Benedict Cumberbatch gives a magnificent performance in the highly anticipated screen adaptation of Max Porter’s award-winning Grief Is the Thing with Feathers.

A mother dies, leaving two primary school-aged children and ‘Sad Dad’. Before long, ‘Crow’ emerges from the pages of the book Sad Dad is writing, to peck at the open wounds and shepherd them through their grief, in the only way it knows how. Dylan Southern employs great visual flair to soulfully explore the chaos, pain and redemption of our most-feared emotion.

Todd Haynes’ homage to Douglas Sirk’s style of social critique by way of melodrama, masterfully tells the story of a well-to-do suburban couple in 1950s America, straitjacketed by convention, yet desperate to lead lives they are seemingly denied. In the autumn of 1957 in the affluent small town of Hartford, Connecticut, Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) is a beautiful but sober mother of two, married to Frank (Dennis Quaid), a ruggedly handsome, former naval officer, now go-ahead executive at a television company. It is a blissfully happy family scene into which drama and tragedy have yet to intrude. It’s shattered when Cathy surprises Frank at work and finds him in the arms of another man. Unable to tell anyone in her social circle, she finds solace in their African-American gardener, Raymond (Dennis Haysbert). However, when they are seen alone together by Cathy's best friend - a social taboo in that era - the gossip begins, threatening to reveal all of the Whitaker's secret life.

The final film in our Melodrama Season.