comingofager

High school is hell, especially if you’re from a family of mythical sea beasts attempting to blend in on land. That’s the coming-of-age context for this latest fantastical fable from DreamWorks Animation, the studio behind Shrek. Ruby (Lana Condor) is an ordinary modern teenager – save for the gills she hides under her polo neck – so all she wants is to go to prom with her friends. Even if prom is “a post-colonial, patriarchal construct”. But this year’s dance will be held on a boat, and Ruby’s mother (Toni Collette) has…

The idea of a teenage girl discovering her father is in the mob gave us one of the great moments in television history, when Meadow in The Sopranos asked her dad Tony: “Are you in the mafia?” Now the Italian film-maker Jonas Carpignano has made this the central plank in this gripping and unnerving drama, effectively the third in his neo-neorealist “Calabrian” movies, after Mediterranea in 2015 and A Ciambra two years later. Both of these films used non-professionals from the region, and now Carpignano is audaciously…