Top Five Reasons to see "Mothering Sunday"

by Cláudio Alves

Adapted by Alice Birch from Graham Swift's novel, Mothering Sunday depicts a day in the life of a young maid in 1920s England. She's been having an affair with a rich boy before he leaves to be married off, plans are made for an afternoon of farewell sex. Throughout, the trauma of World War I haunts the nation, ghosts looming over the living who try to conceal their brokenness through social pageantry. It's all told as remembrance, a writer looking back at her youth, trying to articulate a momentous episode on the page. Cut to non-linear smithereens, the film's prone to disrupt stately historical drama with wet carnality. Flashes of lustful memory often barge their way into unrelated scenes, like rainwater flooding a basement's every nook and cranny...

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Cannes Diary #4: Cannes gets undressed with two lesbian nuns and a naked maid.

by Elisa Guidici

by Elisa Guidici

Blame the pandemic, blame the sensuous summer in Riviera, this Festival is rated R for sure. A lot of nakedness, numerous explicit sex scenes (with a preference for cunnilingus) and in general the inability to spend a day at screenings without a full frontal or two. Sometimes journalists try to sell Cannes coverage insisting on the hotness of various movies. Well, no one needs to exaggerate this year: Benedetta gave us all the scandalous content we wanted...

Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)
COMPETITION FILM

This historical queer drama about the forbidden love between two nuns was my most anticipated film and what an experience it was...

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Cannes at Home: Day 4

by Cláudio Alves

Benedetta has arrived! Going into Cannes, Paul Verhoeven's promised delirium of Baroque nunsploitation was one of the most anticipated titles in competition. As the mixed reactions pour out of the Croisette, international expectations have only increased; Unanimous praise would be disappointing for such a film. Beyond Verhoeven in the Competition lineup, Catherine Corsini also premiered her latest La Fracture. Other promising new titles outside the competition slate are Eva Husson's Mothering Sunday and Karim Aïnouz's Mariner of the Mountains. As we wait for those four gourmet prospects to be released or come to a future festival near us, we look back at these directors' past works, to find many visions of carnality, both sensual and disturbing...

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