EVIL DOES NOT EXI ST TBC

There’s something in the air…

★★★★★ OUT 5 APRIL CINEMAS

With its unhurried pacing, enveloping tranquillity, disruptive stylistic quirks and opaque ending, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to his universally acclaimed Drive My Car (2021) is likely to be a more divisive affair. Tune in to its wavelength, though, and it mesmerises as much as it mystifies.

A tale of corporate greed, Evil Does Not Exist sees an Edenic village located a short drive from Tokyo threatened by a corporation’s plans to construct a glamping site. Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) represents the villagers’ concerns, while talent agency PRs Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) speak for the money-grabbing execs who can’t even be bothered to show their faces.

But what seems to be a cut-and-dried eco-fable about the evils of capitalism slowly reveals itself to be something altogether more complex and perplexing. Characters reveal unexpected layers; the narrative refuses signposted paths. And the realist drama is infused with a sense of the uncanny – at times, Hamaguchi’s enigmatic film teeters on the edge of full-on folk-horror territory.

As the drifting camera repeatedly gazes up at the sky through grasping treetops, and the score jarringly cuts to silence again and again, questions will burble in your mind like the spring water that’s so precious to the village. Just don’t expect the answers to be equally crystal clear.

THE VERDICT Watching Hamaguchi’s measured drama is like escaping the city for pure air. Breathe in its secrets.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s evil capitalists come to destroy your village

STUDIOCANAL, MODERN FILMS, METFILM, BFI, CONIC, ICON, IN.2

MOTHERS’ IN STINCT 15

Parental fights…

★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS

If you enjoyed Anne Hathaway leaning into a Hitchcock antihero vibe in last year’s Eileen, you’ll be pleased to hear that this handsome take on Barbara Abel’s novel (previously adapted by Olivier Masset-Depasse in 2018) promises more of the same.

Hathaway plays Céline, the ostensibly perfectly poised wife to a Mad Men-type hubby (Josh Charles) in early-60s New York. The couple and their beloved son Max are a mirror to the family next door: peroxide Alice (Jessica Chastain, who also produces), her dismissive spouse (Anders Danielsen Lie), and little boy Theo. The two women are coiffured besties – Céline supporting Alice’s desire to return to work, Alice planning surprise parties for her friend. But when a fatal accident brings grief to the door of the neighbours, resentment, suspicion, jealousy, mental-health issues and murderous intent threaten to sully the pristine white gloves of the women of the households.

The directorial debut of cinematographer Benoît Delhomme, Mothers’ Instinct is gorgeously period-accurate and Sirkian in its dramatic beats. It also skilfully allows the audience to weigh up which of the women is a real threat as they accuse each other of unhinged acts, spiralling towards a dark denouement. Both Chastain and Hathaway flutter beautifully between composure and mania within a pulpy structure that questions gaslighting, patriarchal expectation, postnatal depression, gender roles and the special cruelty of frenemies. JANE CROWTHER

THE VERDICT Glossy and entertaining, this may not surprise but its beats are as deftly executed as the ladies’ cocktails.