Hollywood actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) has come to Savannah, Georgia, to research the life of Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), whom she will portray in an upcoming dramatisation of a traumatic period in Gracie’s life, a scandal for which she became a figure of public notoriety. Divorced, Gracie is now married to Joe (Charles Melton), who is twenty-three years her junior, with whom she has several children. Gracie also has grown children from her previous marriage to Tom (D. W. Moffett), amounting to a complicated extended family dynamic. Elizabeth’s assurance that she will respect the family’s privacy are gradually revealed to be specious, however, and her research crosses the line between discreet and intrusive. Todd Haynes’s deliciously layered, ever-so-slightly camp psychodrama benefits enormously from the game performances from the never-better leads.

There will be Open Captioned screenings at 13.20 on Friday 17th and at 20.50 on Wednesday 22nd.

Notes by David O’Mahony