Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: Mother Mary, Primavera, Rose of Nevada, and more

Mother Mary

(112 mins, 15) Directed by David Lowery; starring Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel, Hunter Schafer

David Lowery (The Green Knight, A Ghost Story) makes films so rich with enigmatic atmosphere they cling to your clothes like wood smoke. His latest inscrutable picture – a supernaturally tinged story about the toxic artistic co-dependency of a pop star called Mother Mary and her costume designer Sam Anselm – finds him at his most creative.

As Mother Mary, Anne Hathaway combines old-school Hollywood glamour with a brittle fragility – you can almost see the cracks in her too-bright smile. Michaela Coel plays Sam with darting viper eyes and a barbed wire voice. She’s marvellous and malevolent, her enunciation of each bitter line as sharp as the dressmaking shears she wields.

The individual ingredients in this lavish, theatrical film are promising. But while it achieves moments of dark magic – predominantly those in which Coel gives free rein to her witchy impulses – it doesn’t quite hold together.

One problem is the music. While the score, by Lowery’s regular collaborator Daniel Hart, is suitably razor-edged, Mother Mary’s songs (some written by the ubiquitous Charlie XCX) are too bland and forgettable to make her megastar status credible. And a ghostly presence that manifests as a wafting piece of red chiffon fails to achieve the intended mystery, instead acting as a cloth-eared piece of symbolism.

Primavera

(111 mins, 15) Directed by Damiano Michieletto; starring Tecla Insolia, Michele Riondino, Andrea Pennacchi

A picturesque backdrop of 18th-century Venice, a beautiful orphan, a baroque classical score featuring the music of Vivaldi – Primavera is a crowd-pleasing, prestige period drama of the kind that has fallen from favour of late. But the appeal of such handsome, romantic productions persists.

Primavera tells the story of Cecilia (Tecla Insolia), a spirited foundling raised from infancy at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà orphanage in Venice. The most talented girls are trained in music, and this young violinist is one of the brightest stars of the institution’s chamber orchestra. But it’s not until Antonio Vivaldi joins as the music master that Cecilia, with his encouragement, takes her own potential seriously. Unfortunately, she has been promised as a wife for a raffish nobleman (Stefano Accorsi), and for girls like Cecilia, marriage means the end of music.

This is a gorgeously designed production, tallow candlelight bringing a velvety quality to the forbidding stone walls of the orphanage. Even the girls’ simple dresses – dove grey for everyday wear, deep crimson for performances – are ravishingly lovely. While it may not hold up to historical scrutiny, it is escapism at its most elegant.

Rose of Nevada

(114 mins, TBC) Directed by Mark Jenkin; starring George MacKay, Callum Turner, Rosalind Eleazar

The Cornish film-maker Mark Jenkin has an immediately recognisable directorial voice, both in the look of his pictures and the style of his storytelling. His choice to shoot on a hand-cranked Bolex camera with 16mm film dictates the former. His 2019 film Bait, shot in black and white, had a pleasingly weathered quality; with Enys Men (2022) and now Rose of Nevada, the director switched to colour stock, capturing hues so loud and rich you can almost hear them.

While the films look terrific, there are other formal choices that might not chime with all viewers. Both in line delivery and camera framing, there is a declamatory quality to his work: Jenkin makes a point of showing us what he wants us to see, rather than allowing us to discover scenes for ourselves. I have been resistant to this approach in the past, but here it works rather well.

In this supernatural Cornwall-set drama, George MacKay – his face a stricken mask – and Callum Turner take jobs crewing on a fishing boat with a murky past – and are snared irrevocably.

Surviving Earth

(96 mins, 15) Directed by Thea Gajić; starring Slavko Sobin, Olive Gray, Brian Bogdanovic

A highly personal and unflinching feature debut by Thea Gajić, Surviving Earth explores the loving but rocky relationship between a daughter, Maria (Olive Gray), and her charismatic but troubled musician father, Vlad (Slavko Sobin). A refugee in Bristol from former Yugoslavia, Vlad fought on the Serbian side of the Yugoslav wars, marking him in the eyes of fellow migrants from the region and leaving psychological scars. A harmonica player in a rambunctious folk band, he has ambitions to pursue his music, but his addiction recovery is a precarious, slippery thing ready to slide from his grasp.

It’s a small story, but Gajić – who was inspired by her own father’s experience – has an eye for colour and for human flaws, and Sobin’s chaotic, energetic performance gives the story weight.

Exit 8

(95 mins, 15) Directed by Genki Kawamura; starring Kazunari Ninomiya, Yamato Kochi, Naru Asanuma

An adaptation of a popular indie video game, Exit 8 follows a series of characters trapped in a perpetual loop of white-tiled corridors in a Japanese subway station. The unfortunate individuals – two men and a child – must navigate the route to the exit by spotting anomalies in the repeated passages. Some are subtle – minute changes in the signposting – others, like the cascading waterfalls of blood, are less so. It’s a claustrophobic and creepy premise, executed with economy and style. But by its nature, the film is also relentlessly repetitive, losing some of its oppressive potency by the third chapter.

Photographs by Eric Zachanowich/A24 via AP/Kimberley Ross/Steve Tanner/Metis films