BAZ BAMIGBOYE: Loving couple who won fight against racism 

The actress Ruth Negga may have been cut out of 12 Years A Slave, but she appears in practically every frame of the film Loving.

Ms Negga, who was born in Ireland, stars with Australian actor Joel Edgerton in Jeff Nichols's movie about a repugnant chapter in the fraught history of American Civil Rights.

The actors portray Mildred and Richard Loving: Mildred was black, Richard was white. 

The actress Ruth Negga may have been cut out of 12 Years A Slave, but she appears in practically every frame of the film Loving 

The actress Ruth Negga may have been cut out of 12 Years A Slave, but she appears in practically every frame of the film Loving 

Director Jeff Nichols, Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton, pictured together at the Loving premiere in Cannes

Director Jeff Nichols, Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton, pictured together at the Loving premiere in Cannes

In 1958, the couple travelled from their home in Caroline County, VirginIa, to Washington DC to marry because, due to old slavery laws, it was illegal for them to live as husband and wife just over the Potomac River in Virginia.

'People got incarcerated and punished for something that isn't a negative act,' said Edgerton when we chatted on the Majestic Hotel's beach in Cannes.

Mildred was thrown in jail, and released only after a Virginia court judge decreed that the couple should leave the state and not return for 25 years.

The case ended up at the Supreme Court, which later spoke with one voice in striking down the Draconian interracial marriage laws.

Edgerton and Negga gave fine performances as two people bewildered by the events that have engulfed them

Edgerton and Negga gave fine performances as two people bewildered by the events that have engulfed them

When Richard Loving married his black girlfriend, Mildred Jeter, in 1958, a firestorm of publicity and a prominent footnote in the Constitution of the United States were the last things either of them expected

When Richard Loving married his black girlfriend, Mildred Jeter, in 1958, a firestorm of publicity and a prominent footnote in the Constitution of the United States were the last things either of them expected

Loving: Ruth Negga as Mildred Loving and Joel Edgerton as Richard Loving (right), an interracial couple sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958 for getting married

Loving: Ruth Negga as Mildred Loving and Joel Edgerton as Richard Loving (right), an interracial couple sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958 for getting married

But Nichols's film concerns itself mainly with the Lovings, and the quiet, dignified way in which they held themselves. Their behaviour is embodied in the magnificent, understated performances given by Negga and Edgerton.

As Nichols noted: 'The film's an accumulation of small moments that reflect how they lived their life.'

What makes it work so brilliantly is the way Negga and Edgerton capture the teenage kind of frisson the Lovings had for each other.

When a lawyer asked Loving what he should tell the Supreme Court on his behalf, Loving responded: 'Tell them I love my wife.'

They were an ordinary couple. He was a bricklayer; she raised their kids.

Director Jeff Nichols, actress Ruth Negga and actor Joel Edgerton attend the premiere of Loving at the Cannes Film Festival

Director Jeff Nichols, actress Ruth Negga and actor Joel Edgerton attend the premiere of Loving at the Cannes Film Festival

'He put one brick layer on top of another, and his scope of awareness of the world was not great. Yet I believe there was an innate human decency to him, because his instinct was telling him that something in those laws was not right,' Edgerton told me.

The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, where I watched it. Twice. I will see it again with my wife. And you can all catch it when it opens in the UK.

No date has been fixed yet but we're probably looking at the end of the year or early in 2017 — although I dearly hope it runs at the BFI London Film Festival in October.

 

Last week, Andrew Lloyd Webber told me there was a ‘40 per cent chance’ of his new musical, School Of Rock, transferring from Broadway to the New London Theatre.

Well, now it’s a 100 per cent certainty. The show will follow Show Boat into the New London from October 24, with its first night on November 14. 

The tickets will go on sale from next Wednesday.

 

Watch out for...  

Ben Foster and Chris Pine, who do some of their best screen work opposite Jeff Bridges in David Mackenzie's contemporary, striking, socially aware Texan thriller Hell Or High Water. It's about two brothers who go on a bank robbing spree across the Lone Star State with a wily Texas ranger (Bridges) on their trail. Every single role, from walk-on to leads, is superbly cast; and that's the mark of a movie that really hits the bullseye.

Ben Foster and Chris Pine attend the 'Hell or High Water' premiere during the 69th Annual Cannes Film Festival

Ben Foster and Chris Pine attend the 'Hell or High Water' premiere during the 69th Annual Cannes Film Festival

Adam Driver, who plays a poetic bus driver in Jim Jarmusch's visual poem, Paterson. Its a measure of how much I loved the film that I felt momentarily bereft when I learned that Nellie, an English bulldog who played one of the main characters — Marvin — in the film, died after the movie's completion.

Shia LaBeouf, Sasha Lane (making her acting debut) and Riley Keough (Elvis Presley's grand-daughter), who star in American Honey, Andrea Arnold's sublime study of the flip side of the American Dream. The film was shot in the United States but backed by Film4 and the British Film Institute.

Emma Suarez and Adriana Ugarte, who play the older and younger versions of the eponymous Julieta in Spanish film-maker Pedro Almodovar's new one. The movie, which tells the story of a widow whose daughter deliberately walks out of her life, is directed with a heart-shattering sensibility by Almodovar.

Sonia Braga and Sandra Huller, who star in two disparate films shown in Cannes: Brazilian-born Braga as a woman fighting developers trying to force her out of a beachside Rio apartment in Aquarius; and Ms Huller providing a series of touchingly honest (but hilarious) moments in the German movie Toni Erdmann.

Tanya Franks, Frances O'Connor, Alexander Hanson And Robert Portal, who play cheating couples in Christopher Hampton's version of Florian Zeller's hit play The Truth, which enjoyed full houses at the Menier Chocolate Factory and will now transfer to Wyndham's Theatre from June 22 for a limited run through to September 3. The joint Chocolate Factory-Theatre Royal, Bath production is the latest success from the Zeller and Hampton team. They collaborated on The Father and The Mother, which received critical acclaim in Bath and at the Tricycle Theatre. The Father also played at Wyndham's. 

Obioma Ugoala, who will portray Smokey Robinson in Motown The Musical at the Shaftesbury Theatre from July 4. The show has become a massive hit and is now booking till October 2017, with 380,000 more tickets just released for sale. 

 

Suffering for his art - it's George, the youthful Yogi 

A fantastic role: George MacKay, left, and young co-star Charlie Shotwell

A fantastic role: George MacKay, left, and young co-star Charlie Shotwell

For his latest film, George MacKay had to be proficient at rock climbing, archery, butchery, various academic pursuits and Esperanto. 

No challenge there, then.

‘The most daunting thing, though, was the yoga,’ he said, his eyes revealing the suffering that he endured.

The British actor started learning yoga several weeks before he joined Viggo Mortensen and his screen siblings — played by Annalise Basso, Samantha Isler, Nicholas Hamilton, Shree Crooks and Charlie Shotwell — in director Matt Ross’s film Captain Fantastic.

It’s the story of a father, played by Mortensen, who has raised his children, progressively, out in the woods and away from 21st-century comforts and trappings.

‘I thought: “How difficult will it be to learn yoga?”’ MacKay recalled at a party following the film’s rapturous reception at a gala screening in Cannes. ‘I’m pretty fit. It won’t be a problem.’

Instead, the 24-year-old told me, ‘it was two-and-a-half months of sweat and torture’.

As Bo, the eldest of the film’s children, MacKay had to look as if he’d been studying yoga all his life, and he does pull it off.

Following his scorching performance at the Old Vic in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker, he’s enjoying a season that’s showcasing his considerable acting chops.

MacKay got his big break when he was just ten after an acting scout spotted him and he was asked to appear in P.J. Hogan’s 2003 film adaptation of Peter Pan. He played one of the Lost Boys.

Since shooting Captain Fantastic a year ago in America’s Pacific Northwest, MacKay’s movie brothers and sisters have become close.

In fact, they all went to see him in London at the Old Vic as he performed with Timothy Spall and Daniel Mays.

That family closeness comes through in the movie. ‘We spent two weeks in boot camp, and that’s where the bonding began,’ George said.

I was totally engrossed in this story of where counter culture meets conventionality.

■ Captain Fantastic opens in the UK on September 9.

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