Judy

seen on 16 October 2019

Rupert Goold directs Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland, with Rufus Sewell as her third husband Sidney Luft, Finn Whittrock as her fifth husband Mickey Deans, and Jessica Buckley as Rosalyn Wilder, her PA during her final London tour in 1969.

The film deals with Judy's incipient deterioration during her 1969 performances at London's 'Talk of the Town' nightclub, one of her many attempts to overcome her financial difficulties, here made plain at the beginning of  the film when a Los Angeles hotel refuses to let her and her two children by Luft stay due to unpaid bills. There are also flashbacks to Judy's teenage years when she was under the oppressive 'guidance' of Louis B.Mayer and her ambitious and unsympathetic mother, plied with pills to control her appetite and to help her sleep at night.

The Consequences of Love

seen on 5 October 2019

This film from 2004 is part of Norton Street's Italian Film Festival (in Sydney); its original title is Le conseguenza dell'amore. It is directed by Paolo Sorrentino and features Toni Servillo as Titta de Girolamo and Olivia Magnani as Sofia.

Titta lives in a hotel in Lugano and appears completely withdrawn from life - his routine is unwavering and solitary, apart from regular card games with a once-wealthy aristocratic couple, and some desultory conversations with the hotel manager. He does not respond to greetings from the hotel staff, even the attractive Sofia who works at the bar and in whom he is apparently interested.