From the love/hate setup and the must-dump boyfriend to the kooky mate and frantic finale this well-crafted love story hits all the classic romcom beats, just don’t expect fireworks

Based on Sophie Cousens’ novel of the same name, and adapted for the screen by the author, this opens with a twinkly tourism-office-style visit-London-for-the-festive-season montage that lets us know from the off that the film will be playing by 1990s romcom rules. You know the sort of thing: a declaration of love delivered against a pressing deadline ideally involving a change of location. As This Time Next year progresses, it quickly becomes apparent that said rules have been thoroughly studied, to mostly satisfying effect, as from the get-go the story hits the expected beats. You’ve got heroine Minnie’s initial antagonism towards her love-match Quinn, a loser boyfriend who must first be seen through and ditched, and of course heartwarming subplots involving careers and family. And getting to see the comforting formula followed faithfully is exactly why you would want to watch the movie, so it’s a job well done.

The actors have been taking notes from the same playbook as the script. Lead Sophie Cookson gives us a very plausible blend of Renée Zellweger and Keira Knightley mannerisms circa the early 2000s. Lucien Laviscount smoulders effectively as the almost-too-perfect leading man. Will Hislop continues the consistently fun work he’s been doing in a small role as the dickhead boyfriend (no British actor is embodying millennial bell-end quite as skilfully right now). One real highlight, who will hopefully see more work off the back of their turn here, is a relative unknown: Charlie Oscar, who knocks it out of the park in a small role as a bakery assistant who somehow sits in the precise middle of a Venn diagram between Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous and the Emily Blunt character in The Devil Wears Prada.

Marija Kavtaradze’s affecting film explores the relationship between a passionately physical woman and a man who is asexual

Two people can be seemingly made for each other and still find themselves out of kilter in a relationship. The attraction between dancer Elena (Greta Grinevičiūte) and sign language interpreter Dovydas (Kęstutis Cicėnas) is immediate. Elena is sensual and physically expressive, both professionally and in her many relationships. Dovydas, meanwhile, is asexual. But the fact that he doesn’t need or even want to have sex with Elena doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with her.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but for a while it seems that love might conquer all, even the fundamental differences in their needs. Tensions between them are evocatively captured in this Lithuanian drama: an awkward, uneasy coupling between the pair is kept in a restrained mid shot, but the sequence that follows, showing Elena dancing with two colleagues, is filmed so intimately in closeup that the sweat and skin almost becomes abstract. The second feature film from director Marija Kavtaradze (Summer Survivors), Slow is terrific – an honest and affecting portrait of an atypical romance.

In UK and Irish cinemas now

Cannes film festival
Sean Baker’s tragicomedy features Madison as an escort betrayed by a bratty oligarch’s son who she marries in a film that offers a more realistic take than Pretty Woman

What would Pretty Woman look like if it bore the smallest resemblance to the reality of sex work? Maybe something like this, Sean Baker’s amazing, full-throttle tragicomedy of romance, denial and betrayal. It’s a non-love story which finds its apex in a Las Vegas wedding chapel in the middle of the night and then, with a terrible inevitability, slaloms downwards into the most extraordinary, cacophonous uproar of recrimination unfolding in what is more or less real time. The hangover outlasts the party by many days.

The heroine is Anora, though she prefers Ani, a New York escort and table dancer played with vocal snap and physical grace by Mikey Madison (Manson groupie Susan “Sadie” Atkins in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). One night, the club manager comes into the women’s dressing room and says a high-roller is out there, asking for a dancer who can speak Russian. Ani, who is from an Uzbek background and whose grandmother spoke Russian, volunteers.

Shot on 16mm, Marija Kavtaradze’s quiet drama tells a mature and moving story about the many ways people can be in love

A delicate love affair blooms in the new film from Lithuanian director Marija Kavtaradze, which explores attraction and intimacy with intelligence and compassion. It tells the story of Elena (Greta Grinevičiūtė), a contemporary dancer leading a workshop for deaf teenagers, who falls for sign language interpreter Dovydas (Kęstutis Cicėnas). When Dovydas tells her he is asexual, she assumes she is being rejected. He clarifies that he is telling her because he likes her. They decide to try and make it work.

Shot on 16mm film, Slow looks grainy and pleasingly tactile, a fitting look for a film that is interested in many sides of the human touch – how it can soothe, arouse and even spark discord. The gentle naturalism of Slow’s style – full of long takes, restrained dialogue and a moving handheld camera that makes liberal use of closeups – gives the story a homespun, intimate feel. Dovydas’s experience of asexuality, an underrepresented subject on screen, is portrayed with care. With strong performances by Grinevičiūtė and Cicėnas, Elena and Dovydas’s relationship unfolds at a gentle, unhurried pace, their growing attraction indicated by small details – coy glances, long, loaded pauses between conversation – that reward attentive viewing.