Broken English

F Watchlist

First things first: the fictional framework of this beautiful tribute to British singer-songwriter Marianne Faithfull is as self-indulgent as it is superfluous. Tilda Swinton plays the strict chairwoman, George MacKay the sensitive chief archivist of a “Ministry of Not Forgetting,” which seeks to uncover the truth about historical figures in collaboration with those affected and to question traditional myths and documents. What the two fictional characters bombard us with at the behest of the directing duo Ian Forsyth and Jane Pollard is, in fact, the truism that even in the case of Faithfull, the major's daughter born in 1946, clichéd half-truths obscure our view of the artist: Mick Jagger’s ex-girlfriend and thus the alleged eternal groupie; the blonde folk and pop it-girl of the ’60s; recovered junkie and reinvented new wave icon of the late 70s... Yet the singer, marked by chronic lung disease, willingly embraces the contrived setting just a few months before her death in January 2025—and the result proves her right. Irresistible is her charisma, from the creation of the early Rolling Stones hit “As Tears Go By” to enduring touchstones like “Working Class Hero” and “Broken English,” through to her interpretations of Kurt Weill and a final studio session with longtime companions such as Nick Cave—whom Forsyth & Pollard previously honored with the original tribute 20,000 Days on Earth. The most impressive constants in this journey through a turbulent life are Faithfull's honesty and her humor. She wittily confronts her countless former interviewers and their bluntly sexist questions about promiscuity and drug use, relentlessly describing her long addiction as a refusal to grow up. A clever addition is the intellectual women's roundtable, which comments on Faithfull's life's work from different perspectives. In short: a gift for baby boomers, and hopefully a discovery for everyone else.