Megan Fox’s flair for disdain is utilised to its fullest potential in this dark, witty, teen horror-comedy from Diablo Cody. It starts with her being abducted by a touring indie band, who mistakenly believe they’ve found the virgin they need in order to sign with a major label through a deal with the devil. Fox’s Jennifer then returns as a creature from Hell, who must seduce and eat her way through her high school’s male population in order to stay hot.

The high concept premise turned off many critics, as did Diablo Cody’s sometimes painfully self-conscious dialogue, but both expose the insanity of teen movie conventions, and also the real experience of adolescence, from which the former distantly derive. Occasionally toeing the line between pandering and ridiculing, Cody’s ironic tone assures us we’re in safe hands.

The role is an opportunity for the much-maligned Fox to ridicule the constraints of her vixen-like public image. She quite literally vamps it up, pouting through her flat line readings, dialled down to a derisive, brain-dead monotone, which alternatively derides the ridiculously narrow constraints of her roles, and relishes Cody’s cheeky subversion.

Jennifer’s best friend, Needy, played by Amanda Seyfried, is kept in the shadow of her apocalyptically hot friend by the traditional teen movie device of glasses and a ponytail. For much of the film she quite literally envies the Devil’s accomplice, for the hair and body she feels she ought to have. But Jennifer’s experience of sexuality is through presentation and self-objectification. In a final confrontation, Needy calls Jennifer out, “You’re killing people!” “No,” Jennifer replies, “I’m killing boys.”

High School boys become just a means to an end. It’s a hell of a ride.

★★★☆☆

Like most period dramas, Alan Rickman’s A Little Chaos is pleasantly predictable and idealistic, but it’s also heart-warming and surprisingly lovable thanks to a strong cast and lavish production values.

Kate Winslet is fantastic as the widowed Sabine De Barra, a fictional garden designer chosen to create the new water gardens for King Louis XIV at the Palais de Versailles in Paris. An independent ‘hands-on’ woman drawn inadvertently into the inner-aristocratic circle of French late seventeenth century society, Sabine is intelligent, resourceful, and takes her work very seriously, but the lingering trauma of the death of her husband and daughter refuses to let her go. Sabine’s new boss is the handsome landscape-designer André Le NoÌ‚tre (Matthias Schoenaerts), and it is terribly obvious from the moment they meet that sooner or later romance will – quite literally – blossom.

Sabine’s modest perception of herself leaves her daunted by the strange, intimidating aristocratic figures of court, but André helps keep her grounded and passionate about the project. In a spicy subplot, André’s jealous cheating wife (Helen McCrory) schemes to ruin Sabine’s plans as she grows infinitely jealous of Sabine’s honest charming of the French court and, most importantly, the King. It was never going to be just plain sailing for poor Sabine.

Winslet is, by far, the winning element of this film. Her Sabine is gentle, enchanting, and reflective, all qualities on display while struggling to come to terms with the tragic events of her life. She may be a little older than the other women at the Royal Court, but she emerges the most elegant and wise of all of them. Her infectious character soon begins to rub off on everyone around her, and it’s refreshingly cathartic when things start to go her way.

The film is packed with French clichés. “Macaroon?” The King asks, whilst around him the court runs wild with extravagant outfits and criss-crossing affairs. The widespread acceptance of polygamous relationships is a concept much associated with Parisian high-society, and Rickman has no problem playing this to the maximum. The film suggests that marital relations are no more than a social convenience and that long-standing affairs are the only opportunity to experience true love and passion. Nevertheless, the film is tinged with amiable humour, most notably by the extravagant bisexual Duke Philippe (Stanley Tucci), whose elaborate eccentricity is played with great comic effect.

A Little Chaos does raise some important issues on the treatment of women – even in upper-class society – and the sense of claustrophobia and corruption within the court is obvious. Yet despite its potential to ask big questions, these subjects remain largely under-developed. One example of this resides in the long figurative exchange between Sabine and the King about the fading beauty of roses (akin to his fading perceptions of his mistress), which seems to touch upon a poignant metaphor for a brief second, only to abruptly move on. Perhaps worse than this was the awkwardly stilted love-scene which made the entire cinema audience cringe.

The beauty of the gardens is captured in all kinds of majestic locations, including Oxford’s very own Blenheim Palace, but the actual Palais de Versailles seems achingly and disappointingly absent throughout the film. In spite of this, however, it’s a light-hearted, feel-good film which never takes itself too seriously. If you’re in need of a little break from revision, A Little Chaos will do the trick nicely

The 68th Cannes Film Festival is currently under way in France, briefly transforming a dozy seaside town into the epitome of world class glamour and cinematic excellence. As the world’s auteurs and A-listers descend upon the croisette, they will be doing so under the image of the iconic Swedish actress, Ingrid Bergman, whose image bares down from this year’s festival poster. Recalling both European artistic ambition, and old Hollywood glamour, Ms Bergman’s image is indeed evocative. But what does it tell us?

It tells us how Cannes sees itself, or at least wants others to see it. European but international, glamorous but worthy, important but traditional. It reveals that Cannes is in crisis. Compare it to other festivals, and you can see how difficult it is to understand its modus operandi. Venice’s prestige, Berlin’s political engagement, Sundance’s low budget independents. Where does that leave Cannes? With glamour? It’s hardly the basis for a film festival.

For years, Cannes has been straining against the parameters it has defined for itself in order to reconcile its own demands with those of reality. The festival needs famous faces for exposure, but also great films to preserve its reputation, demanding progressive world talent but also conservative Oscar-bait. Cannes knows it needs awards movies, and in recent years has lent heavily on the infamous Harvey Weinstein to get them. But it needs them in May, when many distributors don’t even have an awards slate conceived off, let alone ready to premieÌ€re.

The programme is diverse. Stretching across the festival’s two competitions, from contest selections and midnight screenings, we have a global hodgepodge of worthy cinema, but without a curated direction. Hollywood premieÌ€res of the new Mad Max blockbuster and Pixar release sit alongside films from American masters Woody Allen, Gus Van Sant, and Todd Haynes.

Provocateur Gaspar Noe’s pornographic epic, Love, will share column inches with Natalie Portman, the latest high profile actor-turned-director whom Cannes has lured into its prestige star-trap. She’s been awarded an out of competition slot, likely to minimise the potential damage the notoriously rowdy critical body can inflict. And then there’s the vast Asian art-house contingent, featuring work from Naomi Kawase, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, and Jia Zhang-Ke. It’s easy to feel lost.

The press seems equally divided in its treatment of the festival. Is it a glamorous parade? Or a cinephile’s Mecca? Films frequently get lost amongst the couture dresses and red-carpeted steps. Compare this to NYFF, Tribeca, and BFI, where the films legitimise the festivals’ existence. But with Cannes, the festival makes the films, the films don’t make the festival. It’s not about cinema, it’s about strategy and exposure.

This isn’t to write-off the festival completely. It manages to bring disparate national cinemas to an international audience, with more easily overlooked fare being able to piggyback off the headline offerings. But operating as the epicentre of the European film market, where release strategies vary, how useful can this exposure really be? Many films from last year are only just washing up on these shores, long after the excitement they drummed up has abated.

Cannes is suffering from a crisis of identity. It clings to its past glamour, whilst attempting to reach for relevancy. This year’s high-profile snubbing of Idris Alba’s awards-tipped Netflix release, Beasts of No Nation, is a sign of Cannes’ fear to abandon the theatrical. But as the market stratifies further, Cannes’ linking of film with the iconic begins tolookincreasinglyoutoftouch.Cannes survives as a behemoth presiding over a milieu in disarray.

Are you happy? Walking away from the Playhouse on Thursday, neither my co-editor nor I knew the answer.

No, we weren’t having an existential crisis, but the characters in Aykbourn’s Living Together certainly were. Were they happy in the end? After all the shit they go through, one certainly hopes so. Not that it wasn’t very funny and at times very touching, but what an ordeal took place for our entertainment. Some people get along, some people don’t. In the family shack, there is no escape: from one another but also from oneself.

These characters seem to have a lot to escape from. Comprised of three couples, each repre- sents the worst relationship extremes. Annie and Tom represent tedious stasis. Norman and Ruth seem to be more volatile than an English student with a chemistry set. Meanwhile, Reg and Sarah seem to be the archetypal submissive coward and insufferable bitch set-up, but on steroids. With everybody so unhealthily invested in each other, it’s perhaps no surprise that each of the characters’ flaws emerges in the drama between everybody else.

In the grand mess, Annie is the most vulnerable. Prime among her exploiters is the philandering Norman. Norman shows up to the family home with the noble intent of a weekend elopement. Annie’s cowardly brother and his insufferable wife promptly arrive as her replacement. But inevitably things start getting complicated when Norman gets drunk and Sarah spontaneously chucks a plate of biscuits at Reg.

We get laughter, tears and an uneasy feeling as we realise that the drama feels somehow familiar. Living Together is if nothing else a heightened version of the family sagas many of us live through and will probably live again.

I wonder what would Rufus Norris, Artistic Director of the National Theatre, make of that table? Positioned in front of him was a small table with a bottle of water particularly well poised in front of two bottles of red wine. To my disappointment, Norris didn’t choose the wine. The reason why I was intrigued by Norris’ perspective on the table relates directly to his directing of Table.

For those unaware of it, Table by Rufus Norris and his wife, Tanya Ronder, was an idea that occurred to him when talking to a pessimistic young director who complained endlessly of her inability to begin creating a play. Norris explains, “I grew tired of her inability to act. I told her, ‘Look, you can create anything from something. Think about this table, people have had arguments over it, people have cried over it, chewing gum from years ago has been stuck on the bottom of it.’” He proceeded to encourage the young director, “‘See, look how easy it is… but you can’t steal that idea. That’s mine!’”

For Norris, creativity stemmed from many places but particularly ‘space’. He encouraged the audience to think of a small space on the Keble College quad and question what has happened there. What arguments have there been? Whose hearts were crushed?

Norris was indeed a particularly reassuring figure; he did not have that obnoxious thespian air about him, nor a sense of self-importance despite his marvellous achievements. Instead he re-emphasised over and over again how lucky he was, but also how crucial it was for those in- terested in gaining a career in the theatre to act now. Norris explained that his own path into the theatre began due to his crush on a friend called Lynn who he followed into the RADA scene. Afteracting in RADA, he participated in labouring jobs, from painting and decorating to cleaning toilets. He then explained, “I got involved with a French company and, because of my building trade experience, they asked me to put up stud walls. As a kind of ‘carrot’, they offered me a part in a play in which I had to be crucified naked. There is no public record. It was not a very good play. I was terrible in it. Yet, while we were per- forming, I was doing session work with a friend as a musician, and his wife asked me to deliver [a script] to my wife. Before I went home I read it and took it in the next day saying, ‘Can we do t hisbecause I want to write music or be in it.’ Brian Astbury [Space Theatre] said, ‘You’re too gobby as an actor, and all of your interest is in the whole and not the part. Direct it yourself.’”

From that moment forward Norris explained that he never gave up. “Fear is a great motivator to me – the fear of failure.” He openly admits that he was financially struggling through his artistic endeavours As he beautifully summarises, “I was 36 before I earned £10,000 in a year. It’s all about stamina. Of the people who started when I started most of them have got their lives together earlier than I did, but it meant they diverted away from the thing that continues to get me out of bed.

“It’s a fantastic privilege to enjoy what you spend most of your life doing. Theatre, despite its reputation, is a tinsel-mine. A tinsel-mine is a hard place to work. If you keep on going you won’t fall away. You’ll be employable.”

Rufus Norris certainly imparted a sense of hope and inspiration into those within the audience. Ultimately, he said, if you want to work in the theatre, saying ‘tomorrow’ is not enough. If you love it enough, if you have passion enough, then you cannot wait for next week or next month. The time is now. 

Entering MOMA’s ‘Gallery 20’ two summers ago, I remember being stunned as a tour group was shepherded past one of the most beautiful works by one of the twentieth century’s greatest painters. Robert Ryman is our Vermeer. He makes surfaces play delicately with light and space. He is often pigeonholed as ‘minimalist’, above all due to his white-on-white colour scheme, but his works are never static or impersonal representations. 

In my experience, telling humanities students that they should really read The Periodic Table tends to make them widen thir eyes, their complexions paling as they cover their ears and moan about the trauma of GCSE chemistry. Really? Even I know letters and numbers in boxes on the wall are not enthralling reading. The book I’m referring to is Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table. The book is semi-autobiographical, each of its chapters finding a central metaphor in the properties of a chemical element.