Brooke Shields refuses to play the victim

A new documentary on Brooke Shields; an existential crisis framed by a road rage incident; a send off to Ryuichi Sakamoto, and everything else worth watching this week.

Brooke Shields handled the many instances of exploitation and abuse with bewildering grace. Picture: Getty Images

Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields

Disney Plus

It’s hard to fathom how well-adjusted Brooke Shields is after watching Pretty Baby, the two-part documentary directed by Sundance veteran Lana Wilson. The film, which reclaims its title from the provocative 1978 Louis Malle film in which the then 11-year-old Shields starred as a child prostitute, explores the life of the world’s most famous teenager, both behind and in front of the camera. It features gorgeous archival footage, interviews with a now 57-year-old Shields, and actors Laura Linney and Drew Barrymore as talking heads. The film unpacks her turbulent but loving relationship with her alcoholic, needy mum-ager; the lecherous directors and interviewers that preyed upon her budding sensuality; her “close friendship” with Michael Jackson; and the many instances of exploitation and abuse (including one outright sexual assault) suffered by Shields — all of which she handled with bewildering grace and precocity.

Beef

Netflix

Beef is an existential crisis framed by a road rage incident. This bonkers dark comedy from the cult production house A24 (Everything Everywhere All At Once) is a belter, both absurdly funny and slyly sad at the same time. Set across both sides of Los Angeles, Steven Yeun (Minari) plays a down-and-out handyman who works at a motel his family used to own. He is desperately trying to scrape together funds to move his parents back from Korea when he locks horns with Ali Wong, a wealthy entrepreneur, in a parking lot. The spat escalates to a crazed car chase through Calabasas and over the course of 10 episodes, their seething hatred fuels an increasingly volatile continuum of payback — and uncovers middle-aged wounds in the process. The two set out to ruin each others’ lives, one bad Yelp review at a time. This marks Yeun’s first return to TV since he was killed off in The Walking Dead back in 2016. It’s good to have him back.

Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence

Mubi

Vale Ryuichi Sakamoto. The Yellow Magic Orchestra founding member and visionary composer won an Academy Award for his work on Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, but his first toe-dip into scoring cinema was Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. What an exquisite, mysterious treasure Nagisa Oshima’s rock star-led war film is. This is a multi-layered, violent, and at times sensual tale of the psyches of men, from clashing cultures, in war. The film, which is now streaming on Mubi, is counted by legendary present-day directors Christopher Nolan and Akira Kurosawa as one of their eternal favourites. David Bowie, fresh off his Broadway role in The Elephant Man, embodies Celliers, a stately British officer interned by the Japanese as a prisoner of war. Sakamoto, elfin and beautiful, plays a stern camp commander, who is transfixed by this alien blonde major. This is worth watching for the soundtrack alone, which is probably the best to ever grace a film.

Asking For It

Premieres 8.30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand, Thursday 20 April.

The latest docuseries from investigative journalist Jess Hill unpacks the epidemic of sexual violence and the need for consent education in Australia. The three-part series, a follow-up to Hill’s See What You Made Me Do — which scrutinised domestic violence and the importance of criminalising coercive control — will look at how the sexual revolution has evolved from the “sexual liberation” of the 1960s and ‘70s, to the era of “enthusiastic consent” we’re living in now. Hill’s thesis is that “the consent revolution is the next evolutionary step towards a truly liberated sexuality”. She explores this through first-person testimony from advocates, experts, and community groups, all of whom are driving change in Australia by insisting that quality consent education be embedded in the national curriculum, from kindergarten onwards. The likes of Grace Tame, Saxon Mullins, Noelle Martin, and Adelle Moleta all speak frankly about their experience navigating the legal system, fighting for law reform, and surviving trauma.

The Marvellous Mrs Maisel

Amazon Prime Video

It’s time we bid adieu to The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. The fifth and final season of the 20 Emmy Award-winning series will open with a three-episode premiere on April 13 and drop in weekly instalments until the finale on May 26. For the uninitiated: the show, which hails from Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, is about a Jewish-American woman in the 1950s (Miriam “Midge” Maisel, played by Rachel Brosnahan) who turns to performing stand-up comedy in Greenwich Village bars when her husband (Michael Zegen) leaves her. This show is a vibrant comic joy; bursting with colour; pacing that is so fast it’s motion sickness-inducing; one-liners so zippy you risk missing them; and a crackpot cast including Tony Shalhoub as Miriam’s tetchy father and Alex Borstein as her bolshie manager, Susie.