This fictitious backstory to the creation of Vermeer's best-known painting looks so impressive, and so precisely mimics the colours the 17th-century Dutchman used, it's a while before you realise it's just a prissy costume drama starring Colin Firth and pouty Scarlett Johansson. A dainty tale of repressed lust, perfectly pitched at its middlebrow audience.
Following the success of Jean De Florette and Manon Des Sources, interest was sufficiently stirred in author Marcel Pagnol to fuel two features based on his childhood memoirs in a sun-drenched Provence. Picture-postcard landscapes figure prominently in Yves Robert's polished recreation of the summer of 1900, although the human drama goes no deeper than minor family arguments and slender rites-of-passage rituals. This was hugely successful, but adds up to little more than an oppressively tasteful tourist-board panorama.
They're comprised of Chris Abrahams (keyboards), Lloyd Swanton (bass) and Tony Buck (drums), and have been in existence on and off since 1987. You might think "jazz trio", but this remarkable group goes far beyond that. Their methodology is to improvise slowly on and gradually develop melodic and rhythmic motifs.
Photos of morris dancers adorn this home of the English Folk Dance & Song Society, and the atmosphere is pin-drop reverent as the Prince's legions gather. Floorboards creak, glasses clink, and someone actually tiptoes. No wonder Will Oldham's first act is to wince, then hurl us into his world of gore, spunk, death and cunnilingus.
The mountain man who tore up British stages last time round has been replaced tonight by a straight-backed loner in the smart-casual dress of the conscientious worker.
