Was the response from my friend Tessa as we left the Watershed, having entered screen 3 two and a half hours previously to watch Vortex (2022). Gaspar Noe’s departure from his usual style and tone was the focus from many critics in the advance reviews of the film, and with…

Back in 1982, Barry Curtis mused extensively in BFI Dossier no. 17 on the eternal question of what happens when a sitcom isn’t funny. If only he’d waited 34 years for the arrival of Paul Verhoeven’s rape-revenge drama Elle, he could have saved himself a lot of ink. In France’s…