Jennie Kermode

6 days ago | eyeforfilm.co.uk | Jennie Kermode

There is a point in John Schlesinger’s swinging Sixties hit Darling when Diana, played with Oscar-winning intensity by Julie Christie, is asked why, as someone who is presented as the face of modernity, she dresses so conservatively. Herein lies the crux of the film. Diana is a model, the Honey-glo Girl, the Happiness Girl. She’s known for her dazzling, carefree smile, and the myth of her picture perfect life is so strong that she almost believes it herself.

1 week ago | eyeforfilm.co.uk | Jennie Kermode

Out in some of the most remote villages in India, where life has remained much the same for centuries, change is coming. It takes many forms. The land is drier than it was, the summers hotter. It’s getting harder to make a good living from the land. The previous generation’s embrace of ultrasound technology as means of identifying female foetuses, so that they could be aborted, has left many young men unable to find wives. Some have resorted to marrying below their caste.

1 week ago | eyeforfilm.co.uk | Jennie Kermode

The shift away from single, socially unencumbered heroes that we’ve seen in film in recent years has allowed a number of new ideas to emerge in old stories, and now that it has evolved a step further, beyond just switching in equivalent women, it’s getting more interesting still. Ba is, at its simplest, the story of a man who gets drawn into a high stakes scam which he’s desperate to escape.

1 week ago | bylines.scot | Jennie Kermode

It’s rare to see political parties from either side of Scotland’s constitutional divide standing together as firmly as they have in response to last week’s attack ad on Anas Sarwar. Commissioned by Reform UK, the ad used fragments of the Labour leader’s speeches reassembled under the headline ‘Anas Sarwar Has Said He Will Prioritise The Pakistani Community’, and it has been widely condemned as racist. The SNP has now joined Labour in calling for Meta, which hosted the ad, to remove it.

1 week ago | yorkshirebylines.co.uk | Jennie Kermode

The government’s controversial border security, asylum and immigration bill had its second reading in the House of Commons this week and is now on its way to the Lords. It has attracted criticism from human rights groups like Freedom From Torture and Amnesty, as well as the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, while Care4Calais described it as a “brutal piece of legislation”.