A lesson from Len

I watched a very interesting documentary about Len Deighton a few weeks ago. Len was a student in Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and became a commercial artist before writing The Ipcress File and finding overnight fame as a writer of intelligent spy thrillers. One thing he learned in college was to walk round [...]

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Better than Sex and the City

I adore Mingzhu. “You look so good in blue,” she told me the other week. “And you are so slim. You have no belly. There’s nothing there at all.” “That’s because Lanying keeps me on a diet of tofu, fish and bitter green vegetables.” “I couldn’t eat like that,” she said. “I love English roast [...]

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Why we still need professional critics

I’ve never understood why film critics always write in opaque sentences stuffed with pretentious abstract nouns. I’ve always imagined it’s because they need to establish the fact that they’ve had an education. It’s one of the reasons I never read much about films. Another is that the critics seldom reflect my own tastes. The only [...]

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In love with cinema

“You dare yourself to make these childish fantasies real,” says Tilda Swinton, talking about her 20-year collaboration with Luca Guadagnino and their ambition to make an operatic film in the style of Visconti or Antonioni. “We egg each other on.” They’ve egged each other on slowly but surely over the last 20 years and now, [...]

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She risked her life for tofu

Gao Yuanyuan in Shanghai Dreams When Lanying was eight years old her parents made her cook the rice every day for dinner. She was also sent to get the tofu.  Tofu, like all food in China in the early 1980s, was rationed, so she had to take her bowl and her coupons to the tofu [...]

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Up in the air

You are no doubt desperate for the sequel to Tom and Mingzhu’s girlfriend experience. Tom admitted to Lanying, the arch-orchestrator of the plot, that Mingzhu was exactly his type. “How did you know that she was exactly the sort of woman I like?” “I just know.” “The trouble is…” said Tom. “Please don’t take this [...]

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The Girlfriend Experience

Last night I went to see a film called The Girlfriend Experience. It was a very intelligent film with some intriguing performances but it was less interesting to me than the rest of the evening, in which the film played a very minor part. We’d invited along two of Lanying’s friends who had never met [...]

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Pedro’s vampire story

Pedro Almodóvar has done a vampire story. It’s true. It’s only a short one but it oozes style. The story crops up in his new film Broken Embraces, which was released in the UK yesterday. Writer Harry Caine is discussing the story with his manager’s son, Diego. It’s Diego’s story but Harry is helping him [...]

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Why I didn’t laugh at Coco

Yesterday we went to see Coco Before Chanel. For once the cinema was full. They even gave us numbered seats, which never happens. Sometimes we sit there and watch a funny film and we are the only ones in the whole cinema who are laughing. This time Lanying sat at the back and I sat [...]

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