or how she obtains such accurate information about who is courting whom. It is Adjoa Andoh though who really rocks this series as Lady Danbury. You may remember her as Nelson Mandela’s personal assistant, Brenda, in Invictus, and the bossy, all-knowing, fierce presence she brings to bear on this series outshines that of the Queen herself. I would be remiss if I did not mention the many ways male flesh is shown from a female (or gay male) perspective. Sweaty, well-defined pecs, abs, and buttocks are revealed in the plentiful sex scenes. Many of the same sweaty, well-defined pecs and abs (but no buttocks) also do a great deal of bare-knuckle boxing. But the star of this show is the colour and patterns. I could not take my eyes off the wallpaper, the upholstery, and the waistcoats, jackets, and frocks. And the gardens. And the architecture. And Queen Charlotte’s wigs! On Netflix.