Big Little Lies (2017 Jean-Marc Vallée)

So Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild) joins the growing camp of feature directors to embrace the long format story (Woody Allen, Jane Campion, Cameron Crowe, Paolo Sorrentino, for example) - this created by David Kelley and written by he and Australian Liane Moriarty from her 2014 novel. It's a pretty fucking inciseful look at domestic abuse, as well as more complex relationships involving families, friends and children, told in an almost Roegish style of mysterious and elusive flashbacks and jump cuts - most welcome cinematic treatment. Also great scenes with no or muffled sound, imaginations and even glimpses of Marienbad (shooting range, for example).

This is achieved through regular collaborater Yves Bélanger on camera and new team (neither Pensa nor Vallée themselves were involved for a change) of editors David Berman, Maxime Lahaie-Denis, Sylvain Lebel and Justin Lachance.

Fab cast of Nicole Kidman and abuser Alexander Skarsgard, Reece Witherspoon and Adam Scott, with daughters younger (Darby Camp) and older (Kathryn Newton), ex husband James Tupper and new wife Zoë Kravitz (daughter of Lenny and Lisa Bonet), Shailene Woodley and son Iain Armitage, Laura Dern and Jeffrey Nordling.

By the end you're thinking virtually anyone could be the murder victim, such are the layers of pent-up violence and aggression and the gradual revelations, and in the way it all begins over an allegation reminds me of the similar themed The Slap.