Billie Piper’s feature debut as writer-director is a peculiar “anti-romcom” – a post-Fleabag-era tale of dysfunctional male/female relationships, tinged with musical fantasia and built around bitterly comedic theatrical dialogue. Boosted by an exceptional cast, and sharing an edgy energy with Piper’s recent TV hit I Hate Suzie, it’s an ambitious, nervy work that occasionally trips over its own stylistic heels, but still proves, as Buzz Lightyear famously discovered, that flying is essentially falling with style.
Piper stars as Mandy, a single mum, living with her own mother, Marion, played by the great Kerry Fox. Career-minded Mandy is described as an “angry, seething” presence, who, as a child, would write love letters interspersed with death threats. Now she is raising a son, Larch (Toby Woolf), beset by anxious tics. In an attempt to quell her innate self-loathing, Mandy repeats an unconvincing mantra (“Although I am scared and angry, I still love and respect myself”), while urgently tapping her temples. By contrast, the chain-smoking Marion has retreated into world-weary resignation, her sly half-smile a mix of defiance and defeat.
On a toe-curling dinner date with uptight workmate Pete (Leo Bill, who proved so weirdly mesmerising in In Fabric), Mandy learns that he is a man “of faith” who finds women intolerable, but refuses to be without one. Mandy replies sardonically that he sounds like a classic rapist. It’s hard to disagree. Yet after vomiting in the streets, she embarks upon a laceratingly awkward and somewhat masochistic relationship with Pete. “I want to unveil myself one piece at a time,” she tells him, “so that I can talk you through what I physically hate about myself.”
Perhaps Mandy is drawn to Pete because he fills a void left by her father Vic (David Thewlis), an equally testing character whose bitterness and regret turn a smile into a sneer. Elsewhere, Pete seems like nothing more than another child, joining Larch in limb-flailing fits of public rage. In the end, it’s Mandy’s own battle to define who she is, and what she really really wants, that is centre stage.
Piper and Thewlis recently worked together on Craig Roberts’s Eternal Beauty, a darkly comedic but also empathetic portrait of schizophrenia, inspired by a much-loved member of Roberts’s family. There are stylistic similarities between Roberts’s acclaimed film and Piper’s off-kilter oddity, which also seems to draw on the film-maker’s personal history. Yet Pete (who seems like a distant cousin of Adam Sandler’s character from Punch-Drunk Love) and Mandy are both clearly emblems of a wider 21st-century crisis, existing in a hyper-real state of near-panic, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
With its forthright soundtrack cues, Rare Beasts seems constantly set to burst into a song-and-dance number, albeit without the arch contrivance of the final act of Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. There’s an almost vaudevillian edge to several of the film’s most inventive set pieces, with tragedy smacking up against emotional slapstick to bizarrely comic effect. Plaudits to cinematographer Patrick Meller and editor Hazel Baillie who juggle carefully choreographed shots with more impressionistic, almost frantic first-person footage to dizzying effect.
Quick GuideNow showing: the best recent digital releases, now finally in UK cinemas
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Nomadland
Chloé Zhao’s quietly profound, multi-Oscar-winning portrait of the marginalised economic migrant community in America’s midwest is a thing of real beauty. Frances McDormand’s performance is typically warm and engaged; the wide-open vistas cry out to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
Sound of Metal
Riz Ahmed brings a jangling intensity to Darius Marder’s portrait of a drummer who is side-swiped by sudden deafness. But Ruben loses more than his hearing; everything from his relationship to his identity is affected. Seek out cinemas with the best sound setup possible.
Minari
A Korean family’s American dream of life on the land in 1980s Arkansas is explored in a deeply personal drama from Lee Isaac Chung, which strikes a delicate balance between humour and pathos.
Judas and the Black Messiah
A full-blooded and forceful turn from Daniel Kaluuya as Black Panther Fred Hampton won him an Oscar and dominates Shaka King’s high-quality civil rights drama.
Apples
An offshoot of the Greek “weird wave”, the bittersweet pleasures of this pandemic-themed black comedy heralds a distinctive new voice in European cinema. Writer-director Christos Nikou is an assured and impressive talent.
Tina
No mere television or laptop screen can contain the energy of Tina Turner’s live performances or the eyebrow-scorching force of her sex appeal. Tina is a conventionally put together documentary biography (directed by Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin), but the extensive archive footage is joyous.
Godzilla vs Kong
What were cinemas made for, if not to watch enormous irradiated monsters pummelling each other, with entire cities squished as collateral damage? Adam Wingard directs.
At times, the dreamy/nightmarish stylistic tics can prove alienating, prioritising the performative over the personal elements. Yet there’s something alluring about the relish with which Piper and Bill sink their teeth into the gleefully overwrought script, particularly during the putative couple’s verbal sparring matches, during which deadpan sparks fly.
Underneath it all there’s an agitated discussion of women’s liberation (Lily James’s Cressida describes herself as a “post-post-post-feminist”), leading towards a deliberately jumbled declaration of desires that is heartfelt, desperate and – crucially - comically undercut by a Greek chorus of disapproval. Mandy may be an uncertain character (whom the director now says she wishes she had cast someone else to play) but Piper clearly has the vision and confidence to carve out a career behind the camera.