Quadruple Bill

Four in a row, to get over the fact that the Eurostar was stranded and the continent isolated, so I couldn't go and celebrate with Little Pea the start of a New Europe.

First: Sleeping Dogs (aka Sleeping Dogs Lie in the US, aka Stay). Quirky, funny and starring an incredibly handsome Bryce Johnson, it's one of those hugely enjoyable movies, which - like a good pizza eaten with friends - I will have forgotten in the sea of pizzas with friends I have consumed over my lifetime:


Second: The Family Friend (L'Amico di Famiglia). The new tour de force by Paolo Sorrentino, the acclaimed director of The Consequences of Love. Giacomo Rizzo is breathtakingly good as Geremia de Geremei, a grotesque moneylender in small-town Lazio still living with his even more grotesque mother. The film is bold. Not a single character is likeable. The plot buzzes is circles like an annoying mosquito in a hot summer night, and eventually stings you, leaving an itchy sense of frustration. I left the cinema slightly depressed about the pockets of decay - real and imaginary - that my country increasingly harbours:


Third: East is East, that classic British comedy set on the border between Manchester and Pakistan, starring an impeccable Om Puri and an equally impeccable Linda Bassett of Calendar Girls memory:


Fourth: and finally, late at night, with yet anoter bottle of wine by my side, and my companions crushed by the cinematic marathon, ¡Átame! (Time me up, tie me down!), by il maestro Almodovar. Fabulously-sensual Victoria Abril, electrifying Antonio Banderas (who's in pre-production for the Memoirs of Hadrian, one of 2 top novels, alongside Charlie Hunnam... yum!), plus Julieta Serrano, Rossy de Palma and María Barranco. We love them all.