Anderson juices up the vibes for Dior with spotlight on Hollywood

News around the world

Dior
Anderson juices up the vibes for Dior with spotlight on Hollywood
Jess Cartner-Morley
Thu 14 May 2026 11.13 CESTLast modified on Thu 14 May 2026 19.20 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/may/14/anderson-designer-dior-hollywood-los-angeles

L ike Christian Dior, the founder of the house he now leads, fashion designer Jonathan Anderson’s ambition is to be not just a Parisian couturier but a Hollywood power player. “We think of Dior as this romantic character, but he was also a very savvy businessman,” said Anderson before a blockbuster catwalk show in Los Angeles . Stage Fright, the Hitchcock caper-noir for which Dior dressed Marlene Dietrich, was the show’s origin story. “There is all this amazing correspondence between Dior, Dietrich and Hitchcock, which shows how he navigated the money that it cost to make that film. I think we underestimate how much negotiation Dior did with studio executives. He was very smart in that way.”


Anderson, 41, who was born in Northern Ireland but since being appointed to Dior splits his time between London and Paris, has his own Hollywood side hustle as the costume designer for Luca Guadagnino’s films, and is set on reinvigorating Dior’s relationship with the film industry.

The catwalk snaked through a boxfresh $724m (£535m) brutalist LA landmark, the concrete and glass David Geffen Galleries at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The scene setting was somewhere between an all-American gas station and a Hollywood back lot. Vintage Cadillacs and glowing Edward Hopper street lamps dotted the catwalk. Al Pacino wore shades in the front row as the Californian sunset glowed pink behind tall palms.


Star of the show was the bar jacket, a Dior classic, given a Hollywood makeover and moonlighting as a curving white tuxedo. There were fluffy boudoir mules in soft rose pink, and silk scarves wound tight around the throat. That Californian classic, the blue jean, was dramatically dishevelled with rips lashed with glittering silver threads. Anderson’s brief at Dior is to add cultural relevance and eye-catching edge, but without sacrificing the scale and reach of the luxury giant. To juice up the vibes, without sacrificing the bottom line. Box office glamour came with a few plot twists: pastel cocktail dresses were paired with quirky jewelled snail clutch bags.


Anderson hinted that the decision to stage a show in LA was the launch of a new strategy to deepen Dior’s involvement in cinema. “This is part of a bigger picture that will unfold throughout the year, from films that I will do costumes for, or franchises that we will do costume for … it’s a starting point of how the bridge between fashion, commerce, and film could be reimagined,” he said.

Men’s shirts were a collaboration with the artist Ed Ruscha. “Ed is LA. He’s such a style icon, and so charismatic,” said Anderson. Words and numbers printed across the shirts nodded to the gas station iconography of Ruscha’s paintings, while headpieces spelling out “Dior” and “Star”, by milliner Philip Treacy (“a fellow Irishman”, Anderson pointed out) echoed Ruscha’s use of typography.


The show follows a Chanel near-takeover of Biarritz a fortnight ago. May’s “Cruise” shows, according to Rose Coffey, senior foresight analyst at The Future Laboratory “evolved from escapist collections designed for ultra wealthy clients who travel between climates, into a form of experiential marketing …

“Fashion no longer moves in the clearly defined seasonal rhythms it once did, and the traditional boundaries of spring/summer and autumn/winter are not as culturally dominant. Cruise is an opportunity for brands to keep themselves top of mind in the cultural conversation. They are about visibility and storytelling and entertainment.” Many of this year’s Cruise shows are taking place in the US, with Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Hermes following Dior in the coming weeks. This reflects luxury’s focus on the US market, where demand is currently stronger than in Europe and China. High net worth potential clients, who place a high value on invitations to brand events, make up a significant portion of the audience at Cruise shows.

The lavish aesthetic of Cruise season also chimes with the flashy tone set by the current White House. “The elephant in the room is the Trump presidency, which is an influence in the sense that America dominates global media right now, so brands want to be there,” said Coffey.

For sale: one cute baby gibbon – mother probably killed by poachers

News around the world

For sale: one cute baby gibbon – mother probably killed by poachers

Mon 18 May 2026 12.00 CESTLast modified on Mon 18 May 2026 16.52 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/18/baby-gibbon-animals-poaching-thailand-illegal-pet-trade-aoe

I t is a cool morning in Thailand’s hilly north, and a wildlife officer sits on the veranda of Omkoi wildlife sanctuary’s office. On her lap is a wide-eyed infant primate dressed in baby clothes. Not unlike a human baby, he kicks and waves excitedly. Most of his dark skin is covered in dense white fur, except for his face and the palms of his hands.

“We call him Chokdee,” the officer says. “It means ‘good luck’.”

Chokdee is a lar gibbon ( Hylobates lar ), and in some ways he is lucky. He was a newborn when local people contacted wildlife services, saying they had found him alone in their village.

“I believe someone removed this gibbon from its original habitat,” says Karin Hirankailas, who heads the sanctuary. Chokdee somehow escaped his captors, but for him to have been captured in the first place, his mother was probably killed.


Gibbons – small arboreal apes native to the rainforests of south-east Asia – are one of the world’s most threatened primate families, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). One of the 20 species is classified as vulnerable on the IUCN red list , while all of the rest are endangered and at risk of extinction, and five are critically endangered.

Alongside habitat loss, the main threat to gibbon populations is poaching for the illegal trade in exotic pets, for which there is growing demand. Analysis by the conservation organisation Traffic shows that the number of trafficked gibbons seized by authorities reached an all-time high in 2025, with Thailand among the most affected countries.

Poachers tend to target infants, which are seen as being “cuter” but are also easier to capture, smuggle and domesticate. “About 70% of gibbons in the trade are under two years old,” says Susan Cheyne, vice-chair of the IUCN’s small apes section.


The illegal pet trade increasingly takes place online; in Indonesia alone, more than 800 infant gibbons were advertised for sale on Facebook between 2015 and 2019.

But the impact on wild populations far exceeds the number of infants traded. Cheyne’s research suggests that, on average, each individual captured results in the death of three or four other gibbons, with devastating effects on families and populations.

Part of the reason lies in gibbons’ unique traits and behaviours, how they shape their interactions with hunters and their capacity to recover from attacks. Gibbons are particularly vulnerable to the pet trade, says Cheyne, “biologically and ecologically”.

Chanpen Saralamba, a biologist at Mahidol University in Bangkok, has spent more than two decades studying gibbon families in Thailand’s Khao Yai national park. One way researchers – and poachers – track gibbons is by following their loud singing duets, which can be heard from up to 2km away.

“Their duet calls help to maintain the pair bond between male and female and also to announce their territory,” says Chanpen.


Unlike most primates, gibbons are monogamous – often remaining with the same mate for life. They live in small, tightly bonded family groups made up of a pair and their offspring, which may stay with their parents for 10 years. Females and males are fiercely territorial and protective of their group.

While following gibbon families, Chanpen has observed males deliberately distracting researchers as the rest of the family moves away. “The adult male seemed to come close to us, taking the opposite direction to the female,” only to flee once the female was far enough away, she says.

“It’s kind of anecdotal but I never knew about this behaviour in other primates,” says Chanpen.


Gibbons evolved these behaviours to defend their territory and to protect their young – they are skilled brachiators (swinging from one hold to another by the arms) and can move rapidly through the jungle canopy to evade predators. But against poachers armed with guns, speed offers less protection.

Gibbons remain attached to their mothers for their first two years, so taking an infant requires killing the mother, and possibly other members of the family if they act defensively or get in the way. Hunters sometimes target other family members opportunistically, says Chanpen, to sell their body parts for traditional “medicine”.

The killing of a mother typically causes the rest of the gibbon family to break down. “The juveniles won’t have family or territory to live in,” says Chanpen.

While data on this is limited, Cheyne says the impact on the surviving members of the family “is likely to be death”.

For every infant that is successfully sold in the pet trade, others will die in transit. “Imagine how it would affect a human baby to be torn from its mum before weaning,” says Cheyne.

At Salawin national park headquarters, near the border with Myanmar, a gloved officer carefully removes the rigid corpse of an adult male gibbon from inside a plastic bag and places it on a table.


Though the body has been frozen, a pungent smell fills the room. It was seized from poachers just days before, says the officer, alongside several other carcasses of birds and squirrels, probably destined for the wild meat or traditional “medicine” markets.

The hunting of adult males can also have far-reaching effects. When a pair-bonded male is lost, the female may struggle to find another mate. Even if she does, the new male will be unlikely to accept her infants.

Gibbons’ reproductive rates are slow, with gaps of at least two years between births. In areas where hunting occurs, this can be too slow to make up for losses.

At the sanctuary in Omkoi, Chokdee has fallen asleep under a blanket, thumb in mouth. It is doubtful he can be returned to the wild, says Karin, the sanctuary’s director.

Rehabilitating orphaned gibbons is difficult and rarely successful. In cases such as Chokdee’s, where a gibbon is separated from its mother at a young age, it may be nearly impossible to teach it to live in the wild again.

Conservationists warn that without stronger action against poaching, prospects for gibbon conservation are bleak. The traits that define gibbons – strong family bonds, territorial behaviour and high investment in raising young – evolved to help them survive. Faced with the brutality of the illegal trade, those same traits can make them more vulnerable.


Find more age of extinction coverage here , and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage

‘I had been silent for a very long time’: how a chance meeting at a burger van revived techno genius the Field

News around the world

Music
‘I had been silent for a very long time’: how a chance meeting at a burger van revived techno genius the Field
Laura Snapes
Mon 18 May 2026 15.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 11.57 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/18/i-had-been-silent-for-a-very-long-time-how-a-chance-meeting-at-a-burger-van-revived-techno-genius-the-field

W hen Axel Willner went to Stockholm’s Funky Chicken food truck last February, he only expected to leave with a burger. While waiting, Willner – AKA the Field, artisan of looping minimal techno masterpieces – noticed another Axel standing two places behind him. This was unlikely enough given the unpopularity of the grandpa-ish name amid 40-something Swedish men. “I was like, oh, how will they call our burgers now?” says Willner.

Unlikelier still, not least given how out of the way the spot is, the Axel was fellow Scandi club music pioneer Axel Boman, co-founder of the joyous dance label Studio Barnhus. They got chatting during the long wait. “He asked if I had any music, what am I doing, because I had been silent for a very long time,” says Willner. He left with an invitation to send Boman some tracks, which eventually resulted in a new label deal and his first record since 2018, Now You Exist.

Willner’s absence had broken a run of immaculate albums released – almost – every two years, ever since the opulent, emotional, meticulously sampled rush of 2007’s From Here We Go Sublime made him an overnight sensation. He fine-tooled that ricocheting plushness across his six-LP catalogue, from bringing in a live band on 2011’s Looping State of Mind to a darker, sleeker refinement on 2013’s Cupid’s Head. His last record, the tender Infinite Moment, was intended to offer comfort during a hopeless time. By the time he finished touring it in late 2019, he was done with road life. “I realised it’s maybe not the best thing for me, because to be honest, I’m quite shy and I don’t like to be the centre of attention,” says Willner, 48. True to form, he declines to put his camera on as he talks from his home in Berlin, where he’s lived since 2008, and answers questions openly, but efficiently. “And I don’t really like to travel, and I realised quite directly that I’m in the wrong business.”

These days, Willner is in the culinary business: a lifelong food obsessive, he joined a friend’s company to become a kindergarten chef, making dishes like “tofu masala and frittata” for lucky little kids. After 14 years on the road, he needed a break, one that Covid soon universally imposed. He watched as some artists “got super inspired by this dystopian feeling, what’s going to happen with the world,” he says. His focus was on family, including homeschooling his adolescent son. Willner intended to get back to music and always knew that starting a new record was a challenge. But, he says, “when I finally picked up music again, I couldn’t do anything. Felt like the music had left me a bit and it was really hard to get that feeling back.”

As self-doubt tightened its grip, he started to give up. Not being able to make music – something that had brought him “some kind of escape, relief, pleasure” since he was a teenage punk – brought about an identity crisis. “Like, what am I?” says Willner. “And if I can’t do this and get any satisfaction out of it any more, what should I do?” Germany’s intense lockdown restrictions meant he couldn’t see family back in Stockholm (living much freer lives) for almost two years, which didn’t help.

Willner had always recorded at home; for 2016’s The Follower, he added modular synths to the studio in his Neukölln apartment. His creative block “tainted” the space. “It was very charged with anxiety,” he says. “Like, why do I come in here?” Having such a distinctive sound started to feel like a straitjacket: “I felt trapped in what the Field is.” He says openly that any new Field record is only ever tweaking the same basics, “but that was also gone and I couldn’t find anything. It felt like standing doing the same thing again, and also that it sucked.”

When music started coming again, there was no major breakthrough, beyond buying an MPC synthesiser. “That was really inspiring,” says Willner, as was Boman’s interest. He had already left Kompakt, the Cologne-based label that had released all six of his previous records: “I wanted to try something new.” Studio Barnhus had an appealingly relaxed vibe (its releases have the most playful artwork in the business), so Willner sent Boman two songs that had come together around 2019: the wide-eyed, puckish Hey Baby and 333 706, a song that seems to stutter like a human throat catching. “That’s quite an emotional tune for me,” he says.

They became the starting point for the five-track EP Now You Exist. The title alone seems to resound with a sense of awe and plainspoken relief. “Exactly that,” says Willner. “It’s as simple as: the EP exists, and also the music – and, indirectly, me as a musician.” There’s a sort of tentative ecstasy to the music, a delicate rejoicing. “Some tracks really have a sense of relief, and others suck you in,” says Willner. “It’s a feeling that is uncomfortable but also comforting in a way.”

The records Willner made for Kompakt all had uniform artwork: The Field and the album title hand-scrawled on a solid colour. The cover of Now You Exist features a distorted bloom, a squiggly explosion of pink from green. Willner calls it “new beginnings … it reminds me of a very welcoming forest on a sunny day.” Also new is Willner’s first ever use of a full a capella vocal line. (What stopped him before? “Copyright.”) “What shall I tell them when they ask me?” a female singer asks on the extremely blissed-out undulations of Another Day. He found it on Tracklib, “a crate-digging” subscription service offering legally cleared samples, and heard in it his feelings about his own stalled efforts and the ineffability of the creative process. “There was a lot of anxiety there,” he says. This song came halfway through the process of making the EP. “That feeling: what will people think of it?”


When Willner released From Here We Go Sublime in 2007, he was blindsided by its success: declared an album of the year by many, it was seen as a gamechanging release, bringing the ambience of Kompakt founder Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas project into a poppier framework. At the time, Willner was working in Systembolaget, the Swedish government-controlled alcohol retail chain, where he loved recommending food and drink pairings. “I couldn’t even imagine,” he says. “I just went along with it and thought, I’m gonna ride this wave as long as the wave is going. And that’s why I also didn’t really step back and feel like, maybe this is not the best thing for me.”

Willner is considering touring offers for Now You Exist, but he’s happily protected from being swept back under the wave by his cheffing job. “I can say no to things and I’m not so dependent on having to travel,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, of course what I did before is a privilege. But it also tore me out a little bit, all the travel. And especially the state of the world right now, I don’t want to go too far away – I like to be close to home base. Not to become picky, but I said a lot of yes before and I’m still trying to learn how to say no. I have a bit more skin on my nose” – a Swedish idiom, skinn på näsa n , meaning confidence and resilience built through experience.

Recently, Willner has loved watching his teenage son discover music and go through what he did at that age, “when music becomes really important to you”, even if he’s bemused by his Smiths fandom. Working with a Swedish label is another full-circle moment. “It’s like coming home,” he says. “Maybe it’s something that had been wanting for a while. But also, everything was just so random.” When Boman propositioned him in that burger queue, “I got quite psyched by the idea.” Willner likes to compare chance moments to “slipping on the banana peel”: food once again flinging him into the future.

Now You Exist is out now via Studio Barnhus

Billie Jean King graduates from college at age 82 after leaving for tennis: ‘Yeah baby, only 61 years!’

Uncategorised

Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King graduates from college at age 82 after leaving for tennis: ‘Yeah baby, only 61 years!’
Roque Planas
Tue 19 May 2026 20.15 CESTFirst published on Tue 19 May 2026 04.01 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/18/billie-jean-king-college-graduation

When Billie Jean King left college in 1964, she had a purpose. Within a few years, she had become the top-ranked tennis professional in the world. Over a trailblazing career, she won 39 championships, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Gold Medal – all while pushing publicly for gender and pay equality.

Last year, she finally returned to finish the degree in history she started more than six decades ago. On Monday, she graduated at 82 years old.

“It is a privilege for me to be here as a member of your graduating class,” King said at her commencement. “Yeah baby, only 61 years!”

King recalled growing up in a working-class family, the daughter of a firefighter father and homemaker mother.

“Like so many of my fellow graduates, I am the first member of my immediate family to graduate college, like many of you,” King said.

She chose Cal State Los Angeles, then known as Los Angeles State College, because the tennis coach, Scotty Deeds, trained men and women together. He said it would help give her the level of competition she needed to excel.


“Their approach to winning in tennis was revolutionary at the time,” King said of Deeds and the women’s coach Dr Joan Johnson. “Even today, most collegiate D-1 and D-2 tennis teams do not have the women and men practice together. Scotty and Dr Johnson had it right and they took the extra step for their student athletes.”

King distinguished herself as a tennis champ in college, winning Wimbledon doubles while enrolled. King was 18 and her partner, Karen Hantze, was 17, making them the youngest team to win at the time.

But King told the crowd that her true motivation since childhood had been to fight discrimination, a calling she first remembered feeling at age 12, when she realized that virtually everyone at the tennis clubs where she trained was white.

“I asked myself, where is everybody else?” King said. “From that day forward, I committed my life to equality and inclusion for all. Tennis is a global sport and it became my platform, but equality was my dream – to make the world a better place.”

She added: “We can never understand inclusion unless we’ve been excluded.”

King, one of the first openly gay professional athletes, founded the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973 and successfully campaigned to get the US Open to pay equal purses at the US Open. That same year, she defeated Bobby Riggs in a historic match billed “The Battle of the Sexes” – a feat later dramatized in a Hollywood film staring Emma Stone and Steve Carell.

King ended her speech with words of advice for her fellow graduates.

“Have fun,” King said. “Be fearless. And make history.”

‘A lot happened in my 50s’ – Daniela Nardini played Anna in This Life. Now she’s a therapist

Uncategorised

Television
‘A lot happened in my 50s’ – Daniela Nardini played Anna in This Life. Now she’s a therapist
Anita Chaudhuri
Tue 19 May 2026 11.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 11.58 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/may/19/daniela-nardini-interview-anna-this-life-now-therapist

A lmost 30 years ago, not long after the final episode of This Life, the BBC series that launched Daniela Nardini’s career, I interviewed her at a swanky hotel in Covent Garden, London. I had expected her to be exactly like her This Life character, Anna Forbes, the provocatively sharp and messy woman now being credited by critics as the prototype for Fleabag. She did not disappoint. My memory of that encounter remains vivid: a giddy hour covering love, ambition, sex and fame. She wore a pink lily in her hair, and wine might have been consumed.

Nardini now lives and works as a therapist in the West End of Glasgow. As I stroll through the tenement-lined streets to interview her, there are other reasons I’m ruminating on the past. In the short walk from the subway, I pass my first home, my nursery and my primary school (now inevitably repurposed as luxury flats). I am getting timewarp vibes at every turn, but the sensation evaporates when Nardini comes to the door. The woman on the threshold has a very different demeanour from the one inhabiting my memory. She remains striking, with the same soft, dark gaze. But what is most compelling is her unsmiling stillness.

There is an awkward formality as she ushers me into her consulting room. The space is filled with plants and zen art. Gesturing for me to sit in what is presumably the therapy armchair, she offers coffee and within moments is deftly extracting my life story. For one stricken moment I wonder if she thinks I am her next patient. In an attempt to wrest back control, I blurt out a question I had been intending to leave until much later. “Do your therapy clients ever seek you out because of This Life?”

A look of astonishment flits across her face. “That just hasn’t happened!”

I tell her that I’m surprised, particularly when she mentions that most of her clients are women, many in midlife.

“Well, in a therapeutic environment, you’re having a conversation about real stuff, and some of it’s dark and some of it’s difficult, and it’s about helping a person to find the best way through it. A couple of people have mentioned that they’ve maybe seen me in something, but I downplay it.”


At its peak, when people would rush home from the pub to catch the next episode of This Life on BBC Two, the show had 3.5 million viewers. Nardini’s character resonated with a generation of young women who found themselves floundering while trying to make their way in the work-hard, play-hard professional milieu of late-90s Britain. Her bravado, her swearing, her wildly confident sexuality all chimed perfectly with those Cool Britannia times.

Nardini had discovered acting at school, before going to drama school in Glasgow and getting parts in the Scottish soap Take the High Road, the TV adaptation of John Byrne’s Your Cheatin’ Heart and, inevitably, Taggart, in which she played a detective. She also acted in several fringe theatre productions, including the title role in the Liz Lochhead play Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off. The following year, 1995, she heard a rumour that This Life was seeking a Scottish actor to play Anna. She didn’t think she stood a chance. But, as fate would have it, Lochhead was asked if she could recommend anyone and Nardini was called for audition.

“It was crazy, really, because This Life was such an instant success,” says Nardini, beaming at the memory. “It provided me with lots of opportunities. But at the time, I had moved down [to London] from Scotland and I found it all quite overwhelming. I’m a family girl and I missed everyone back home.”

When the series was abruptly cancelled after two seasons, Nardini found it hard to shake off the character, for which she earned a Bafta in 1998. “Casting directors kept asking: ‘Can you do her again, but in a different way?’ The only way to really break out was to do theatre. Then slowly, as I got older, things changed anyway. I started playing mothers and different kinds of parts.” As well as numerous theatre roles, she went on to win a Scottish Bafta for her role as a ruthless estate agent in Annie Griffin’s New Town in 2009.

She expresses surprise when I tell her about the comparisons to Phoebe Waller-Bridge. “Really? I’ve never watched Fleabag.”

Seven years ago, Nardini made the decision to retrain as a therapist. However, you couldn’t call it anything as simple as a “pivot”.

“Therapy has always been something I’ve been interested in, and, well …,” she breaks off, looking sheepish. “Actors always lie about their age. My younger brother says he gets confused about what age he is, because I’ve always taken a couple of years off mine. I’m having a big birthday next weekend, and I’m glad to just admit I’m going to be 60, and leave the past decade behind. Quite a lot happened in my 50s.”

This is something of an understatement. Not long before her 50th birthday, Nardini’s beloved father, Aldo, died. She has previously said that her family could have been in The Godfather – not because of any crime links but because of all the internal feuding.

“Did I really say that? Well, my dad was definitely the don.”

Aldo was the co-founder of Nardini’s ice-cream palace, a white art deco cafe on the seafront at Largs in Ayrshire. I can still recall its monumental knickerbocker glories, the highlight of summer day trips.

In the aftermath of grief, her marriage to the restaurateur Ivan Stein ended. The couple had moved back to Glasgow from London in 2009 with their young daughter, Claudia. “My husband was retraining to be a chef and I wanted to be close to my family,” she says.


Stein went on to launch The Gannet, one of the most stellar Glasgow restaurant successes of recent years. I suggest it must have been great fun to have had a ringside seat during its glory years.

“Well, I had a little child, so I was in the house most of the time.”

It was ironic that she married someone who was in the same business as her family. “Yes, my father had really long hours as well. So, I understood it.”

There is a significant pause. “A chef and an actress … perhaps it’s just not a good idea.”

She says it in such a deadpan way that I start to laugh, and then so does she.

“We’re fine. Sometimes, things don’t work out and you just have to get on with it.”

Then, summoned for her first post-50 NHS mammogram, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which had spread to one lymph node. She underwent a mastectomy and breast reconstruction.

“When I was diagnosed, I felt that it had happened because my heart was broken. It felt it was connected to what I had gone through in my life. And I’ve talked to quite a few people who have felt the same thing about their cancer. I felt it came from an emotional place.”

She considers herself “very lucky” because the cancer was caught early and she didn’t need to have chemotherapy.

“I knew quite quickly that it wasn’t going to kill me and I was going to be OK. And once it was done and I’d been through this treatment, I felt it had been dealt with physically, but not emotionally.”

How did it affect her? She leaves the room and returns with a beautiful canvas , one of a series of colourful portraits of women she painted during lockdown. The woman has had her breast removed and the space is adorned with red roses.

“As a woman, to lose your breast is a very profound thing. The way I’d previously been recognised by the public, it was very sexualised. Then suddenly to lose that part of yourself is very challenging. It changes your relationship with yourself, and not in a negative way.”

She says she has a new appreciation for what the human body can withstand. “The narrative becomes: ‘I was ill; now I’m healthy. I have survived this. A different strength has come through. My sexuality is still here, but it’s different because of that experience.’”

All these events would test anyone’s emotional resources and, in the midst of it, Nardini realised that she needed help. “There was just so much happening. My marriage, my dad, both things kind of dissolved at a similar time. I was very close to my dad – he was a massive character, and that was mixed in with the grief of a marriage failing, ending. And then the breast cancer. It was just too much for me to process.”

After seeing a therapist and experiencing first-hand the difference it could make, she started her own training – but negative things kept on happening. First came lockdown, then her mother died in 2022, and then her aunt, to whom she was very close. “Because I’d been hit with a further emotional onslaught, training took me a while.” She finally qualified in 2024.

“If you’ve lived a life and you’ve been through stuff yourself, you are going to have more empathy for people who are going through similar things. Sometimes, I think if you are a therapist and you’ve never experienced low mood or anxiety, how can you share about it or talk about it with someone who’s going through it?”

Nardini tells me that as a therapist, she has a supervisor to enhance her practice, which has helped her greatly. “Mine has been teaching me about schema, the self-defeating patterns of your life. Once you understand where those are coming from, it’s inspiring, and you can say: ‘OK, now I know that’s not my stuff any more.’”

So, what was her stuff?

“My stuff was probably being the only girl in quite a strong male family. I also lost my brother Pietro in a car accident when I was in my teens. I think I was just numb for several years.”


When she was 21, Nardini started having panic attacks. “I remember standing outside the drama school building in Glasgow and suddenly my heart was beating really fast and the sky went really big and I felt this overwhelming fear. And I believe it was because I hadn’t allowed myself to fully experience my grief.”

Learning the impact of unexpressed emotions first-hand has had a big impact on her therapeutic approach. “Clients will come to me and say: ‘Oh, I just block that out’; or, ‘It just all goes over my head.’ I tell them: ‘No, you have got to bring it into the light because that’s the stuff that stopping you from living a happy and healthy life.’”

Is being a therapist so very different from being an actor, in the sense that you are drawing on your own experience? “To be a therapist, you’re listening to a person talking about their challenges. Being an actor, you go on a kind of psychological journey. So, yes, there are similarities.”

Did she enjoy being famous? “Well, for all of us on the cast, it was our first big job. We were all making money so we had great fun. We got invited everywhere and had a fantastic time. We all got on great.”

However, she did not enjoy being recognised by the public. “I’d be out with my mum and someone would come barging up and ignore her, just focusing on me. I found that disconcerting. I don’t miss that. Also, if you’ve been in the public eye, people think they can ask you questions about stuff that’s really private.”

Now that Nardini is single, this has added an unwelcome dimension to the prospect of dating. “I’ve been on two online dates in 10 years. One was with a psychiatrist, and we just didn’t fancy each other. The other was with a guy who had Googled the hell out of me. He was bringing up all this stuff about my family. I asked him: ‘Exactly how long did you spend researching me?!’ After that, I was like: I don’t know about this.”

It made her wary. “Right now, I’m glad that I don’t have a partner, but it has taken a long time to get to this point. A lot of your identity is wrapped up in who you’re married to.”

Nardini says she is not entirely against the idea of meeting someone new. “But he’d have to be quite some guy. Because right now I am really happy. I have a social life. I have a professional life and I feel pretty content. I don’t want any problems coming into my life. I don’t want anyone coming in and telling me what to do, what to eat, what to watch on the telly. You become very contented in your own space. You know, sometimes I think I’d kind of like it, but I’d like it to be with someone amazing.”

Recently, she asked one of her clients if they would give up their job if they won the lottery. The client said they would. “See, that’s the thing. I wouldn’t stop working. I would want to keep doing what I’m doing now. Being a therapist. My acting life is quieter now, but people still come to me with small parts. So I’d like to keep doing that too. Doing it all is what makes me tick. It’s been a good move for me.”

Despite everything, Nardini still feels lucky.

This Life is available now on BBC iPlayer for its 30th anniversary

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here

Son of Mango fashion chain founder arrested in Spain over father’s death

Uncategorised

Spain
Son of Mango fashion chain founder arrested in Spain over father’s death
Sam Jones
Tue 19 May 2026 19.14 CESTFirst published on Tue 19 May 2026 12.20 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/19/jonathan-andic-son-mango-isak-andic-arrested-death-father-spain

The son of Isak Andic, the founder of the fashion chain Mango, has been released on bail of €1m (£866,000) after being arrested and questioned in connection with his father’s death in Catalonia almost 18 months ago.

Andic died in December 2024 after apparently falling 100 metres down a ravine while hiking in Montserrat, near Barcelona, with his son, Jonathan. His death aged 71 prompted tributes to him from politicians, journalists and the fashion world .

An initial investigation by the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, concluded the death was an accident, but officers and judicial sources told El País and La Vanguardia last year that the case was being treated as a possible homicide.

On Tuesday the Mossos d’Esquadra said Jonathan Andic, who is now vice-chair of the Mango board, had been arrested and taken to appear before a judge in the Catalan city of Martorell. The 45-year-old was released after posting the €1m bail.

The court said the case was being “investigated as a charge of homicide” and ordered him to remain in Spain, surrender his passport and appear weekly before the judge.

A spokesperson for the family said they were confident of Andic’s innocence and they would continue to offer investigators their “total cooperation”.

El País reported last year that police had found no direct or definitive evidence to explain what happened in the ravine but had “come across a series of clues which, when taken together, had led them to move away from the idea of a mere accident and toward the possibility of a homicide”.

La Vanguardia reported that the judge overseeing the case changed Jonathan Andic’s official status from witness to possible suspect in September last year.

The family issued a statement to the media at the time saying: “The Andic family has not and will not comment on Isak Andic’s death in all these months. However, they wish to show their respect for the ongoing investigations and will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities, as they have done so far. They are also confident that this process will be concluded as soon as possible and that Jonathan Andic’s innocence will be proved.”

Isak Andic was born to a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul in 1953, emigrated to Catalonia with his relatives in the late 1960s and started selling T-shirts to fellow high school pupils. He progressed to running a wholesale business and sold clothes in street markets before opening his first Mango store in 1984.

“He saw that we needed colour, style,” Mango’s global retail director, César de Vicente, told Agence France-Presse in March last year. Andic soon opened dozens more stores around Europe and “realised that having the same name, having the same brand, in all the shops, would make the concept much stronger”, De Vicente said.

Am I being taken for a fool by my family over taking care of my mum? | Annalisa Barbieri

Uncategorised

Family
My mum demands I take her on holiday – but favours my brother in her will
Annalisa Barbieri
Sun 17 May 2026 07.00 CESTLast modified on Sun 17 May 2026 20.23 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/may/17/taken-for-fool-by-family-over-mum-annalisa-barbieri

For years , it has fallen to me and my sister to take my mother on holiday . Now, she has a big birthday coming up and wants me to arrange a trip abroad. I have three other siblings, who have never taken her on holiday , so to prod them into action I spoke with one of my brothers, who expressed disbelief at my mum’s request and told me I was a fool for going along with it.

I can’t decide if he’s being mean (our father died a few years ago and she doesn’t have friends to go with) or if I am the fool in the family . I have young kids and a tight budget, but our holiday has to be arranged to suit “ Granny”, so it ends up being a less adventurous , more expensive trip than my siblings take with their kids.

A little part of me is wondering if my mum is playing me for a softie and not making demands on my siblings because she knows I’ll cave.

Related to all this, t here’s a wild inequality to the inheritance that’s being left, with the lion’s share going to my eldest brother . M um has also helped out with his children over the years, but always refused to look after mine even for an evening .

I try to accept this , as I don’t want a schism in the family and I know if I complain, my siblings and my mother will get angry . But I’m starting to think my brother is right : I am a fool and I need to come up with some excuse to get out of this latest holiday demand .

I don’t think there’s anything foolish about being kind, but it has to be with boundaries. Clearly, these, and a sense of fairness, are lacking in your family.

You’re right to be angry with your mother, who doesn’t seem to treat you all fairly. But your brothers/siblings would be in for the lion’s share of my rage. Instead of being grateful for all you do for the woman who is, after all, their mother too, and perhaps even offering to pitch in, they berate you as a “fool”? Not on.

You say you don’t want a schism in the family, but there already is one and you are the bridge that is stopping it widening. Before you snap, it’s time to take stock.

I went to UK Council for Psychotherapy-registered psychotherapist Prof Hannah Sherbersky, who noted societal expectations of daughters v sons, before adding: “But you do have agency and you’re making a choice about being there with your mum, and this is a wonderful thing. Your siblings are missing out on that connection, but you talk as if you’re being fooled. I wonder if you can lean into it … What if you are not being hoodwinked, rather it’s a wonderful act of generosity on your part, providing some special memories for your mum?”

That said, for your own mental and physical health you should set boundaries. If you could change one thing about this scenario, what might that be? Is it the financial burden, the unfairness, being more appreciated? How much of a “fool” did you feel before your brother said something?

There’s nothing wrong with asserting your needs and letting others deal with the fallout, so long as you can deal with it yourself. The key here is to find the sweet spot that assuages any guilt, addresses a sense of duty, but also takes into account what you want to do. So it may be missing this year’s holiday, but planning the next with a firm, “I can’t this year, but let’s look at 2027.”

If you can find this spot, you can minimise criticism (because it won’t bother you so much) and then you won’t need excuses because you’ll be leading from the front.

Every week, Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to ask.annalisa@theguardian.com . Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions . The latest series of Annalisa’s podcast is available here .

Comments on this piece are pre-moderated to ensure the discussion remains on the topics raised by the article. Please be aware that there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site.

Bournemouth 1-1 Manchester City: draw hands Premier League title to Arsenal – as it happened

Uncategorised

Premier League
Bournemouth 1-1 Manchester City: draw hands Premier League title to Arsenal – live reaction
Rob Smyth
Tue 19 May 2026 23.00 CESTFirst published on Tue 19 May 2026 19.00 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2026/may/19/bournemouth-v-manchester-city-premier-league-live-pep-guardiola-arsenal

Pep Guardiola was expected to confirm his departure tonight , which may well be the reason didn’t. Football matches aren’t the only things Pep loves to control. You wouldn’t blame him if he was pretty hacked off at the timing of the story, 24 hours before such a big game. Now he will get to announce or at least confirm it on his terms, maybe on the pitch at the Etihad after Sunday’s game.

Guardiola to decide future at the end of the season

I have one more year of my contract. I will talk to the chairman at the end of the season. I will not tell you here – I have to talk to my chairman, my players and my staff.

I’m the happiest man in the world to be at this extraordinary club.

Pep Guardiola’s reaction

It was a tough game – we knew it would be. They had 10 days to prepare and they have a lot of energy. We fought and found a goal at the end but it was too late.

We could have played tomorrow or Thursday, but [the schedule] is what it is. We put a lot of midfield players to try control their transitions. The players have given everything all season in difficult circumstances.

We were close. On behalf of everyone at Manchester City, we congratulate Mikel and all the staff, players and fans on winning the Premier League. They deserve it.

In other news, Spurs are hunting a late goal at Stamford Bridge that would effectively keep them in the Premier League and relegate West Ham.

I’m going to hang around for Pep Guardiola’s post-match interview , but we have a separate blog for all the reaction to Arsenal’s triumph. They’ve only bloody done it!

Declan Rice was right: it wasn’t done. Hats off to Mikel Arteta, his staff, his players – and the board, who held their nerve when Arsenal were 15th at Christmas in 2020. That 3-1 win over Chelsea on Boxing Day, inspired by two teenagers and a 20-year-old*, was the little acorn that grew into a 14th Premier League title.

* Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and Emile Smith Rowe

Here is where the story ends. Congratulations, Arsenal, champions of England after 22 years. Farewell then, Pep Guardiola, 10 years of dominance ending in anticlimax. Two domestic cups counts as a disappointment in Pep terms. There will be no treble celebration at Manchester’s Co-op Arena leaving party on Monday. Eli Junior Kroupi wrote his name in north London legend for ever, as the title race reached its conclusion on the south coast. Erling Haaland’s late equaliser was nowhere near enough.

Andoni Iraola has been able to keep his future movements secret and he received a post-match send-off from a club grateful for three seasons of progressive, exiting football, capped off by reaching European football for the first time. A point was enough to claim that. His team’s determination to complete the job was too much for opponents who cracked under the pressure of their situation, perhaps distracted by overnight news of the huge change coming their way.

Strictly speaking City lost the title tonight, but it was a mad 15 minutes at Everton that really cost them. And Arsenal reuniting with an old friend, the 1-0 victory, when it really mattered.

Arsenal’s Premier League finishes under Mikel Arteta: 8th, 8th, 5th, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 1st. How’s that for a journey?

Arsenal’s title is the biggest story , but it’s far from the only one: Bournemouth have qualified for Europe for the first time in their history . They are now unbeaten in 17 Premier League games, an outrageous achievement, and will play in either the Europa League or the Champions League.

Bournemouth were fabulous tonight, particularly Adrien Truffert, Eli Junior Kroupi and Marcus Tavernier. If anything, the draw flattered City.


Pep Guardiola goes straight to the fourth official , presumably to query the amount of added time. City’s players are on their haunches, processing the fact it’s all over.


Full time: Bournemouth 1-1 Man City

Arsenal are champions of England for the first time in 22 years!


90+7 min Rodri’s shot is desperately blocked. Or was it Cherki’s? I DON’T KNOW.

90+6 min Truffert is booked for a hack at Marmoush. This is City’s last, last, last, last chance. Maybe even the last one.

City have 90 seconds to get another. After a penalty area scramble, Rodri’s shot hit the post and Haaland smoked the rebound into the top corner. Cracking finish.


GOAL! Bournemouth 1-1 Man City (Haaland 90+5)

Yep.

90+4 min Marmoush’s free-kick hits the wall, then Foden misses his kick on the rebound.

90+3 min Now Kluivert fouls Rodri on the edge of the area. No second yellow card, but a chance for City to give Bournemouth and Arsenal a scare…

90+3 min Kluivert and Rodri have a row, then Khusanov and Scott do likewise. It settles down pretty quickly, after which Kluivert and Rodri are booked.


90+2 min This result, lest we forget, clinches a European place for Bournemouth , and they are still in with a serious chance of qualifying for the Champions League.

90+1 min Six minutes of added time.

90 min: Brooks hits the post!

David Brooks gallops through on goal after a perfectly timed pass from Unal. Donnarumma comes to meet him and Brooks curls a shot from 20 yards that thumps the right-hand post!

90 min: Double substitution Enes Unal and Lewis Cook replace Evanilson, who had run himself into the ground, and Adam Smith.

88 min: Great chance for Brooks! That could have been it. Brooks, who had loads of time at the far post, screwed a shot too close to Donnarumma from 15 yards after great play from Tavernier on the left. Evanilson then curled not far wide from distance.

87 min “I started following Arsenal in the 2010-11 season, and I’ve never had any expectations of them winning trophies, outside of an FA Cup at least 2-3 times every decade, so I’m largely removed from the rancour that Arsenal’s recent title challenges have elicited,” writes Russell Eberts. “If this result holds, will the narrative be that Arsenal didn’t earn their Premier League trophy, but that City ‘bottled it’ in the end?”

No, no chance. Arsenal are worthy champions; anyone who says otherwise needs a banter transplant. They’ll be called boring champions by some, and I’m sure that will take the gloss off the celebrations that are about to begin in the Gunners pub and elsewhere.

84 min: Bournemouth substitution David Brooks comes on for Rayan.

82 min I think City are cooked. They’ve looked leggy all night, and if he had his time again Pep Guardiola might make more than just one outfield change from the FA Cup final team. Then again, the fresher players have made little impact from the bench.

79 min When the mini-title race began a month ago, we all thought that three away games would be crucial: Arsenal at West Ham, Manchester City at Everton and Bournemouth. How right we were.

78 min A moment of fortune for Petrovic, who spills a dropping ball and grabs it at the second attempt. That could easily have fallen for O’Reilly in front of goal.


76 min: Man City substitution Omar Marmoush comes on for Jeremy Doku.

76 min: Bournemouth substitution Justin Kluivert replaces Arsenal legend Eli Junior Kroupi.

74 min Cherki wins a corner for City, who appear to have found a second wind. They need a second goal, but they have to score the first first.

The corner pinballs around before Tavernier calmly clears.

73 min If it stays like this, Pep Guardiola will have failed to win the league in consecutive seasons for the first time in his career. Failure gets us all in the end, if you can call a two-trophy season a failure.


71 min Doku tries to run Rayan, who ushers the ball behind for a goalkick and celebrates in front of the home fans. This Bournemouth team really are wonderful.

69 min Donnarumma reacts well to punch Rayan’s deflected cross round the post. Bournemouth aren’t just keeping City at bay, they’ve been on top in the last 10 minutes.

68 min After 22 years, Arsenal are now 22 minutes* away from their 14th league title.

* Plus added time, I know.

67 min Truffert busts his lungs yet again to win a corner for Bournemouth . He’s been magnificent tonight.

Scott’s corner is poor and headed away by Nunes.

66 min “So, next season,” begins Zach Neeley, “the managers of the supposed big six a will be an (either way) even more Arteta’d Arteta, Maresca not only in Pep’s shadow but fired by Chelsea this season in weird circumstances, Chelsea with the also recently fired Alonso who Liverpool always wanted, Liverpool w/ a shouldn’t have been fired but still itching to fire him Slot, and Carrick trying to avoid the “Manchester United manager entropy field” and being the next Ole. So the one with the most chill managerial situation would be, Tottenham? What a world.”

The words ‘chill’ and ‘Tottenham’ have just appeared in the same sentence, and life may never be the same again.

65 min Bournemouth weathered the storm at the start of the second half. Long way to go, obviously, but right now they are pretty comfortable.

All in the mind: are exercise slides the next ugly shoe?

News around the world

Fashion
All in the mind: are exercise slides the next ugly shoe?
Lauren Cochrane
Fri 15 May 2026 07.00 CESTLast modified on Fri 15 May 2026 19.08 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/may/14/are-exercise-slides-the-next-ugly-shoe-nike-mind-hoka

W hen the much-hyped Nike Mind shoes were released in January, I bought a pair. I was grabbed by the idea that the orange nodules on the sole could , supposedly, focus the mind. The futuristic look of the shoe also appeals. If walking on knobbly things took a bit of getting used to, it was worth it – if only for that irresistible fashion smugness of having something rare. In the last week, I have been stopped in the street and asked where I got the shoes. It turns out they are now out of stock and have sold for over £300 on resale site Goat.

The Mind is part of a wider trend in “exercise slides”, a pre-game shoe designed to ground you ahead of your chosen activity. Nike claim that the 22 nodules on the sole stimulate the mechanoreceptors on your feet, engaging the sensory area of your brain, meaning focus is heightened. Meanwhile, recovery slides made by brands such as Hoka and Oofos use cushioned soles and a shape that cradles the foot to helpfight foot fatigue after a lot of exercise. The Mind are worn by footballers including Erling Haaland and Reece James, runner Keely Hodgkinson and basketball players Victor Wembanyama and A’ja Wilson, while ballerina Francesca Hayward namechecks Hoka’s slides as part of her daily routine.


Of course, the connection between footwear and sport isn’t always purely about function. This month, Crocs partnered with Umbro on a pair of slides that combine the clog shape with the look of a football boot – just because. And Canadian brand Literary Sport have previously styled their design-led activewear with what look like recovery shoes. So: in a world where the ugly shoe is now an established category , could the exercise slide be next in line?

Tom Barker, style editor at Highsnobiety, thinks they have stiff competition in the world of ugly shoes. Consider the Vibram FiveFingers barefoot shoes – originally created for hikers, with a “pocket” for each toe – that are now being worn with cult brands Damson Madder and Peachy Den by people in south-east London drinking skin-contact wine.


“In a time when people are wearing toe shoes, these kind of shoes don’t actually feel that out there,” he says. The Mind 002 collaboration with the brand Fragment – the same sole but with a sneaker upper-covered in cross-hatched lacing – has a chance, though. “That version has the right amount of freaky and weird that it could catch on,” he says. “The normal Nike Mind, as futuristic as it is, looks a little bit like something someone’s made in the lab. It’s very tech oriented.”

There’s little doubt that shoe trends have leaned towards the absurd this century, moving from the relative calm of so-called dad trainers to Martine Rose’s mule Nike Shox , Balenciaga’s oversized 10XL sneakers , and surprising hit hybrids like the snoafer (a mix of sneaker and loafer) and the sneakerina . While some of this might be down to designers’ desire to create the latest viral item, it also reflects the foregrounding of footwear in what most of us wear. Shoes are far from the afterthought of an outfit now – they’re becoming a main character.

If the exercise slide might not win the ugly shoe competition, it could still take off this summer thanks to the boom in running – and its impact on our wardrobes. Whether that’s through a Harry Styles-approved pair of running shorts reworked with a band T-shirt , or run club merch worn way beyond parks , this is a case of lifestyle influencing fashion. “People are wearing [exercise slides] as casual shoes a little bit, but the flip side of that is everyone’s running, it’s not just a pure style thing,” says Barker. “There’s a niche there of people who want nice-looking recovery shoes because everyone and their nan is doing a half marathon.” Put simply, they appeal equally to those still suffering from runner’s toe from the London Marathon, those gearing up for Sunday’s Hackney Half and non-runners concerned with aesthetics, like me.


Ali Ball, the e-commerce director at Runner’s World, sees the shoes as part of a wider trend, with consumers buying into all aspects of their run. “People are investing more in running kit these days, so may be more willing to spend money on extra accessories,” she says. While she has seen a growth of recovery slides for post-race, those who run the races regularly tend to use more tried and tested options: “A lot of [marathon runners] wear Crocs, general sliders, Birkenstocks etc – anything that feels more comfortable and cushioned than a regular shoe.”

But do they even work? And could they be doing more harm than good? Dr Helen Branthwaite, chief clinical adviser at the Royal College of Podiatry, says there’s little evidence either way as yet, but one rule of thumb remains: don’t wear any shoe for an extended period of time. “We know through research [that] if you have a varied choice of footwear, you’ve got a much healthier foot,” she says.

Experts are not convinced by the Mind shoes. Branthwaite says nodules on the sole are not new – she points to similar ones on shoes from Japan, and the Arena pool slides popular in the 70s – but they do have some logic. “If you stimulate the mechanoreceptors in patients with diseases like Parkinson’s [who have lost sensation in their feet] it does bring back some better function.” However, she is skeptical that the bumpy texture will mean more mental focus in the long-term: “If you think of having a pebble in your shoe, after a period of time you get used to it.”

Ball agrees. “Everyone is looking at ways they can improve or get faster,” she says. “I would just urge people to remember that there are other things you can focus on to improve your time – pre- and mid-race fuelling, strength training, for example. Slides won’t magically make you a faster runner.” Or, if you’re like me, clock in a personal best on your next stroll to the pub.

To read the complete version of this newsletter – complete with this week’s trending topics in The Measure and your wardrobe dilemmas solved – subscribe to receive Fashion Statement in your inbox every Thursday.

This article was amended on 15 May 2026. Literary Sport is a Canadian brand, not American as an earlier version said.

The Unknown review – Léa Seydoux gets invaded in uncanny and bizarre body-swap horror

Uncategorised

Cannes film festival
The Unknown review – Léa Seydoux gets invaded in uncanny and bizarre body-swap horror
Peter Bradshaw
Mon 18 May 2026 17.50 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 06.09 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/18/the-unknown-review-lea-seydoux-arthur-harari

A rthur Harari’s film is adapted from a graphic novel he wrote with his brother Lucas called The Case of David Zimmerman. It is a doomy, murky and intriguing supernatural noir mystery, hardly visible within the dark toxic cloud of its own strangeness, populated by people bearing stricken expressions of misery and fear. There are some genuinely uncanny and disquieting moments. Maybe it is a parable for the crisis of gender identity – or just identity, and everyone’s occasional experience of the profound, unreconcilable unknowability of our own bodies. There is also something of the mood of Blow-Up , or Basil Dearden’s Brit pulp chiller The Man Who Haunted Himself , or indeed David Robert Mitchell’s modern classic It Follows . But this one, sadly, is flawed by that perennial problem of how to end a story with a great premise.

Niels Schneider plays David Zimmerman, a photographer in his late 30s documenting the way in which his home town has changed over the past century – a project inherited from his photographer dad. (He has an old photo of them both seated on the pavement, apparently mimicking Chaplin and the Kid.) David is overworked, dishevelled and depressed, but is just about persuaded to go along to a raucous New Year’s Eve party where he is stunned to glimpse a woman staring at him, played by Léa Seydoux , whom he realises he photographed a few months’ previously.

She is apparently called Eve, a would-be actor who had a temp catering job at an anniversary party where David was taking pictures. She angrily quit after being yelled at for dropping a tray of glasses and, entranced by her moody defiance, David neglected his official duties to snap her as she stalked off. They have sex in an impossibly squalid basement, and David wakes up the next day to find he is now in Eve’s body.


He is terrified and fascinated by female anatomy (though a more comical film might have scenes with David/Eve getting to grips with novel problems like doing up a bra). Almost paralysed with horror at the waking nightmare of this situation, he finds a way of getting into Eve’s apartment (which, importantly, has a picture of Bob Dylan on the wall), and then he seeks out his own walking, talking male body, which he assumes Eve’s consciousness now inhabits. But it is not as simple as that. Before their meeting, Eve had been animated by an evil invader, with her authentic consciousness long since discarded, and the invader, having taken over David’s body during the sex act, went on to have sex with another woman, Malia (Lilith Grasmug), whose consciousness is now imprisoned in David’s body. A succubus is going around instigating a chain-letter sequence of metempsychotic hookups, which results in a male consciousness within a pregnant female body.

It really is very bizarre. Not-Eve and not-David are faced with a deeply peculiar challenge: could they somehow partly rectify this situation by having sex, which might restore David to his real body and at least give the third woman an actual female form? Finally, having stumbled around in the wilderness of physio-psychological mirrors, our troubled hero and heroine give us to understand that they (and we) have pretty much run out of narrative road. Seydoux, with dark circles under her eyes, is now almost catatonic, having gazed into that abyss which, in Nietzsche’s words, has been gazing back for almost two hours. It is a distinctly disquieting and baffling experience.

The Unknown screened at the Cannes film festival .