There are people we grieve twice in a lifetime. Once for who they were. And once for who we were never allowed to know. My father is one of them. When I was a child, my mother told me he was a paedophile. She didn’t whisper it. She didn’t hesitate. She said it plainly, as fact. As warning. As control. When we misbehaved, she would drop us at the greyhound station and force us to spend sleepless weekends with him. I remember the noise of the station. The way my stomach would knot. The terror that would sit in my chest at night when the lights went out. I was absolutely terrified to sleep. He was a workaholic. Twelve-hour days. Long hours. Absence disguised as provision. He would leave cash on the bench, stockpiles of food in the fridge, and the television on - a wild luxury I couldn’t enjoy because fear had already moved in. At home with my mother, we weren’t allowed a TV at all. Looking back now, my father was unemotional, but never unkind. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t offer hims...
There are films you enjoy, films you admire, and then films that bypass your intellect entirely and go straight for the nervous system. Strange Darling did that to me. I didn’t just watch it - I felt located by it. From the title alone, the film announces its intelligence. Strange Darling sounds intimate and threatening in the same breath, and the opening scene honours that tension immediately. The colour blocking is not aesthetic flourish but psychological architecture. The cinematography is precise, deliberate, almost mannered - yet constantly vibrating with danger. The chemistry between the leads is undeniable and unsettling. Not romantic, not safe - a charge that feels ferocious without tipping into fantasy. They are both extraordinarily talented and undeniably hot, which matters because attraction interferes with moral clarity. The film understands that beauty disarms suspicion and uses it without apology. Watching them together is confronting, hypnot...