Tag: portrait
Portrait of the artist: critics cast doubt on Boris Johnson holiday snap
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It’s a busy time for the prime minister, as he faces multiple crises including rocketing energy prices, container ships turned away from British ports and a standoff with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol. But...
Mussolini’s Sister review – interestingly quirky portrait of a grumpy octogenarian
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Juna Suleiman’s documentary about Hiam, her octogenarian grandmother who lives in Nazareth, is no journey through a picture-perfect family album. Hiam is not the cake-baking kind of grandmother. In fact, she is grumpy...
Regency nip and tuck … ‘new’ Constable portrait reveals the artist’s diplomacy
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A previously unknown painting by John Constable has been discovered, to the excitement of art historians. A portrait of a Regency woman in all her finery has not only been identified for the first time, but it has sur...
Marceline. A Woman. A Century review – vibrant portrait of a fascinating film-maker
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While still little-known outside France, the inimitable Marceline Loridan-Ivens was a formidable force of nature. A Holocaust survivor, her awe-inspiring resilience is deeply felt in her works as a writer and director...
Muse and model or painter-poet? Elizabeth Siddal given fresh portrait
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Wan, pale, tragic. Elizabeth “Lizzie” Siddal is remembered for how she was portrayed by the 19th-century men who saw her as their muse: artists Walter Deverell, her husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and most famously Jo...
Almost Liverpool 8 review – portrait of a postcode searches for the Toxteth spirit
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As a community organiser says at the start of this documentary, the name Toxteth – apparently hardly used in the area pre-1981 – has become synonymous with riots. Directors Daniel Draper and Allan Melia set out to sho...
Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett review – portrait of a lady
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Early on in Claire-Louise Bennett’s keenly awaited novel, its unnamed narrator recalls childhood visits to her grandmother’s home. When it was time to leave, the elderly woman, whose much-loved signature bake was frui...
Strangers on a Pier by Tash Aw review – an intimate family portrait
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Years ago I was queueing in a fruit and veg shop in Cornwall with my half-Chinese dad when an elderly woman came up and asked him: “Where are you from?” “Liverpool,” he said. “But where are you really from?” she pers...
Alia’s Birth review – a loosely collaged portrait of a foundering relationship
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An affecting – and apparently real – home-birth sequence comprises the last 15 minutes of Egyptian film-maker Sam Abbas’s otherwise fictional short feature. The sudden onrush of biological imperative gives this footag...
Val review – unusual doc offers fractured portrait of an unusual actor
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Who is Val Kilmer? Is he a former A-lister, whose idiosyncrasies and counter-culture taste made him a Hollywood outcast? Or is he an unbearable egotist who alienated the industry through rude unprofessionalism and imp...
Hemingway review – a gripping portrait of a literary legend
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Those familiar with the Ken Burns style – memorably put to use to unpick such varied topics as the Vietnam war, jazz and baseball – will expect a certain standard from the renowned documentary-maker’s take on Ernest H...
Sunflowers review – an intricate portrait of Van Gogh’s iconic series
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Not surprisingly, Vincent van Gogh has proved a rich seam for the Exhibition on Screen gallery series, with one of the most commercially potent of modern painters providing material for previous films including Van Go...
The Killing of Two Lovers review – a riveting portrait of male rage
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Pain and rage pulse through this superbly made drama about marital breakdown and male humiliation. The tension is cranked up in its shocking first scene, which works cleverly in tandem with the title, but writer-direc...
‘It’s hard to look at’: Donald Trump makes National Portrait Gallery debut
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A picture is worth a thousand tweets. Donald Trump gained immortality of sorts on Friday when he made his debut at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. But he also ran into some “good trouble”. Canny curators...
The Lady in the Portrait review – painterly pageantry in a Chinese royal court
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This French-Chinese co-production about an earlier French-Chinese collaboration offers handsome pageantry amid its lavish recreation of 18th-century imperial court life, but it isn’t quite enough to compensate for a p...
A Space in Time review – lyrical portrait of a family facing an incurable disorder
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Here is a deeply personal documentary that raises awareness about a disability without neglecting the interiority of those living with the condition. Co-directed by Riccardo Servini and Nick Taussig, the film follows ...