Cranleigh Film Club is showing Leave No Trace (PG) on Friday 13 March 2020 and Summer 1993 (12A) (Members’ choice) on Thursday 26 March. Films start at 7.30pm; doors open at 7.00pm. Our film will be shown in the Band Room, GU6 8AF, and there is ample parking in the adjacent Village Way car park.
Refreshments are available.
Leave No Trace (Friday 13 March)
Will, traumatised veteran and daughter Tom live a perfect existence in a nature reserve in Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. A mistake tips them off to the authorities. Tom begins to connect with others and thrive; her father reacts differently. Debra Granik’s films deal with personal strength and willpower. Her second feature, Winter’s Bone, starred the unknown Jennifer Lawrence and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Leave No Trace has been called ‘an engaging and touching film that leaves a warm glow.’
Ben Foster (Will) has made nearly 40 feature films over 20 years. A critic said he’s ‘an actor who makes a bad film worth seeing; sometimes he suggests the film you’d rather watch!’ Thomasin McKenzie, (Tom), received two US awards for ‘breakthrough performance’ in this film and four nominations for Best Young Performer. Cineccentric said “she doesn’t act; she experiences; she lets the moment come to her.”
“A delicate story of two people on the fringe of society that never feels manipulative, and lands with emotional wallop. Rarely have two performers faded into their characters more believably than here. The way these two people clearly love each other is palpable; that connection is the undercurrent that drives the entire narrative,” Roger Ebert, “I can’t wait to see it again, and for the world to see it.”
Tim Robey in the Telegraph: “the question is whether Tom will seek independence from her restless father, or whether the father will allow her the freedom to go her own way. Ben Foster, often such a livewire, gives one of his gentlest, most introspective performances, but there’s a stubborn intractability beneath. Thomasin McKenzie’s performance makes it perfectly clear what difficulties Tom has speaking up for herself, all pent-up anxiety and bottled but welling emotion.”
Summer 1993 (Thursday 26 March)
Six-year-old Frida looks on in silence as the last objects from her recently deceased mother’s apartment in Barcelona are placed in boxes. Although her aunt, uncle and younger cousin Anna welcome her with open arms, Frida finds it hard to forget her mother and adapt to her new home in the Catalan countryside. Carla Simón’s 2017 film is partly autobiographical: she herself was sent to live with her uncle and aunt after both parents died. “Frida is in her own little world and we are there with her, so it’s for us to catch what’s on the fringes of this universe. Simón bypasses most of the sentimentality normally associated with a film like this, opting instead for a mature exploration of grief and its after-effects. One gets the sense that Simón is inspecting her childhood,” Roger Ebert.
Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian: “A stunning drama of a childhood ripped apart. Complex and simple; very moving. Summer 1993 is about a child’s fraught relationship to the adult world, with some of the most miraculous child performances I can remember seeing recently.” Slant magazine wrote: “the miracle of this film is Simón’s desire to inhabit the rhythms of a child who’s reckoning with traumatic emotions that are only beginning to emerge in her. Crucial plot points emerge as backdrops to the explicit purpose of a scene.”
Come and join us!
Membership costs £30 per year, covering all 12 films. To join please email your details to the Membership Secretary, Sara Lock, at . We make a £5 charge for guests at each film. Do come along and enjoy the atmosphere!
