‘Monica’ Review: Andrea Pallaoro Finds a Fresh Angle on the Trans Experience

Dianne Buswell took to social media with a hilarious confession about her relationship with her boyfriend of nearly four years Joe Sugg.MORE: Strictly's Dianne Buswell shows off natural hair colour - and you won't believe itThe professional Strictly Come Dancing dancer, 33, shared a video on her Instagram Stories from TikTok that showed a couple in bed and one of them not so subtly attempting to wake their partner up.WATCH: Strictly's Dianne Buswell comments about having children with boyfriend Joe SuggThe clip read: "When you're always the first one to wake up," Dianne added: "@joesugg this is me."READ: Dianne Buswell's behind-the-scenes wedding photo with Amy Dowden will confuse youSEE: Bridesmaid Dianne Buswell sparks reaction in low-cut dress in new wedding clipIn the clip, the person Dianne is referring to tries to make noises with the duvet and fidgets around with the pillow in an attempt to rouse their sleeping partner - a very relatable scene.@thedfamiily I hate the waiting game…tag your significant other half if this is you

Kylie Minogue has teased her fans with her latest social media post. Posing behind some white and black printed curtains, the 54-year-old singer put on a flirty display.MORE: Kylie Minogue sizzles in striking silver dress to announce exciting newsDressed in a loose green and white number, the blonde beauty pouted towards the camera whilst keeping her eyes shut.

Shania Twain has many hit songs under her belt but last April she was feeling particularly reflective about her 1993 song What Made You Say That.SEE: Shania Twain looks unrecognizable with big curly hair in throwback prom photoThe 57-year-old took to Instagram where she opened up about the track which was her first music video directed by the late Steven Goldmann. Steven is known for directing other hit music videos like Bruce Springsteen's Born In the U.S.A and LeAnn Rimes' This Love.WATCH: Shania Twain films inside her epic Bahamas propertyShania also shared a clip from the music video, and the star looks like she has barely aged a day since! Reflecting on the difficulties of the music video, she revealed: "I remember I had a really small budget for my wardrobe, everything you see in the video was from a local department store and customised by me to keep costs down!"SEE: Shania Twain steals the show in elaborate gown with thigh-split at ACM HonorsMORE: Shania Twain's secret to her incredible figure revealedThe star still looked incredible, as she danced around in a flirty white dress, and a small black top with long sleeves, paired with some beautiful black leggings.Fans were shocked by how the star appeared to be ageless, with one writing: "You're still the sexiest woman ever," and a second added: "Beautiful then, beautiful now."A post shared by Shania Twain (@shaniatwain)Shania's fans were blown away by her ageless appearanceA third echoed the sentiment, as they said: "Hot back then, and even today!"The star was also complimented on her hard work for the video.

Kelly Ripa didn’t hold back as she was questioned about her and husband Mark Consuelos’ sex life on Thursday’s “Watch What Happens Live”.

Candace Cameron Bure is celebrating more than 26 years of a happy marriage! The actress told Mayim Bialik on the "Celebrity Jeopardy!" host’s "Breakdown" podcast this week that she and her husband, former hockey player Valeri Bure, make time for each other and still "love each other physically, spiritually" and "mentally."  She added that laughter is a turn on for her with her husband and they are both happier when they’ve had sex.  "Laughter is one of my love languages," she said after the "Big Bang Theory" star asked about where she finds intimacy in her marriage. "I grew up with comedians on the show ['Full House'].

In the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s death and King Charles III's accession to the throne, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle reportedly want to delay the release of their Netflix documentary series and the duke's memoir.  The Duke and Duchess of Sussex hope to make last-minute edits to portions of both projects that talk about Harry’s brother, Prince William, and his wife, Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, as well as the king and his wife Camilla, the queen consort, the New York Post reported.  Both the Netflix series and Harry’s memoir were set to be released by the end of the year, the newspaper reported, but will likely now be pushed until next year.  "A lot of conversations are happening," a source told the Post. "I hear that Harry and Meghan want the series to be held until next year, they want to stall.

The Royal Mint have unveiled the first British coins featuring King Charles III following the Queen’s death.

"Cheers" premiered on television 40 years ago on Friday, making everyone want to go somewhere where everybody knows their name.The show made its cast members household names, even spawning a spin-off show, "Frasier," and a reboot is in the works. The show did not start off as a ratings' superstar. However, it quickly became one of the most popular shows on air, with many members of its cast getting nominated for, and even winning, Emmy Awards.

The latest big bucks music rights deal has been confirmed, with Concord acquiring a stack of copyrights and revenue rights from good old Genesis.According to the Wall Street Journal, the deal is valued at over $300 million, and gets Concord ownership of song rights, and certain recording rights and revenues, from all three members of the band’s classic line-up: Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks. That includes music from the three musicians’ respective solo careers as well as Genesis itself.Concord was already the administrator of the song catalogues of Collins and Genesis, and the music firm’s President Bob Valentine confirmed that it was via that existing relationship that talks regarding a big old catalogue acquisition began.Confirming the deal had been done, Genesis manager Tony Smith of TSPM said: “This is a catalogue of music that we are all extremely proud of and it means a great deal to many fans.

Rammstein have again secured an injunction from the courts in Hamburg, Germany banning Viagogo from facilitating the sale of touted tickets for the band’s 2023 tour.As the live sector has started to get back to normal following the COVID pandemic, the debate around secondary ticketing – so the resale of tickets by touts online – is becoming a bigger talking point again, with many artists keen to stop tickets for their shows being sold at a marked-up price on platforms like Viagogo.It’s not the first time Rammstein and their tour promoter has gone legal to formally stop tickets for their shows being touted. They got a similar injunction in the Hamburg courts back in 2018 in relation to their 2019 tour.

LABELS & PUBLISHERSWarner Music has partnered with NFT marketplace OpenSea to help the record company’s artists do some of that Web3 stuff. “Fundamental to music’s DNA, is community – it’s artists and fans coming together to celebrate the music that they love”, says WMG’s Chief Digital Officer Oana Ruxandra. “Our collaboration with OpenSea helps to facilitate these communities by unlocking Web3 tools and resources to build opportunities for artists to establish deeper engagement, access, and ownership”.

Good afternoon Insiders, Max Goldbart here. Our crack team of reporters and editors brought you the news from Zurich to Singapore to London this week, and I’m here to help you digest. Read away.

A US judge has declined to dismiss one of the song-theft lawsuits that alleges Ed Sheeran ripped off Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ when he wrote his 2014 song ‘Thinking Out Loud’, concluding that a jury needs to consider whether the elements shared by the two songs are protected by copyright.Sheeran’s lawyers have been quite busy over the years dealing with various allegations that the musician has lifted elements of existing songs when writing his pop music. That included the headline-grabbing legal battle in the UK courts over ‘Shape Of You’, in which the Sheeran side was victorious.Over in the US, ‘Thinking Out Loud’ has resulted in multiple song-theft lawsuits.

Budget supermarket chain Lidl has been ordered to melt down all their chocolate bunnies for being "too similar" to those sold by Lindt, a top Swiss court has ruled.

Carol Vorderman has once again shown off her incredible figure - this time while wearing a sequin Union Jack bikini top as she 'flew the flag' for the UK.

Three major champions and one of Scotland’s leading golfers helped Bothwell Castle Golf Club celebrate their centenary year with a match to remember.

Hull City have taken the bizarre step of sacking manager Shota Alveradze just hours before their first game back after the international break.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic It’s 2022, and a Hollywood studio has just made a movie in which two men fall in love and can’t figure out what to do about it. No one dies of AIDS. No one gets tire-ironed on the side of the road. Judd Apatow produced the thing, so you know it’s funny. And yet, somehow, “Bros” doesn’t feel like that big a deal. Sure, it’s a well-budgeted, wide-release, R-rated gay romcom, and that’s historic (if you put enough qualifying adjectives in front of it). But one of those had to come along sooner or later. Oddly, it feels like there already have been others, and there’s no question more are coming, considering how hard Hollywood has been working to include gay characters.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “If we got rid of every gay man in the military, there would be no military,” a sympathetic officer tells Marine recruit Ellis French in “The Inspection.” That’s an exceptionally open-minded take on the United States’ “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, seeing as how pretty much everyone else French encounters at boot camp is openly hostile to there being a gay man among them. But writer-director Elegance Bratton made it through the system — like the character, he’d been lost and homeless for a decade before enlisting — and this deeply personal narrative debut is one gay Black man’s way of showing how he not only survived the experience, but was strengthened by it. “The few, the proud,” as they say.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic You’ve heard the expression, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Well, “The Grab” makes the case that society had best brace itself for disorder, since certain parties are gobbling up the world’s food and water resources while the rest of us are distracted by other things. Produced in association with the Center for Investigative Reporting, “Blackfish” director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s astonishing, eye-opening doc hits us with the idea that the next world war won’t be fought over ideology, oil or border disputes, but basic resources like meat, wheat and water, none of which should be taken for granted. Experts call this field “food security,” and the entire system is more fragile than it looks. World populations are climbing while water resources are dwindling, which has led countries such as Saudi Arabia and China to seek farmland on other continents. Among its myriad examples, “The Grab” focuses on a 15-square-mile expanse in La Paz, Ariz., an arid desert locale where there’s no limit to the amount of water landowners can pump from the aquifers. Arizona’s policy of unrestricted access means Saudi investors can legally tap into the water table to grow fields of hay, which will be shipped home to feed their cattle, even if it means draining the wells of local farmers in the process.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic At the end of “The Swimmers,” you could be excused for thinking that Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini won an Olympic gold medal. She didn’t. That’s not to detract from everything she and her older sister, Sara, went through to escape the Syrian civil war and reclaim their dreams of competitive swimming. It just means that director Sally El Hosaini and co-writer Jack Thorne didn’t know how else to wrap this inspirational true story, which is ideally suited for one of those 40-minute Oscar-grubbing documentary shorts but is stretched over three times that length (and then some) in this feel-good Toronto Film Fest opener. At a bloated 134 minutes, it’s not enough that co-leads (and real-life sisters) Nathalie and Manal Issa have great chemistry on-screen, or that the story reminds you of last year’s “Flee” and a dozen other true-life refugee stories. The gratuitous running time tells you something right off: There’s more than enough movie here even without the trip to the Rio Olympics, where Yusra placed 41st out of 45 in the 100-meter butterfly. But stretching it out this long is still liable to make your brain start to prune, the way fingers do when they spend too much time in water.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In early 2021, while Americans were focused on the transfer of power back home, daredevil director Matthew Heineman (“Cartel Land,” “City of Ghosts”) assembled a crew and flew to Afghanistan to check in on the status of America’s longest war. At that point, Osama bin Laden had been dead a decade, the Taliban was weakened but not defeated, and the U.S.-trained Afghan Army was holding its own fairly well — and yet, nearly 20 years in, there was still no end in sight for American involvement. That changed almost as soon as Heineman arrived, as the Biden administration made plans to pull out. In that moment, what might have been another business-as-usual desert war doc — with routine patrols, precisely targeted drone strikes and soldiers expressing their ennui — shifted to something audiences hadn’t seen before. The title, “Retrograde,” refers to the process by which military forces extricate themselves from conflict, removing or otherwise rendering useless the equipment they’d used to engage the enemy. For Heineman, that meant capturing all kinds of cinematic sights: A brawny soldier smashes a heap of computer monitors, helicopters airlift vehicles out, and things go boom as a team tosses all remaining ammo into a trench, douses it in gasoline and lights the pile with a well-aimed rocket. The Taliban won’t be using these bullets.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Imagine showing up for an Airbnb rental, only to discover that another guest is already there. What would you do? Check in anyway and hope for the best? Or take the mix-up as a sign and get the heck out? In “Barbarian,” Tess (Georgina Campbell) makes the wrong decision. It’s already late, and she decides to stay — this despite the fact that the stranger sharing the house is played by Bill Skarsgård (the actor who embodied Pennywise in the recent “It” remake). For audiences, this casting is a clue Tess is in for a scary stay. But it would be wrong to think you have “Barbarian” figured out. For Tess, there are plenty of other red flags in the way her unexpected roommate behaves. Should she really believe they double-booked the same place in a derelict Detroit neighborhood? Or is there another reason he’s there? What if he’s some kind of rapist or axe murderer? Is the flimsy lock on her bedroom enough to protect her should he turn violent? Tess does have certain survival instincts (she’s sharp enough to decline a drink from this guy, who calls himself “Keith”), and she has empathy, too, which will become kind of a defining characteristic later on, when things get super-crazy and you just want her to get out of town as fast as possible.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Just how polished does a career-spanning documentary about the anarchic underground filmmaker behind “Greaser’s Palace” and “Putney Swope” need to be? If you’ve seen any of Robert Downey’s films, the answer is obviously: not very. You might even say, the scrappier the better. So goes the thinking behind “Sr.,” a loose seemingly seat-of-your-pants portrait of the antiestablishment director (perhaps best known for siring “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr.) that sneaks up on ya, emotionally speaking, seeing as how it doubles as a kind of farewell exercise between the two generations (plus grandson Exton) in the months before Downey succumbed to Parkinson’s Disease.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Most of the time, documentaries don’t get sequels, which is strange. Unlike their scripted fiction counterparts, the story doesn’t end when the cameras stop rolling. If you’ve ever attended a filmmaker Q&A after the screening of a great documentary, you know the first question from the audience is almost inevitably either “What’s happened since?” or “Where are they now?” Bryan Fogel must have heard that more times than he can count in the five years since his game-changing Russian sports doping doc “Icarus” won the Academy Award. “Icarus: The Aftermath” is his response, a daring and sure-to-be-divisive movie that’s even more shocking than the 2017 original, even if the big news is already out of the bag.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In the era where content is king, Sam Mendes still believes in moving pictures. “Empire of Light” is the proof. While the world was in lockdown these past couple years, Mendes let his imagination run to his happy place: a grand old English movie palace he dubbed the Empire Cinema. Thousands pass through its Art Deco doors seeking escapism, but Mendes is more interested in the employees — the projectionist, the ticket-takers, the box office attendant and so forth, who collectively form an ersatz family — whose stories, he senses, are every bit as interesting as the ones they show. And so he put them up on screen where they belong. But “Empire of Light” is more than just Mendes’ homage to an endangered art form — in fact, it spends a lot less time valorizing the medium than you might imagine. He has assembled a terrific cast, trusting that these performers can go deeper than their dialogue makes explicit, whether it’s Olivia Colman (who can do anything) as the romantically frustrated theater manager Hilary or relative newcomer (and “Blue Story” breakout) Micheal Ward as Stephen, Mr. Ellis’ latest hire (in an unusually sleazy cameo, Colin Firth plays the boss).

Trace Lysette arrives at the premiere of her new film Monica at the 2022 Venice Film Festival on Saturday (September 3) in Venice, Italy.

Transparent’s Trace Lysette stars in the Venice Competition title Monica, directed and co-written by Andrea Pallaoro, who returns to the Lido after his films Medeas and Hannah.

Andrea Pallaoro’s “Monica” is oblique in its depiction of characters in crisis, yet never obtuse. He and cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi shoot the film in the boxier Academy ratio, locking the film into a nearly permanent state of portraiture.

When Trace Lysette got to Venice for the premiere of the Andrea Pallaoro-directed drama Monica, she learned that she becomes the first Trans actress to headline a competition film here. Lysette plays the title character, a Trans woman who comes home to care for the mother who rejected her years ago, The young woman has a lot of personal issues she is working through, but among the most frustrating is that the mental faculties of her mother (Patricia Clarkson) are failing along with her health. She doesn’t recognize her child, and Monica tries her best to build a bond as her caretaker. Lysette was a regular in the Amazon series Transparent, and she co-starred with Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu in Hustlers. But this is her first leading role in a movie. We met at the Excelsior hotel for a Disruptors party thrown by Deadline, Thelios and Guillotine Vodka. It is clear that setting a milestone in Venice is not something Lysette takes lightly.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic With a title like “Women Talking,” audacious actor-turned-helmer Sarah Polley’s fourth feature makes clear that it will be one of those rare films capable of passing the Bechdel test. That barometer, for those who may not know, poses three seemingly easy-to-meet criteria: (1) The movie has to have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something other than a man. It’s astonishing how many movies fail. Even Polley’s film, which consists of women talking for most of its 97 minutes, is a complicated exception, since most of the conversation — an urgent meeting among the wives, mothers and daughters of an ultraconservative religious colony — concerns the men. But even then, there’s no denying that “Women Talking” is unlike any film you’ve seen before, which is exactly what you’d want from the director of 2012’s astonishingly personal, format-shattering meta-documentary “Stories We Tell.” A decade later, Polley is back with another bold thought experiment, this one inspired by a horrific conspiracy of sexual abuse discovered within a Mennonite community about a decade ago.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic These days, with rappers singing about “wet-ass pussy” and Ana de Armas simulating a presidential blow job in “Blonde,” it’s hard to imagine a world in which a couple four-letter words are enough to get a book banned. In the case of D.H. Lawrence’s notorious 1928 novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” it was more than just the sex talk that riled the censors (the 1955 French film version was banned because it “promoted adultery”), although the book certainly seems tame by the standards of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and whatever gynecological surprises an un-Safe Google search might turn up. How then to approach Lawrence’s controversial classic today, when audiences have seemingly seen it all, but still find themselves surfing for titillation on Netflix (judging by the streamer’s T&A-skewing Top 10 lists)? In an admirable bid to make “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” at once respectable and arousing, French director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (“Mustang”) embraces the erotic nature of its source, while making it something you can still recommend to your mom, assuming she’s got nothing against a nude romp in the rain.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic The Lord works in mysterious ways, Christians are fond of telling us. More mysterious still is the matter of faith, a uniquely human idea which operates on the principle that phenomena we can’t explain are true, not because we understand them but because we don’t need to. Set in an almost medieval-feeling 1862, “The Wonder” asks audiences to ponder the meaning of a miracle. Is it possible, as the devout residents of a small Irish community believe, for an 11-year-old girl to survive for four months without food? The child, Anna O’Donnell (Kíla Lord Cassidy), suddenly stopped eating, and swears that since then, she’s been sustained by “manna from heaven.” As word of this “wonder” spread, pilgrims have come to see the phenomenon for themselves. Local authorities understandably have their doubts, calling for an English nurse, Lib Wright (Florence Pugh), to observe the situation.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic There is no Athena housing project in Paris. That’s a name invented by “Athena” director Romain Gavras and partner in crime Ladj Ly for the banlieu apartment block that becomes a kind of makeshift fortress in an epic standoff between residents — first- and second-generation Black and Arab immigrants tired of being mistreated — and the French national police. Naming it thus lends what unfolds there a classical resonance, one that ties Gavras’ astonishing third feature to the tradition of Greek tragedy, though the situation could hardly be more timely. “Athena” tells the story of four brothers, one murdered on camera by a group of unidentified men in police uniforms, the three others torn about what to do next. Who were these assailants, shown stomping an innocent 13-year-old to death? Why does the French police seem to be protecting the culprits? And what will it take to obtain justice?

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian director Andrea Pallaoro is back on the Lido with English-language drama “Monica,” starring transgender actor Trace Lysette (“Transparent”) as a woman who returns home to the Midwest to care for her dying mother, played by Patricia Clarkson. His sophomore feature, “Hannah,” premiered at Venice with star Charlotte Rampling winning the festival’s Coppa Volpi for the best actress in 2017. Pallaoro, who lives in L.A., spoke to Variety about making a film that is not about “transitioning per se,” he says, but about the title character’s rapport with the world long after the transition has occurred. What drew you to the subject matter?

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “The Kingdom Exodus” begins with a joke, and for the next five hours, it never gets serious, not even for a second. That’s not what you might expect for the long-delayed finale to Lars von Trier’s made-for-TV horror series, though it sure makes this over-the-top return to the haunted Rigshospitalet — that big, brutalist medical center in the heart of Copenhagen — a lot more fun. For all of two minutes, von Trier tricks us into thinking that maybe this third season is going to look like a polished, peak-TV miniseries of the sort you might find on HBO or Netflix (after all, the original series came out in 1994, one year before the artifice-renouncing Danish revolution that was Dogme 95, and von Trier has since gone back to making dark fantasies with heightened style). We open on a closeup of a woman’s eye, ideally lit and steadily framed, reflecting a TV screen on which a tuxedoed von Trier appears, a quarter-century younger, over the credits of Season 2’s final episode.