Joanna Scanlan says Allahu akbar
...plus, a not very good play about Catherine de Medici
Maestro trailer just dropped…
Meanwhile slim pickings in our movie theatres at the moment, though I did manage to find a good one on the Tiff Digital Cinema website. The British-French co-pro After Love (Aleem Khan’s feature debut) was screened at several festivals in 2020, including Tiff, but only got distribution for the UK, won indie and Bafta awards, and disappeared. It’s now back on streaming platforms. Joanna Scanlan (The Thick of It, Gentleman Jack, Getting On) is rarely seen in dramatic roles, but excels here as Fatima (Mary) Hussain, an Englishwoman who fell in love with a Pakistani man as a teen, married him young against her parents’ wishes, converted to Islam and fully embraced the Pakistani community in Dover as her own. The movie opens with a scene of domestic contentment, with the two, now a middle-aged couple, coming home late after a visit with friends, doing the little rituals through which we repossess our home when we return to it, shoes off, kettle on, gossip about friends, only for Ahmed to drop dead from a heart attack.