ALEXANDER MCQUEEN’s eagerly anticipated retrospective opens on Saturday at the V&A, but I also hear of an upcoming film and a play about the late fashion designer.
The film producer Damian Jones has bought the rights to Andrew Wilson’s new biography, which includes revelations that McQueen was abused by his sister’s husband and was HIV positive. The script comes from the movie newcomer Chris Urch; lined up as director is Andrew Haigh, who has made two gay-themed films and the San Francisco-set television series Looking. No lead has been announced as yet.
But first, in May, the St James Theatre, in London, stages McQueen, described as “a journey into his visionary imagination and dark dream world”. Dark indeed, if the biography is anything to go by.
■ Can the film censor explain why The Duke of Burgundy has an 18 classification? This oddball movie about a submissive-dominant relationship between two women in a rural European chateau features no nudity — just close-ups of the shapely stockinged legs of the lead actress, Sidse Babett Knudsen — and all the sex acts in it are implied, not explicit. Maybe the British Board of Film Classification, like Queen Victoria, is simply stunned by Sapphic leanings.
■ Soundtracks for movies are crucial in orchestrating our emotions. Take Still Alice, out this weekend, for which Julianne Moore deservedly won an Oscar as an early-onset Alzheimer’s victim. The haunting music has a particular resonance for its British composer, Ilan Eshkeri, whose maternal grandmother has dementia, while the fathers of two of his best friends recently died of complications from Alzheimer’s. The score could not be more different from his music for the Shaun the Sheep movie, currently riding high at the box office.
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■ What’s wrong with the Royal Court? Since Vicky Featherstone took over nearly two years ago, there have been too many disappointments — Birdland, The Mistress Contract, Teh Internet Is Serious Business, Hope and now How to Hold Your Breath. Featherstone, who has opted for political/issue-led theatre, seems to have forgotten that plays must first and foremost have dramatic impact. Now, just announced by her, comes a verbatim (and worthy-sounding) work about the National Health Service, to coincide with the general election. At least there are some decent productions, such as the current Fireworks, at the upstairs theatre.
■ Poor Nick Penny, who steps down as director of the National Gallery this summer. He arrived seven years ago and soon expressed his disdain for blockbusters. So it must be dispiriting for him to leave after staging two smash hits in a row — the wonderful Rembrandt: The Late Works and now the fabulous Inventing Impressionism.