The Letterboxd Show 3.30: Fran Hoepfner

Episode notes

[clip from Amadeus plays]

Too many notes, your Majesty.

Exactly. Very well put—too many notes.

I don’t understand. There are just as many notes, Majesty, as are required—neither more nor less.

Well, my dear fellow, there are in fact, only so many notes the ear can hear in the course of an evening. I think I’m right in saying that. Aren’t I Core Composer?

Yes, yes, on the whole, yes, Majesty.

This is absurd.

My dear young man, don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious! It’s quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all—just cut a few and it’ll be perfect.

[The Letterboxd Show theme music Vampiros Dancoteque by Moniker fades in, plays alone, fades down]

GEMMA Hello and welcome to The Letterboxd Show, the podcast about movies people love watching from Letterboxd: the social network for people who love watching movies. I’m Gemma, and each week on Four Favorites, well, just like it says on the tin, we talk to a special guest about their four favorite films. Speaking of favorites, Slim is on assignment this week, so please welcome for the first time on Four Favorites, all the way from our other podcast, Weekend Watchlist, my favorite Mia... Mia Vicino!

MIA Hi Gemma! It is a delight to finally be co-hosting my number one favorite podcast. Our guest this week is also a number one favorite, Fran Hoepfner! Fran is a writer for Bright Wall/Dark Room, Gawker and The Wrap. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious Fran Magazine, her substack. Fran is also a Letterboxd member with nearly 15,000 followers. She’s great at one-liners such as her 2017 review of The Shape of Water: “someone has finally dared to ask, ‘what if Lilo & Stitch was rated-R?’” [Gemma laughs] In addition, she has very, very thoughtful reviews of which I am a very big fan of. I am so pleased to welcome Fran to the show—welcome, Fran!

FRAN Thank you so much for having me.

GEMMA Fran, no, the pleasure is all ours, especially when I saw your four favorites, which include one of my four favorites!

FRAN Ooh...

GEMMA This might be a first on The Letterboxd Show. Slim has had plenty of people come on to talk about RoboCop, but absolutely nobody until now has brought A Room With a View to the party. So, I am beyond excited*.* Also, Topsy-Turvy, Certain Women and Amadeus. These are no small movies you’ve chosen...

FRAN No, I really swung for the fences. [Gemma laughs]

GEMMA Have they changed very much in the years that you’ve been on Letterboxd? Or is it just you’re one and done?

FRAN This is maybe my second round of top four. When I ed the platform, I had the same top four for a really long time and I’m kind of struggling to the exact specifics of what it was—it was like, Force Majeure, [The] Lost City of Z, a different Mike Leigh film and something else. And it was only earlier this year that I thought, ‘you know what? it’s time for a refresh.’

GEMMA And a very impressive refresh. I was wondering—I don’t know about you, Mia—but I’m obsessed—before we can to your faves, Fran—obsessed, I mean, I’m obsessed with TÁR. I’m obsessed with Cate Blanchett as Tár. I’m obsessed with Todd Field and all of his creatives and the work that they’ve done in making this film. And I feel like as we kind of swing into award season, we just need more people to be as obsessed with TÁR as we are. And Mia and I, it seems like every other day in the Slack, we both kind of ‘and another thing...’ each other, as we another detail about TÁR. And at the risk of getting—let’s not get too spoilery for those who haven’t seen it, but it’s out on general release in US cinemas now. So can we just talk a little TÁR?

FRAN I love TÁR.

MIA I also just want to add that Fran, you specialize in classical music studies. [Gemma gasps] You’re kind of—yes, yes, yes…

FRAN Yeah.

MIA And a lot of that kind of went over my head when I was watching, because I just, I’m not super well-versed, and I was curious, your thoughts on it from that perspective?

FRAN That’s a great question, and I think I’m, you know, far enough outside of that community and really just a voyeur at this point of the classical music world. But I think what it really kind of nailed down is a certain sort of Lincoln Center snobbishness that pervades that whole scene that I find really funny and was funny to see at New York Film Fest amongst people being made fun of in that film. But I think what was most thrilling for me was to have a film that digs so deep into essentially the two pieces that are at the center of it—Mahler 5 and the Elgar Cello Concerto, both of which are longtime favorites of mine and to have a movie not trying to dumb-down what they’re about, but rather just let those pieces to speak for themselves, one of which is really powerful and scary and kind of insane and the other of which is really sexy and seductive. [Gemma laughs]

GEMMA Which both goes so well with the themes of the film as well, right?

FRAN Yeah. My high school crush played the Elgar Cello Concerto, so watching Tár react to that, I was like, ‘girl, I know. I know what that’s like.’ [Gemma & Mia laugh]

GEMMA See, this is why I wanted to talk about TÁR with some other girls and, you know, in a certain age group, because I feel like—it’s not a major criticism, but I feel like the TÁR marketing campaign has done one thing—t’s absolutely targeted itself at, as you say, that Lincoln Center culture. You know, it’s Cate Blanchett on the poster, he colors are very dark, It’s dramatic, it’s this, it’s that. It’s a very prestige film. But I think they’re totally missing a trick and of the other audience for this film, which is, you know, Letterboxd girlies aged 18 to 24... [Gemma laughs] Because of the other characters in the film—there’s Noémie Merlant from Portrait of a Lady on Fire and then there’s this incredible newcomer, Sophie Kauer, the English actress who plays Olga, who was the cellist herself. Yeah, it’s hilarious because there’s all these funny, funny bits about the world of culture itself and mentions of people like Simon Rattle, and if you know that stuff, you know, you’re gonna get a laugh, but if you don’t—or even if you do, like you Fran—there’s also this completely different angle to approach the film from which has been lost on the marketing. Do you think they’ve got a plan for that? Or do you think they just haven’t figured it out?

FRAN That’s a good question. I think they must be somewhat relying on word of mouth, which I think has been relatively successful, as well. The more TÁR is talked about, the more I hear about TÁR. And I certainly know that it’s bringing in friends of mine who aren’t major cinema-goers, also, just because they’re so curious—especially because all the marketing is just “Blanchett. TÁR.” They’re like, ‘what does that mean? I don’t know what that means.’ [Gemma laughs] And when you leave that movie, you definitely know what that means. But I think the marketing is also just leaving out how funny it is and that’s become my thing that I just keep wanting to talk about.

MIA I want to go see it again because I want to laugh, because I saw it in a press screening with a couple other people, and I’d really love to see it with the crowd, because it was funny!

FRAN Yeah. Oh, the biggest comparison I can make for it is something like Phantom Thread, to which I think it’s somewhat similar thematically, but also like, that’s another movie that teaches you that it’s funny through the act of watching it. And I previews for that movie were really very unfunny and stuffy and serious. My brother who watches movies, who I love to death, still has not seen Phantom Thread because he’s like, “it’s the most boring movie trailer I’ve seen in years.” And he doesn’t believe that they made a comedy from sort of what they marketed there and I feel kind of similarly with TÁR.

GEMMA I so agree with that, because I finally, finally—and this is crazy to it—but I finally watched Phantom Thread about two years after it came out, on a plane, because it was the only thing I hadn’t seen and I was stuck on a twelve hour flight. And I was suddenly going, ‘this shit is hilarious. Oh my God. She’s—wow, give me some mushroom soup, because I want to be in this wacky world of these two people.’

MIA I after it came out, people were asking PTA like, “when are you going to do another comedy?” And he was like, “I just made one...” [Gemma & Mia & Fran laugh]

GEMMA Speaking of, in your Gawker review of TÁR, you write: “It’s easy for Tár and others to pretend that the works of the great Austro-Germanic masters existed in a bubble, that Beethoven et al did not live in their worlds as much as we live in ours, but classical music has always been a industry motivated by money and power and sex, just like the rest.” And that immediately made me think of the politics in the first of your four favorites: Amadeus. In the way that Emperor Joseph II can make or break someone’s career with just a yawn…

FRAN Yeah, that movie feels, for as heightened as it is, so true to what that industry was at the time, which is that it was an industry—these guys were not making music sort of out of the ion and love of their hearts so much as they were trying to keep the lights on and feed all of their two to twelve children. [Gemma laughs]

GEMMA Oh my god, so many children. So we’re talking about Amadeus, 1984, directed by Miloš Forman, written by the great Peter Shaffer. This is in our Top 250, of course, at number 158, has a 4.2 out of five average. It’s, in Jack’s Fact’s opinion—so Jack who provides the facts for the show—in his opinion, it’s the best Best Picture winner, much better than Forman’s other Best Picture winner, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in Jack’s opinion, which I’m totally fine with as well.

MIA I am as well. [Mia & Gemma laugh]

FRAN Yeah, I can live with that.

GEMMA So Amadeus won like a billion Oscars, came out in 1984. There is a Director’s Cut, which I watched for the first time this week, though I have seen the film a gazillion times. Fran, why is this in your top four?

FRAN I’ve had a complicated history with this film, which is to say the first time I saw this, I really was not very crazy about it. I was pretty young, I saw it in early high school, maybe, or late middle school—my dad sat me down and made me watch it because I was doing all this classical music at the time. He was like, “it’s crazy you haven’t seen this or haven’t sought this out.” And I found it really upsetting and disturbing, because I think it not only shattered what my vision of that period of history was like, which is quite romantic, but it’s also a really dark film and a really stressful film and a really sad film. And I was like, ‘I think I might hate what this is and not enjoy it.’ And it wasn’t until I think early into 2020, early into the pandemic, I revisited it with a friend, because it had been over a decade at that point and we had been talking about it. And upon rewatch, I was completely blown away by it. And then I was lucky enough that earlier this year, Bright Wall/Dark Room did a podcast episode about it and I got brought in to kind of pinch it for that episode, so I had to rewatch it again for the second time in two years. And coming away from it, I was like, ‘I guess this is just one of the best movies of all time—it’s kind of just indisputable.’

GEMMA Yes!

FRAN But it definitely took me a minute.

GEMMA Ah, I’m really curious, Mia, are the rumors true? Is it the first time you’ve seen Amadeus for this show?

MIA Yes. The rumors are true. This is my very first time—I also watched the Director’s Cut, Gemma. Before this, all I really knew about Amadeus was like, all The Simpsons parodies about it—they’ve parodied this film a billion times on The Simpsons. So I thought that there would be more musical numbers because they’re always parodying it with songs—and to be fair, there are musical numbers, but I mean like, modern-day musical numbers. I thought this was a modern-day musical, kind of.

FRAN Song and dance...

MIA Yes, exactly. I had no idea what this was. [Mia laughs] And then I really—obviously, yes, it’s one of the best films ever made. I love his pink wig era.

FRAN So cute.

MIA That’s one of my favorite Mozart’s eras—yes, it’s cute! It’s cute! And I loved how it was so unafraid of the color pink, the whole film. Oh my god—the gowns, the production design... We need to bring back pink everywhere.

GEMMA Absolutely everywhere.

MIA Yeah, we’re so afraid of it these days—what’s up?

GEMMA There’s a list by Mal called: “obsession for perfection” and another list by Laikha: “The obsessed artist”. And, you know, like you say, it’s a stressful experience and this film sits in a very particular kind of trope of artists striving to better themselves at their craft, but taking it to obsessive level. Whether you’re talking about Mozart or, for anyone who hasn’t seen the film, Salieri, the great composer who thinks he has been given his gift by God and then meets Mozart, the precocious—what is the line he says? “Why would God choose an obscene child to be his instrument?”

MIA Yes, lots of questioning God from Salieri in this one. I liked when he—in the Director’s Cut at least—he sees Mozart’s wife naked and then he throws his crucifix in the fire. [Mia & Gemma laugh]

FRAN I think the movie is so lovingly humanizing towards both of them though, which is really nice. I think figures like Mozart are this huge mystery to us because they existed, you know, 300 years ago, we have no idea what their day to day life would be like, it’s easy to other them. But I think having a very, you know, a modernly rambunctious person really puts into context what life was like back then and I think brings a larger dimensionality to his character.

GEMMA It’s just incredible, isn’t it? And then it’s—and we’re going to talk about this a bit with Topsy-Turvy—but there’s also a love from Forman for the craft of opera and the craft of stage-setting, because we see a lot of it, in the Director’s Cut especially, but definitely in the original theatrical cut, is the idea of, ‘how are these things lit without electricity? How did the sound travel? What were the audience doing?’ And I love that there’s these two different types of theaters that we even have now—there’s the kind of prestige theater that’s funded by, you know, rich, rich people and then there’s off-Broadway, I guess, you know? And that Mozart’s having a better time at the off-Broadway plays with his mates.

FRAN I also just think that Tom Hulce is such a unique performer. And when when my dad showed me this when I was a kid, I only knew him as the voice of Quasimodo from the Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame. He’s like, “you’ll have to like this, it’s the Quasimodo voice guy.” You know, there’s no reason for a thirteen-year-old to know who F. Murray Abraham is, but that was a huge draw for me as a kid, and given kind of how short Hulce’s filmography is, he’s effectively just retired from this part of his career, it’s so thrilling to see someone so just in-the-pocket and bringing all of themselves to a character like this.

GEMMA I mean, he has to go so far, right? He’s going from happy-go-lucky guy to absolute tortured-artist—if the rumors are true about Salieri’s role in his downfall, it is such a great interpretation of that artistic journey. And equally, Elizabeth Berridge as Stanze, as Mozart’s wife, is brilliant! And similarly, she retired from that part of her life. She’s married to Kevin Corrigan, who’s still acting away, you know, he’s in so much stuff. But she’s barely done anything else and she almost wasn’t in this... I don’t know if you know that story, that actually Meg Tilly had the role, but then she injured her leg and so they flew Elizabeth Berridge to Prague to audition and then she stayed there for six months.

FRAN It wouldn’t be as good without her. She’s a huge part of it. And it’s maybe my favorite performance in a movie of great performances.

MIA Speaking of performances, F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce both nominated for Best Actor—they have to fight each other at the Oscars then, which is awesome.

GEMMA Ahh! They would never do that now, would they?

MIA No, no! They would not.

GEMMA They would agree who would be ing and then they’d both take it home, right?

MIA Yeah, no, it’s historic that they went up against each other—and then who should win but Salieri himself...

GEMMA He made the confession, he gets the trophy.

MIA Yeah, that’s true. [Mia laughs]

GEMMA Fran, with your classical hat on, where does Mozart sit for you in the canon and your heart? Too many notes or just the right amount? [Fran laughs]

FRAN Just the right amount of notes, for sure. I mean, my entryway into classical was definitely Romantic era classical music, which comes a good 100 years after Mozart. And so I getting into Mozart kind of after all that and being like, ‘yeah, this is kind of too many notes or it all sounds like math to me—it’s variations, it’s exercises.’ And it’s funny, because you see Tár essentially have this conversation about the Bach piano piece, which is that like, you know, ‘maybe this is too rudimentary, it’s too basic, it’s also made by someone of, you know, Austro European background which invalidates a sort of personal experience to it.’ But the older I get, the greater appreciation for Mozart I have, and he’s never going to be like the first guy I’m going to if I’m scrolling through my classical playlist, but he’s an artist whose work I’m always happy to hear—and I think I prefer the operas actually is what it comes down to than the symphonies or the concertos.

MIA I’m curious what your favorite Mozart opera is, Fran?

FRAN Oh, [The] Magic Flute.

MIA Nice, nice.

FRAN Which is just, it’s the one—I think it’s the only one of his I’ve seen life and that makes just a huge difference, all things considered, but I just had the time of my life seeing that, so the memory is so fond that it’s got to be number one until I see another one. [Gemma laughs]

GEMMA I saw it recently, in the last couple of years, actually, nd it was a beautiful version where they dropped a sike at the front of the stage and obviously built, I don’t know how they did it, smoke and mirrors, built a scaffolding behind the sike, and then projected doors and windows onto the sike and had little openings. And it was just done like a black-and-white silent film but with the opera. It was amazing, it was so cool!

FRAN I love those more fantastical operas than the classical tragedies just because you get to really have that fun in stage design too.

GEMMA One of the brilliant things about pretty much all of the films you’ve chosen—I mean, this is so stupid, it’s like saying, “too many notes,” the casting in all of these films is sublime, as it will be no matter who played these roles, but I love the people who pop up in Amadeus, including Wolfie’s theater pal, Schikaneder, who is Simon Callow, the wonderful Simon Callow, who also plays Mr. Beebe in A Room With a View. Can we just talk about that?

FRAN When Simon Callow shows up in a Merchant Ivory film or in any film or in [The] Witcher Season Two, I’m like, throwing up my big foam-finger hand and cheering at the top of my lungs—I’m so happy when I see him on screen. I love him to death. [Gemma laughs]

GEMMA And he is no better in any film than he is as the Reverend Mr. Beebe in A Room With a View. So 1985, one year after Amadeus, directed by James Ivory, adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from E.M. Forster’s great novel about how stupid English people are when they go to Italy and many other things besides. We... I don’t know, I just—this is in my four faves, so I’m just gonna synopsize this and then floor is yours. So, when Lucy Honeychurch and chaperon Charlotte Bartlett—poor, poor Charlotte—find themselves in Florence with rooms without views—the horror—fellow guests Mr. Emerson and his son George Emerson Jr. step in to remedy the situation. Meeting the Emersons could change Lucy’s life forever, but once back in England, how will her experiences in Tuscany affect her marriage plans to Cecil Vyse?

MIA Cecil... He makes me laugh. [Mia laughs] Speaking of Phantom Thread also earlier, this is like the proto-Reynolds Woodcock blueprint.

FRAN Oh, absolutely. It’s one of his craziest performances and that’s saying so much.

GEMMA So we’ve got Daniel Day Lewis in this, we’ve got Helena Bonham Carter, we’ve got Rupert Graves, we’ve got Julian Sands at the height of his, you know, adorable hotness, and we’ve got our darling Mr. Beeve, Simon Callow. So many other people—we’ve got the Dowager Countess. It’s a cast that just keeps on giving as the film gets older itself. So, when did you first see it?

FRAN I saw A Room With a View for the first time a couple years ago, on a whim—maybe five or six years ago—I saw it on FilmStruck, if that dates it at all.

MIA FilmStruck! RIP to a legend... Ugh, yeah...

FRAN I sought it out, it was sort of recommended as a great summer movie. And I had recently moved away from Chicago, where I lived almost all of my life, and I was living effectively by myself in between work and school. I had no job, I was just sort of hanging out all the time—I was extremely bored and full of kind of youthful malaise and it was very hot, humid summer and A Room With a View was recommended to me. I didn’t know very much about it at all and I watched it on FilmStruck on a whim and it completely blew me away. It’s one of those where I watched it, I watched it again the next day. I was lucky enough that the Quad in New York did a screening that summer, I went to that. I watched it like five times the first year I saw it and now it’s just become an annual rewatch.

MIA That’s like exactly what happened to me with Mikey and Nicky. [Gemma & Fran laugh] Where I had watched on Criterion Channel—when Criterion Channel first launched—and then I watched it, yeah, I think the next day and then I watched it five times that same year or something. [Mia laughs]

GEMMA Wow.

MIA That’s so funny—it happens.

GEMMA A Room With a View, I saw it in cinemas and I probably went back every couple of weeks for as long as it was playing wherever it was playing in the first year it came out. And then as soon as the VHS was available, oh my god, and then the DVD. And then the last time I started cinemas—I was really mad, it was about ten years ago, and it was the first time I became aware of—no, it must have been longer than that, because it was the first time I became aware that cinemas were switching from film to digital, and this cinema in particular were like, “we’re playing it at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, it’s gonna be beautiful,” and I rolled up and they basically pressed play on a DVD and I felt very robbed. It wasn’t even a beautiful Digital Intermediate file, it was just a plain old frickin’ DVD. I was like, ‘well, I could have stayed home and done that.’ So I haven’t seen it on film in a really long time, but this is the Blu-ray that I plucked from the Criterion Closet when I was in there a couple of weeks ago.

MIA Yes!

FRAN I think this is one of the first Blu-rays I ever bought. [Gemma gasps]

GEMMA Oh yeah, it’s well worth owning. Okay, so let’s dive in, though. I mean, we could talk about all the times we’ve seen it and all the places we’ve seen it, but let’s encourage listeners who haven’t yet seen it as to why they ought to—because there’s a lot to love in this. I mean, there’s a lot you could, in the context of 2022, criticize, I’m sure, about the ways in which the English are quite stupid when they go somewhere that’s supposedly more ionate, like Italy, and the ways the Italians are represented and that ion. But that was kind of E.M. Forster’s point in the original novel, right? Was what happens when you put these very societally blocked-up people in a place where there are apparently no issues with expressing how you feel.

FRAN Yeah, I became—it was only after watching this film that I got really into Forster’s novels. I had never read him before. And I would go so far now as to say Howards End, the novel, is probably my favorite novel of all time.

GEMMA It’s so good.

FRAN Just an incredible book. But I love what he does—I mean, I see him as like a natural successor to Jane Austen, because it’s easy to be like, ‘Jane Austen, she writes these great romantic-comedies,’ but she’s extremely concerned with social class and economics and essentially the business of love, and Forster, I think is also concerned about this just from a slightly more modern, compared to her, perspective. And so I love that part of the agony of A Room With a View is like, ‘what if you kissed a socialist?’ [Mia & Gemma laugh] That might be really bad to do, depending on who you are and your background.

MIA Yeah, I’m a fan of E.M. Forster. I’m reading Maur—Maurice as they say actually—Maurice! Maurice!

GEMMA Maurice!

MIA Yes. Reading that, love the film with Hugh Grant and just Merchant Ivory in general. Can we talk about Merchant Ivory?

GEMMA Mhm. Mhm.

MIA Yes, well, I just want to say that James Ivory did go to my school, the prestigious University of Oregon.

GEMMA Wait, whaaat?

MIA Yeah, you would not expect, huh? [Mia laughs] Yeah, I was surprised when I found out. But I love, love, love Merchant Ivory and I know that both of you are—and I’m more curious as to how you all discovered their work.

GEMMA I mean, I have to say, I just went and watched the trailer for this film and found it on YouTube because I thought, ‘I wonder what the trailer was like.’ And it gives everything away—the kiss, the nudity, running around pond...

MIA No! It gives away the nudity?

GEMMA It gives away—ah, it gives away Lucy having Charlotte up her butt telling Judi Dench all of her secrets. It gives away Cecil—like it gives it all away! And I don’t that from back in the day, so I don’t know how I discovered it, I just know that I love period films... This is a judgment free space, it is a safe space, I understand... [Gemma & Fran laugh]

MIA We would never judge you for loving period films, Gemma. [Gemma laughs] Why would we ever do that? [Mia laughs]

FRAN Three of four of my top four are period films.

GEMMA Oh, this is true.

MIA I was gonna mention that, exactly, yeah.

GEMMA All I would say is that more people need to get their hands on the tools of period filmmaking so that period films can be more, you know, inclusive and diverse. But apart from that, I just bloody love a period film. I don’t know if you’ve seen that the Criterion interview with Helena Bonham Carter about the kiss scene...

[clip of interview plays]

HELENA BONHAM CARTER You know the kiss that ended up being, that everyone loved, that was totally improvised, right at the last minute. They were desperately always trying to find cornflowers, but the only things that we had were poppies and then because of the sunset, we’d been waiting for days, I think if I , to try and get this kiss. It had to be on that magic moment, whatever that meant, it means. And suddenly it was like, “okay, you’re on. Let’s just do the kiss. Julian, you stand there. Helena, just walk—” It’s very hard to walk across a plowed field in high heels and—oh god, it was hard work. I just knew I had to get him—get to him without falling down. [Helena laughs] And then not laugh when he kissed me. It’s really hard to kiss someone when you’re only eighteen, you haven’t done it that many times too. So it was hard. That was hard. It was really hard not to laugh when Cecil kissed me. And then my mum came, I , that was really off-putting to Julian. So he had to kiss me again in the bushes somewhere. And mum was banging his eyeline, that was putting him off. He had to say, “excuse me, could you...” And John Malkovich was there for some reason knitting because he was a good friend of Julian’s on set. There were lots of weird memories.

MIA What?!

FRAN Cute. [Gemma & Fran laugh]

MIA That is cute. Wow. Yeah, this was like Helena Bonham Carter’s breakout role, and I think that that’s a good enough reason to seek it out, because that’s cinema history.

GEMMA I was gonna give some of Jack’s Letterboxd facts, but he has none, because, he writes: “This is still on my list of shame. As James Ivory’s second most popular film on Letterboxd behind Maurice.” But Jack still hasn’t seen it. So, Fran, Mia, if you would, why should Jack Moulton, watch this in the next week? Move it up his watchlist.

FRAN Oh, it’s so beautiful and it’s so romantic. I think a lot of discourse around what a studio romantic-comedy is or just what a romantic film is, has gotten sort of, everything’s lost in the sauce. But I think what is so great about this movie is that it looks so beautiful, the settings, the costumes the people in it, that you’re like, ‘I’ll fall in love! Why not?’ It really promotes this idea of a beautiful world worth falling in love with in a way that is not too melodramatic—it’s having a little fun along the way.

MIA Oh man, my pitch for Jack… Well my pitch, see, I’ve already gone over mine which was that it’s Helena Bonham Carter’s breakout, Daniel Day Lewis is doing a Phantom Thread type thing, and then also I love how it’s just about also how smart girls want to kiss and they want to read... And that’s true. [Gemma & Fran & Mia laugh] That is very true. And then on the other hand, I just, I love the Lucy Honeychurch character and then I love the love that Emerson has for her, and when he’s like, “I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings.”

GEMMA Ohhh my god...

MIA That’s what we want to hear! That is what we want to hear.

GEMMA Honestly, fanning myself right now, fanning myself.

FRAN I’ve got a good fact, actually, which is that with the sort of lead costume designer, I believe for this film, Jenny Beavan—yeah, she’s incredible, and I was gonna say, she won an Oscar for this film and then I believe did not win again until Mad Max: Fury Road in which she infamously got up in the big leather jacket with the skull on the back to accept her award. So she is, as far as I’m concerned, the coolest person of all time. And it’s great knowing that she was well-awarded for both this movie and that one.

GEMMA I love her. She’s amazing. I was trying to find a TÁR link between all of these films, and I did find one here: the Cockney Signora, who’s played by Amanda Walker, who is in Triangle of Sadness, which is a fellow award season contender... [Gemma & Mia laugh]

FRAN There we go.

MIA There, that’s close enough!

GEMMA But also, just to finish off, Fran, there’s a beautiful use of, my homeland sister hero, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa singing Puccini’s O mio babbino caro, which I had never bothered looking up the lyrical translation for that until this very show. And wow, the words: “If my love were in vain, I would go to the Ponte Vecchio and throw myself in the Arno! I am anguished and tormented! Oh God, I’d like to die!” This is—what an amazing use of a song to bring Lucy Honeychurch into Florence and that incredible scene beside the Arno with the blood on the photos and—oh yeah, Jack’s Facts, there’s blood, there’s fighting, there’s male-nudity and there’s Mr. Beebe. Why haven’t you watched this already?

MIA Well, we can go into some more amazing, beloved, English character actors with the film Topsy-Turvy, 1999, directed by Mike Leigh. Here’s the synopsis: After their production ”Princess Ida” meets with less-than-stunning reviews, the relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan is strained to breaking. Their friends and associates attempt to get the two to work together again, which opens the way to ”The Mikado,” one of the duo’s greatest successes.

GEMMA Oh, wow. So this is another biographical film about great composers. [Fran laughs]

FRAN Yup!

GEMMA And here, here is the TÁR link—do you know what it is, Fran?

FRAN I don’t know if I do.

GEMMA This is really exciting, I’m so excited. Allan Corduner is in this, Allan Corduner in TÁR is Sebastian, the Assistant Conductor.

FRAN Ohhhh—oh my god.

GEMMA Oh my god. And Allan Corduner, who is Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan, is Tár’s Assistant Conductor in TÁR.

FRAN I didn’t even realize.

MIA Topsy-Tárvy...

GEMMA I see what you—honestly, I think I see what you’re doing, Fran—ou’re just making all roads lead back to TÁR.

FRAN Yeah, it all goes back to TÁR.

GEMMA Anyway, what a gorgeous, deeply long in a good way, incredible film about the art of putting on a show.

FRAN Yeah, it really just appeals to every indulgent feeling I have about art. It’s quite a maximalist film. It’s long, it’s talky, but there are also these musical numbers. And, you know, on any given day, I could probably have—Mike Leigh has what? Eleven films, maybe twelve? Like, eight of those could go in my top four and I would be completely sated. But Topsy-Turvy is the one that this year just kind of clicked for me. And I really had to be like, this might be the most fun that he’s having while not losing any of the, you know, socialist, humanist elements of some of his talkier, quieter dramas.

MIA Yeah, the socialist elements—I love how they all unionized in of Timothy Spall’s character.

FRAN It’s amazing. [Fran laughs] It’s incredible. It’s so lovely.

MIA It’s so nice. Yeah, I mean, it’s about community! The theater community, but also community in general—a lot of Mike Leigh’s films are about that subject. And I’m curious about who your favorite Mike Leigh regular is?I know we both love David Thewlis, I just have to mention him, but I want to know your number one.

FRAN I’m gonna give you two because this is—

MIA Okay, that’s great.

FRAN This is my favorite thing. So, Lincoln Center, or Film at Lincoln Center, did a big Mike Leigh retrospective this year. And I went to go see Mr. Turner, which I had seen in theaters when it came out and really did not like and so I was like, ‘I need to see this again. I’m older. I get the Mike Leigh thing now. I’m going back to it.’ And that film has Martin Savage and Dorothy Atkinson, both of whom are also in Topsy-Turvy. And here’s what’s crazy.... They met doing Topsy-Turvy and they got married. [Mia gasps]

GEMMA Aww...

FRAN And so in the context of Topsy-Turvy, they become my favorite Leigh-regulars, even though it’s probably Jim Broadbent, who is like, my favorite man of all time.

GEMMA Oh my god, Mr. Gruber. Mr. Gruber… [Gemma laughs] from Paddington... We love him so much.

FRAN Oh, he’s so cute.

GEMMA Harold Zidler from Moulin Rouge!

FRAN Yeah, Zidler is like... Zidler imprinted on me when I was so young. [Mia & Gemma laugh] I just... I love him to death and I love him in Life is Sweet, that’s one of my favorite Leigh performances ever, is him as the dad there. But yeah, the Martin Savage, Dorothy Atkinson pairing I really love. And they’re both like singers in the show—Martin Savage is kind of the skinny, balding guy with the little glasses and Dorothy Atkinson, I think she looks like Saoirse Ronan kind of...

GEMMA Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh.

FRAN And I just love them in it. I think they’re both just great singers and a lot of fun on screen.

GEMMA Who’s your favorite Mike Leigh regular, Mia?

MIA David Thewlis. [Mia laughs] Yes...

GEMMA Oh, just all-time.

MIA Of course, I’ve even watched his short film that he made with him. They put a bunch of the Mike Leigh shorts on Criterion and I did thirst watch and Mike Leigh short for David Thewlis, it’s true. [Gemma & Fran & Mia laugh] I can it that.

GEMMA Oh my gosh. Well, I’m just—

MIA Gemma, but wait, wait. Sorry, Gemma, we don’t have yours. You need to tell us yours. [Mia laughs]

GEMMA Oh no, okay, well, I feel like if Slim were here, he would say Timothy Spall. So I’m just going to throw that one out for Slim. We all love Tim Spall, he’s gorgeous.

MIA We do, we do.

GEMMA But for me, it’s Lesley Manville. I adore her. I mean, she’s incredible. She’s so wonderful in this as Lucy Gilbert, Gilbert’s wife. She’s—ah, oh my god, the layers and shades in Lucy Gilbert and what’s going on for her while her husband is off making shows.

MIA Ouch, ouch!

GEMMA I know, it hurts! [Mia laughs] But then she’s also this, you know, brilliant social—I don’t know, she’s a brilliant social worker in Secrets & Lies, I love her role in that. I love her accent in that. And then of course, I love, love, love—it’s not a Mike Leigh film—but from this year, her starring role in Mrs. Harris—Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris... [Gemma & Mia laugh] Which you can say Paris... It’s Emily in Paris, it’s Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris.

MIA Yes.

FRAN Easy.

GEMMA I just had to say that. [Gemma laughs]

MIA That’s true. Even though I don’t know a single person who calls it Emily in Paris. [Mia & Gemma laugh]

GEMMA Also, I loved seeing Andy Serkis pop up on this.

FRAN Oh my gosh.

GEMMA You know, he’s an amazing actor and amazing director, and he really for a while became known as Peter Jackson’s motion-capture guy, so I love it when he pops up in English dramas, especially English dramas that are about drama and the theater and music and what a voice! He’s great!

MIA When I went to go see this, I saw this in theaters around when the Mike Leigh retrospective was happening in New York, then LA got it a little bit later, a little behind the times. But we did get it and I went to go see Topsy-Turvy and I was like, ‘is that the guy from Grey’s Anatomy?’ But it can’t be, because this was like, the 90s... I’m like, ‘he looks the same, it cannot be.’ Lo and behold, that is the beloved Kevin McKidd. Wow! [Gemma laughs]

FRAN Oh, I’m just putting together who this is and this is one of the hottest people of all time.

GEMMA Yeah, yeah, yeah. The redheaded Scotsman from Grey’s Anatomy who basically doesn’t look like he’s aged a day in the last 30 years, so we need to know Kevin McKidd’s secret. We need to know either where the well on his Scottish property is that has the elixir of youth in it or who his surgeon is. I don’t know what’s going on there, but that guy never ages, totally hot. Hey, so just looking at some Letterboxd reviews of mentions that the dress rehearsal sequences give High School Musical audition scene vibes. [Gemma & Mia laugh]