5 things to watch this weekend – 6 to 8 December

Where’s it on? Film4, Saturday, 11.20pm

Coming a satisfactory 92nd in the BBC’s recent poll of best films directed by women, this viscerally gory directorial debut from French filmmaker Julia Ducournau awaits strong-stomached late-night viewers on Film4 this Saturday. Garance Marillier plays the young vegetarian veterinarian who, in the throes of an intense run of hazing rituals at vet college, is forced to eat raw rabbit’s liver. This dare has some surprising after-effects, as 16-year-old Justine comes over in a rash and soon develops an insatiable appetite for meat, coupled with a raging libido. Ducournau’s shocker harkens back to a slew of horrors that play on the bewildering sea-changes of puberty, from Carrie (1976) to Ginger Snaps (2000), while also recalling the frank and corporeally brutal eroticism of Claire Denis’ vampire film Trouble Every Day (2001). Try it on for size and join the wait to see what this talented new director does next.

Where’s it on? Blu-ray

If you’re perennially disappointed that certain vintage classics of the Christmas movie feature comparatively little action during the festive season – that’s you It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), and you White Christmas (1954) – this too-little-known British gem has you covered. Opening with shots of the London Christmas lights and a well-heeled west London world in the days before the mass yuletide exodus, The Holly and the Ivy is festivities from end to end, as disparate family members repair to rural Norfolk for a get together with their parson father (Ralph Richardson). It’s snowing, there’s carol singing, and much baring of family tensions and secrets. Refreshingly, this is no mush fest either, but a film that touches on strained bonds and faith in the modern world in ways that play like a very stiff-upper-lip analogue to Chekhov or Bergman. George More O’Ferrall’s film is new to Blu-ray this week, and it’s worth making an annual ritual of.

Where’s it on? Blu-ray

The presence of peak-era Debra Winger and Tom Berenger and a title like Betrayed tell us we’re in the 1980s, but revisiting this Costa-Gavras thriller in the era of MAGA and the rise of the alt-right and its subject could hardly feel more right-now. Following the murder of an outspoken Jewish radio DJ, Winger’s FBI agent infiltrates a midwestern farming community where the perpetrators may be hiding. The closer she gets to Berenger’s Vietnam vet and family man, however, the closer she gets to the community’s brutal secrets. Where the same year’s Mississippi Burning dealt with racist violence through the historical lens of its civil rights-era story, Betrayed tackles white supremacy and neo-Nazism in the present tense – even featuring a presidential candidate whose dog-whistling tactics play straight into corn belt prejudices. If you can forgive some implausibilities in the story, the results make for sobering viewing.

Where’s it on? Selected cinemas nationwide

Getting a big-screen reissue in time for festive season, Jacques Demy’s all-sung romance, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, is a film it’s difficult not to gush over. Catherine Deneuve shot to stardom playing the radiant daughter of an umbrella-shop owner who falls in love with a handsome garage mechanic (Nino Castelnuovo), only for their romance to be tested when he’s shipped off to fight in the Algerian war. Don’t be fooled by the candy-coloured hues (on everything from the clothes to the wallpaper) or Michel Legrand’s swooningly melancholic melodies into thinking Demy’s film is in any way treacly or insubstantial. What makes it so wounding is how Demy anchors his bright and seductive surfaces in real emotions and life experiences, tackling themes such as teen pregnancy, the draft and the compromises life forces upon us. We’re en route to a climactic scene – and rising crane shot – at an Esso petrol station that will leave you crying till Christmas. 

Where’s it on? Blu-ray

Elia Kazan’s famous dockyard drama is rarely considered a film noir, though there are enough shots of rain-glistened paving, men in trilbys and dark New Jersey back streets for you to make the case. In fact, with its powerhouse ensemble of Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger and Karl Malden, this landmark release provided a stepping stone between the new urban realism of noirs like Force of Evil (1948) and the later Method-infused New York movies of Scorsese and De Niro. Enshrined as an American masterpiece with multiple Oscars, it’s nonetheless a contentious classic: its story of a docker turning informant against a crooked union boss has usually been seen as Kazan’s special pleading for his own naming of names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. The new Criterion Blu-ray offers plenty of contextual material to help you argue the toss, and it’s difficult to imagine the wintry Hoboken cinematography by Boris Kaufman ever looking better.