Five of the best … films
The Guardians (15)
(Xavier Beauvois, 2018, Swi/Fr) 138 mins
Handsome, intense study of the French countryside during the first world war and the years after, focusing on the women left behind to keep the farms going after the men have marched off. Nathalie Baye plays the rural matriarch whose hiring of a young servant girl sets off a tidal wave of emotions; the mood is one of melancholy rather than crisis.
The Festival (15)
(Iain Morris, 2018, UK) 98 mins
Those who like to experience their music festivals face down in the mud are advised to head down to the latest awks-teen comedy from The Inbetweeners people. Joe Thomas (AKA Simon from the show) plays a just-dumped dork who heads for the big show … and, surprise surprise, bumps into his ex. Cue a stream of underpants gags and toilet jokes.
Mildred Pierce (PG)
(Michael Curtiz, 1945, US) 111 mins
Part of the great 1940s cycle of James M Cain adaptations, this is an unutterably bleak study of a hard-hit housewife who struggles for money to placate her grasping, manipulative daughter. Joan Crawford’s queenly presence and Michael Curtiz’s high-key direction make this more potboiled than hardboiled, but it’s still a blood heat classic. It is part of a two-month Crawford season organised by the BFI, which is also showcasing the 1939 all-female comedy The Women.
Leaning Into the Wind (PG)
(Thomas Riedelsheimer, 2018, Ger/UK) 97 mins‹
A follow-up to 2001’s Rivers and Tides, this is an enigmatic but fundamentally endearing study of “land artist” Andy Goldsworthy, who has made a considerable career out of manipulating natural elements into art. Whether he is plastering yellow leaves over rocks or “swimming” through tree-tops, Goldsworthy is an engaging, interesting subject who – in spite of all this time in front of the camera – doesn’t give much away.
Heathers (15)
(Michael Lehmann, 1988, US) 103 mins
This pitch-black 80s teen satire remains one of the all-time greats. With a star-making performance from Winona Ryder (pictured, right), the script’s hotline to teenage insecurity, and a vital splinter of ice in its heart, Heathers is superb value on its 30th anniversary.
AP
Four of the best … rock & pop
Reading & Leeds festival
The annual post-GCSE results blowout is here again. Marinade yourself in lager and enjoy a comprehensive lineup. Highlights include Astroworld hitmaker Travis Scott (pictured) and genre-defining maverick Kendrick Lamar. Flying the rock flag are Nashville’s Kings of Leon and blossoming indie kids Wolf Alice.
Little John’s Farm, Reading; Bramham Park, Wetherby, Fri to 25 Aug
Princess Nokia
The remarkable Destiny Frasqueri returns, bringing her fierce gender politics, robust attitude to bad audience behaviour and currently emo-inflected music. While recent mixtape A Girl Cried Red emphasises the black-clad, wonkily-fringed side of her character, she’s a volatile performer, so anything could happen.
O2 Forum Kentish Town, NW5, Mon; Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds, Tue
Francis and the Lights
The freakishly well-connected Francis Farewell Starlite has collaborations with – among others – Kanye West, Chance the Rapper and Bon Iver to his name. Whether that can be attributed to his vocal resemblance to Phil Collins is unclear. But his polished AOR melodies and bleepy, processed soundscapes almost certainly won’t be gracing venues as modestly sized as this for much longer.
Islington Assembly Hall, N1, Tue
Sea Change festival
This excellent Devon fest boasts a carefully curated blend of stimulating talks and slightly under-the-radar sounds. Musical highlights include psychedelicist Gwenno, confessional Leeds drone-popsters Hookworms and rave-jazz ensemble James Holden and the Animal Spirits. Talks come from Billy Bragg, career provocateur Cosey Fanni Tutti and many more.
Various venues, Totnes, Fri & 25 Aug
PH
Black Art Jazz Collective
Polemical motives don’t reliably make good art, but America’s Black Art Jazz Collective can pull it off. Merging the postbop virtuosity of charismatic personnel such as Mingus Big Band saxophonist Wayne Escoffery and fiery trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, theirs is a reflective and often incandescent original repertoire dedicated to influential African-Americans from WEB Dubois to Barack Obama.
Ronnie Scott’s, W1, Mon & Tue
JF
Four of the best … classical concerts
La Cenerentola
Although some of the gloss may have rubbed off Stefan Herheim’s reputation following his distinctly unconvincing production of Pelléas et Mélisande at Glyndebourne this summer, he remains one of today’s leading opera directors and the chance to see a show by him is hard to resist. This staging of Rossini’s comedy comes from Opéra de Lyon, with Michèle Losier in the title role.
Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Fri to 26 Aug
Nørgård’s Third Symphony
Per Nørgård’s eight symphonies are perhaps the most important examples of the genre written in the past 50 years. Yet they remain little known in Britain, and the Proms performance of Nørgård’s third, completed in 1975, will be its first here.
Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Mon
The Original Chinese Conjuror
In 2006, Raymond Yiu announced himself as a distinctive new voice in British music with the premiere of his theatre piece at the Aldeburgh festival. Revived as part of Northern Opera Group’s Left Bank festival, it will be fascinating to see how well this darkly humorous tale stands up now.
Left Bank Leeds, Thu to 25 Aug
Future Flute Fest
The twin centrepieces of the British Flute Society’s weekend of concerts and workshops are recitals by two of the leading flautists of our time. Sophie Cherrier plays an all-20th-century programme ranging from Debussy to Pintscher, while Stefán Höskuldsson includes works by Taffanel, Liebermann and César Franck.
St John’s Smith Square, SW1, Sat & Sun
AC
Five of the best … exhibitions
Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up
The Mexican surrealist painter becomes a 21st-century performance artist in this hit show. Kahlo’s true art, it suggests, was herself. She fashioned a charismatic persona but it came at a terrible cost. Like saints’ relics, the medicines and aids that got her through a life of pain and disability are shown alongside her self-portraits.
Victoria & Albert Museum, SW7 to 4 Nov
Drag: Self -Portraits and Body Politics
Leigh Bowery’s surreal transformations of his own body and Cindy Sherman’s art of masquerade are among the self-shifting exploits celebrated here. The exhibition surveys the relationship between drag and art from the 1960s to now, and also features Samuel Fosso, Rose English and Cerith Wyn Evans.
Hayward Gallery: HENI Project Space, SE1, Wed to 14 Oct
Free the Pussy!
Yoko Ono asks why we make a hell in paradise, in a text work that takes this exhibition’s theme of protest to a cosmic level. Ono is one of a diverse gang of artists who are here to support punk feminists Pussy Riot. John Keane depicts their struggle in a contemporary history painting; Hayley Newman shows guerrilla masks made from dishcloths; and the show’s curator, Tamsyn Challenger, has created a brightly painted ducking stool.
Summerhall, Edinburgh to 23 Sep
Thomas Cole
American art first found its tone – sublime, romantic – in the 19th-century paintings of this immigrant from Lancashire. Cole’s lurid imagination is highlighted here by comparison with contemporaries including Constable. How does his vision differ? He responds to something new, the sheer scale and mystery of an America that still felt like a new world. His masterpiece The Course of Empire adds a pessimistic depth.
The National Gallery, WC2, to 7 Oct
Sir Richard Wallace
One of the world’s loveliest art collections uncovers its own history in this fascinating show. Richard Wallace was the illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess of Hertford, whose collection of sexy French paintings and furniture he inherited. This exhibition foregrounds the wonders that Wallace added to the collection, from medieval reliquaries to stupendous objects from Asia and Africa. It is a small but majestic treasure house.
Wallace Collection, W1, to 6 Jan
JJ
Five of the best … theatre shows
Rain Man
The Classic Screen to Stage Theatre Company presents an adaptation of the 1988 Oscar-winning film. Mathew Horne, of Gavin and Stacey fame, plays Raymond Babbit, the autistic savant with a genius for numbers, while Downton Abbey’s Ed Speleers is his long-lost salesman brother with a money-making plan involving a cross-country road trip.
Windsor Theatre, Tue to 1 Sep; touring to 24 Nov
The End of Eddy
A stage adaptation by Pamela Carter of Eduoard Louis’ extraordinary, autobiographical novel about growing up gay and in grinding poverty in a rural French village. Stark, dark and unflinching, it was written when the author was only 21 and tells of his fight to escape prejudice and bullying, even within his own family.
The Studio, Potterrow, Edinburgh, Tue to 26 Aug; touring to 6 Oct
The Song of Lunch
Cold Feet star Robert Bathurst and The Trip’s Rebecca Johnson feature in Christopher Reid’s The Song of Lunch, as exes who meet in an Italian restaurant in Soho in an attempt to rekindle their relationship. This bittersweet comedy of love, loss and human frailty features animations by Charles Peattie – AKA the Daily Telegraph’s Alex cartoonist – illustrating the action.
Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, to 27 Aug
Sitting/Nina’s Got News
The BBC asked four people to write plays who have never done so – two of them familiar from TV. Katherine Parkinson (The IT Crowd) submitted Sitting (Gilded Ballroom Teviot), in which three people sit for a painting in an artist’s studio, years apart from each other, for very different reasons. Comedian Frank Skinner’s offering, Nina’s Got News (Pleasance, Queen Dome), finds the ex-boyfriend and best friend of Nina reacting to an extraordinary piece of information.
Edinburgh festival fringe, to 26 Aug
Copenhagen
In 1941, two atomic physicists and old friends – the Dane Niels Bohr and German Werner Heisenberg – met in the occupied Danish capital as an arms race ensued between the west and the Nazis. No one knows what the pair discussed, and Michael Frayn’s absorbing 1998 drama plays various possible versions of their meeting. Here, Charles Edward and Paul Jesson play the two men and Patricia Hodge is Bohr’s wife.
Chichester Festival Theatre: Minerva, to 22 Sep
MC
Three of the best … dance shows
Atomic 3001
Choreographer Leslie Mannès collaborates with composer Thomas Turine (AKA Sitoid) and lighting designer Vincent Lemaître in the creation of this powerfully immersive dance experience. As light and music build to a pulsing, implacable intensity, the movement is drawn into a ritual of self-immolation and transformation.
Dance Base, Edinburgh, Tue to 26 Aug
St Petersburg Ballet: Swan Lake
Technical powerhouse Irina Kolesnikova stars with the award-winning Denis Rodkin in this traditionally Soviet production of the Tchaikovsky classic. Alternate casts include the Bolshoi ballerina Yulia Stepanova and the Mariinsky’s lead virtuoso Kimin Kim.
London Coliseum, WC2, Wed to 2 Sep
Confessions of a Cockney Temple Dancer
Shane Shambhu’s funny, blunt and beguiling solo reflects on issues of race and culture as he narrates his own personal journey growing up in east London and learning classical South Asian dance.
Dance Base, Edinburgh, Wed to 26 Aug
JM
