Babylon review: Margot Robbie is a force of nature as a below-par Pitt pales in comparison

BABYLON

(18) 189mins

★★★☆☆

THIS period comedy begins with an elephant nuzzling a truck driver with its trunk and covering a colleague with a discharge from its opposite end.

But while Babylon starts as a big, sloppy visual treat, it finishes as the cinematic equivalent of a pile of dung.

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Margot Robbie stars as aspiring actress Nellie LaRoy in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon[/caption]

It follows our hero Manny Torres (Diego Calva from Narcos) as he works his way up, from an elephant transporter in 1926, into America’s silent movie business.

Along the way he pals up with Margot Robbie’s aspiring actress Nellie LaRoy and with film star Jack Conrad, played by Brad Pitt.

Manny falls for spirited LaRoy and impresses the pencil-moustached Conrad with his ability to solve a crisis — of which there are many.

This love letter to Hollywood is a change of pace for director Damien Chazelle, whose previous films were the brilliantly intense Whiplash, romantic La La Land and moving moon-landing drama First Man.

Gone is the tight script-writing of those, and in comes a host of hit-and- miss ideas that stretch out for too long.

When Babylon works, it is exhilarating, hilarious film-making which will have you saying to pals “Do you remember that scene . . . ?”

The highlights are LaRoy fighting a rattlesnake in the desert night, and shocking a bunch of snobs with a dead rabbit, the wildest orgy ever seen in a mainstream movie and the frustrations of early bids to record with sound.

Robbie is at the centre of it all, grabbing the audience’s attention and holding on to it for dear life.

The Australian actress is a force of nature to whom a below-par Pitt pales in comparison.

Relative newcomer Calva impresses as the likeable lead we are meant to root for.

But it is hard to invest in most of the characters, who are largely fame-obsessed and self-destructive addicts with little back story.

Gross-out scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in a Sacha Baron Cohen film are too much.

But this would have been a four-star review if shorn of its last ten minutes.

After delivering an eye-popping extravaganza, Chazelle adds an epilogue that tries to explain his film.

Earlier in the story, LaRoy says: “I hate it when people put topping on ice cream, it messes it up.”

If only Chazelle heeded those words.

GRANT ROLLINGS

HOLY SPIDER

(18) 115mins

★★★☆☆

FEW films have been as timely as this, about the horrifying attitude to women in Iran.

This Danish-backed, Iranian-language production is based on a real-life serial killer who murdered 16 women, mainly sex workers, in the repressive state during the 1980s.

Names have been changed and a female reporter has been put into the centre of the story, but otherwise it largely follows Saeed Hanaei’s killing spree in holy city Mashhad.

What is shocking is the attitude to the victims, who like women in Iran today are demonised for disobeying strict religious laws.

Holy Spider is not for the faint-hearted.

It deserves the 18-certificate for the way the camera dwells too long on women breathing their last, with a scarf wrapped tightly around their neck. It crosses a line, becoming gratuitous.

But the film is worth seeing for the outstanding Zar Amir Ebrahimi as a journalist determined to track the murderer.

She rightly won Best Actress at last year’s Cannes Film Festival for this quietly intense, powerful performance.

GRANT ROLLINGS

ALICE, DARLING

(15) 89mins

★★★★☆

THIS is a quietly powerful tale of domestic abuse, by coercive control.

Handsome artist Simon and his girlfriend Alice (an exceptional Anna Kendrick) appear to have it all – young and stylish with good careers, a New York apartment, and a go-getter’s life.

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This is a quietly powerful tale of domestic abuse, by coercive control[/caption]

But frustrated, angry Simon (Charlie Carrick) bullies, intimidates, patronises and terrorises his “darling”.

He controls her diet and life choices, tries to cut her off from old friends, and makes her so anxious she trembles with fear and tears her hair out in clumps.

Domestic abuse is hard to portray and director Mary Nighy (daughter of Bill, here making an assured debut) uses flashbacks to hint at Simon’s physical menace – deftly leaving certain things unseen but easy to imagine.

We share in Alice’s dread, knowing that everyday decisions like eating the “wrong” breakfast pastry, could trigger Simon.

A female friendship, on a short getaway, gives Alice strength and invokes the possibility of escape.

Wunmi Mosaku as Steph, her supportive best friend, is a standout.

LAURA STOTT