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Jamie Pring

Harlow Council

CBSVL

Yolanda Hadid finds it hard seeing her daughter Bella Hadid “suffer” with the effects of Lyme disease.

The former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star – who, like her model daughter and son Anwar was diagnosed with the tick-borne condition over a decade ago – shared a series of photos of Bella in hospital and admitted it is more difficult to see her child in pain than to deal with her own debilitating symptoms.

She wrote on Instagram: “As you will understand watching my Bella struggle in silence, has cut the deepest core of hopelessness inside me.

“The invisible disability of chronic neurological Lyme disease is hard to explain or understand for anyone.

“I try to lead by example on our Lyme journey but my own pain cannot compare to watching my baby suffer.

“After many years I stopped sharing my personal story because I needed an energetic shift, time to focus on my healing rather than absorb other people’s opinions about my journey.”

Yolanda is “determined” to help find an affordable cure for the disease.

She wrote: “Even so, I am the CEO of my health and after fifteen years of searching the globe, I am still determined to find a cure affordable for all.

“Hopefully soon I will share whatever we have learned and the places we have been with you and our Lyme community as soon as lab results reflect our victory.”

The 61-year-old star then shared a message directly to her “beautiful Bellita” and praised her bravery.

She wrote: “You are relentless and courageous.

“No child is suppose to suffer in their body with an incurable chronic disease.

“I admire your bravery and your willingness to keep fighting for health despite the failing protocols and countless setbacks you have faced.

“There simply aren’t words big enough for the darkness, the pain, and the unknown hell you’ve lived through since your diagnosis in 2013.

“You didn’t really live, you learned how to exist inside the jail of your own paralyzed brain.

“I am so proud of the fighter that you are. You are not alone, I promise to have your back every step of the way, no matter how long this takes.

“You have fought through another month of treatment and I know god is good, miracles do happen everyday [prayer emoji] I pray for your speedy recovery my love.

“This disease has brought us to our knees, but we always get back up. We will continue to fight for better days, together.

“You are a survivor…

“I love you so much my badass Warrior.(sic)”

Yolanda’s post came after Bella, 28, shared her own hospital photos on Instagram and apologised for being out of the public eye.

She wrote: “I’m sorry I always go MIA I love you guys (sic)”

Yolanda commented on the post: “[heart emoji] Lyme warrior.(sic)”

And Bella’s sister, Gigi Hadid, added: “I love you! I hope feel as strong and good as u deserve, soon!!!!!! (sic)”

Pick of the week
Riff Raff

There’s a distinct whiff of Fargo to Dito Montiel’s blood-flecked crime drama. We’ve got the seemingly ordinary family with secrets: Ed Harris’s Vincent, spouse Sandy (Gabrielle Union) and her nerdy teenage son DJ (Miles J Harvey). There are the disrupters: Vincent’s ex-wife Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge), their errant son Rocco (Lewis Pullman) and his girlfriend Marina (Emanuela Postacchini), who spark revelations about Vincent’s former life. And there are the comic-relief mob killers, nicely underplayed by Bill Murray and Pete Davidson. But it’s Coolidge who is the film’s trump card: funny, profane, horny – and wonderfully disinclined to take the revenge plot in any way seriously.
Sunday 21 September, Prime Video

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Elio

The latest from the Pixar factory is another chipper animation, a sci-fi adventure that serves up big doses of Spielbergian wonder and DayGlo visuals. One other regular Spielberg theme – broken families – provides the emotional heart of the drama, as the titular hero, a lonely, 11-year-old orphan (Yonas Kibreab), dreams of finding extraterrestrial life. But then he is mistaken for Earth’s ambassador by a commonwealth of actual aliens, who need his help to negotiate with the warlike Lord Grigon. Luckily, Elio has made friends with Grigon’s neglected son, Glordon …
Out now, Disney+

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The Night of the Shooting Stars

For a tale of wartime atrocities in occupied Italy in 1944, there’s a surprisingly playful tone to the Taviani brothers’ 1982 film. The inhabitants of a small Tuscan town decide to flee to the American side when they suspect the retreating German army are planning to massacre them. But their escape becomes an increasingly fable-like meander through a pastoral idyll of woods and wheatfields (and bomb craters), punctuated by tragicomic scenes of death. It’s a tough balance to maintain but the drama makes a lasting impression.
Saturday 20 September, 9pm, Talking Pictures TV

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Novocaine

Jack Quaid has experience of being put through the ringer in The Boys, but Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s comedic but astoundingly grisly thriller must be his most extreme role yet. His assistant credit union manager Nate has a congenital insensitivity to pain, which makes him wary of human contact – until the fellow employee he has fallen for, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), is taken hostage by bank robbers, transforming him into a have-a-go hero. Like Home Alone if the Wet Bandits couldn’t feel the blows, it’s a riot of slapstick violence.
Thursday 25 September, 9.20am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere & Paramount+

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French Lover

Lisa-Nina Rives’ Paris-set romantic drama relies heavily on the charms of its male lead, Lupin’s Omar Sy, for its success. So there’s a sly irony that those same characteristics – embodied in his pampered film star Abel – don’t really work on the bar worker, Marion (Sara Giraudeau), he meets not-so-cutely. She has her own, unstarry problems, which means their union is a slow burner. But the reassuring narrative of the “boy meets girl” trope does kick in eventually, with Sy convincing as a self-obsessed but lovable actor.
Friday 26 September, Netflix

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Seven Psychopaths

Either a comic interrogation of his own desire to make violent dramas or an attempt to have his cake and eat it, Martin McDonagh’s bleak, chatty 2012 comedy concerns a Hollywood screenwriter, Marty (Colin Farrell), who is trying to pen a script called Seven Psychopaths. He’s encouraged by his best mate, dog kidnapper Billy (Sam Rockwell, who always seems to be having a great time), but soon finds fiction and real life overlapping. There’s a shaggy dog story quality to the film that keeps you on your toes, while Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson and Tom Waits add heft to the supporting cast.
Friday 26 September, 12.40am, Channel 4

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The Southerner

The great French film-maker Jean Renoir’s sojourn in the US during the war resulted in six pictures, of which this 1945 rural drama is the most celebrated. Oddly, it’s a very American story, in which a Texas farm worker rents a piece of land to fulfil his dream of growing his own cotton. Zachary Scott and Betty Field give natural performances as the Tuckers who, along with their two young kids and grumpy granny, try to make the best of things despite a leaky house, sickness, hostile neighbours and one hell of a storm. A humanist paean to family and community.
Friday 26 September, 4am, Talking Pictures TV

When the US-raised French-Haitian singer Cécile McLorin Salvant played Ronnie Scott’s for the first time as a 25-year-old in 2014, the awestruck atmosphere recognised a young multilingual jazz artist of rare gifts – but it was soon apparent that her sublime technical skill as a singer wasn’t the half of it.

Salvant had all the jazz tools: coolly hip timing, improv quick-wittedness, the crystalline sonic clarity of her early model, Sarah Vaughan. But she could also conjure up a dream world of her own that listeners would willingly follow her into. Her new album, Oh Snap, is a set of 12 originals and one cover that she created on her own over four years, before adding her band. She experimented for the first time with computer-generated sounds to draw on grungy pop and intimate folk music and expand on the classical-vocal education and extensive jazz input she acquired while living in France in the 2000s. Salvant says her enthusiasms as a visual artist also liberated her for this adventurous step-change.

The opening I Am a Volcano is a diaphanous vocal that builds intensity against a drum loop, while Anything But Now – themed around procrastination – is a breezy jazz swinger featuring freewheeling pianist Sullivan Fortner. Take This Stone, featuring Salvant’s folksy harmonising with favourite fellow singers June McDoom and Kate Davis, is a standout – as is What Does Blue Mean to You, a brushes-cushioned, quietly conversational and then starkly soul-wailing epiphany inspired by Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The meditative, pandemic-induced Expanse, the playful Auto-Tuned electro-pop of A Little Bit More and the skipping, scampering synth-hooked title track all show how ingeniously and fearlessly this remarkable artist can reinvent herself.

Also out this month

Distant geography and other ventures have periodically silenced 2009 Mercury nominees Led Bib, the unique UK band led by expat American drummer Mark Holub – but Hotel Pupik (Cuneiform) returns to strip the lineup down to just two saxes, bass and drums, and recaptures much of their original directness in the tracks such as the polyrhythmic, raw Iron Ore, and the ensemble spontaneity of the long, hypnotically bass-thundering title track. American bass star Christian McBride reconvenes his acclaimed big band for the star-packed Without Further Ado Vol 1 (Mack Avenue), hitching the outfit’s terrific scores to guest performances by Sting and Andy Summers, Dianne Reeves and Samara Joy. And on She Looks Up at the Trees (JAM String Collective), all-female UK violin/viola/cello trio the JAM String Collective bring old-school violin swing into the 21st century with their sinuously entwined ensemble inventiveness, succinct solo breaks and cruising grooves; trombonist/composer Rosie Turton and grime MC Kayes Mensah guest.

London
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Marie Antoinette died over 230 years ago. But in the modern day, the teen queen’s presence remains widely felt.

A-listers from Kylie Jenner to Miley Cyrus have embodied her likeness for fashion magazines, wearing diaphanous frocks or towering wigs surrounded by a selection of teeth-rotting confectionery. Last year, Chappell Roan performed at the Lollapalooza music festival dressed as Marie Antoinette in a crimped wig and Rococo gown — reviving a pop star trope that began with Madonna at the 1990 MTV Awards. Fashion designers such as John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld, Vivienne Westwood and Alessandro Michele have all mined the royal for inspiration. For the 2016 Fenty x Puma collection, Rihanna — who is the global ambassador and creative director — imagined what the 18th century figure might wear to the gym. The last queen consort of France has even had her “beauty secrets” published in Vogue, in honor of her 262nd birthday.

Much like Marilyn Monroe or Joan of Arc, Marie Antoinette has evolved beyond being a historical figure to become a concept. Her image is now shorthand for beauty, decadence, rebellion, and misogyny. This week, the memorialization continues at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, which is staging the UK’s first-ever exhibition on the fashionable queen.

“Marie Antoinette was a fashion and style icon in her own time, but there had never been an exhibition that really looked at that incredible legacy,” Sarah Grant, the exhibition’s curator, told CNN. Antoinette’s court was crowded with hairdressers, dressmakers and milliners, all working to create the lavish styles that defined the late 18th-century French fashion scene. Those trendsetting choices not only made Antoinette a prominent style icon, but also gave her the power to influence society — laying the groundwork for what one would consider “celebrity style” today.

At the V&A, visitors can wander through pastel-pink rooms and bear witness to 250 objects that piece together a picture of Antoinette’s life: From her dazzling jewels — seen publicly for the first time since her death, once packed up by the queen herself in 1791 as she attempted to flee France to avoid persecution — to countless watercolour fans, silk gowns and beaded slippers. Her favourite scents, such as the orris root, tuberose, violet and musk that she used to perfume herself in the morning, were recreated to immerse the audience in the pageantry of the 1700’s French court. But it wasn’t all sweet smelling roses: Before entering the crimson-walled room that features Antoinette’s stained prison chemise uniform, as well as the guillotine blade allegedly used to behead her, Grant conjured another, more pungent but equally familiar fragrance to the royal — the mildew, sewage and smells of the polluted Seine river, which ran near the prison cell she was held in for weeks.

Antoinette’s legacy isn’t entirely without controversy. During her reign, she was subject to gossip, ridicule and slander in revolutionary propaganda. Satirical cartoons painted her as sexually devious, assuming her failure to produce an heir was because of an unbridled lasciviousness. She has been depicted in various ridiculous forms — as a mythical half-human, half-bird creature; a rabid hyena; and a double-ended beast with King Louis XVI. For many today, Antoinette is remembered for her opulence and subsequent detachment from the strife of the French people during a time of immense poverty.

But the watershed moment for Antoinette in the courtroom of public opinion may have been Antonia Fraser’s 2001 biography, and Sofia Coppola’s subsequent 2006 Oscar-winning film adaptation starring Kirsten Dunst, which presented a compelling and sympathetic — though not uncritical — portrayal of the former queen. Fraser’s account of Antoinette was “told through a female lens,” explained Grant, one that positioned her as a child bride married off for political advantages at the age of 14 — suddenly with the weight of an empire on her shoulders. “There was a lot of empathy,” Grant said, noting that the V&A exhibition “wouldn’t have been possible” without it.

And while Coppola’s movie took creative liberties, with its New Romantic soundtrack and custom-made Manolo Blahnik pumps, it brought Fraser’s research to new audiences. In the view of Hannah Strong, a film critic and the author of “Sofia Coppola: Forever Young,” the director — who is the daughter of celebrated filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola — may have “resonated” with the plight of Antoinette herself. “Marie Antoinette was this young woman who came from enormous privilege and was thrust into this life that she never chased herself,” Strong said. “I think (Coppola) really identifies with this idea of women in history who have been maligned or mistreated.”

The film was a point of entry to the world of Antoinette for the designer Jeremy Scott. “Sofia Coppola’s rendition is just so visually beautiful,” he recalled to CNN over the phone. “The colors, the bon-bons.” For Scott, the empathy captured by Dunst’s empathetic performance offered a different perspective of Antoinette. “I have a soft spot for her,” he said, laughing that he would have even aided her ill-fated attempt to escape from Paris. “I would have been like, ‘Girl, hide here!’”

Scott’s Fall-Winter 2020 Antoinette-inspired dresses, tiered gowns frosted like cakes and Rococo dresses shortened in to min, designed for Moschino, the Italian fashion label where he was previously creative director, are on display in the exhibition. “That maximalism, that frivolousness, that panache, there’s a joy to it,” he said. “It’s fantasy and frivolity. To me that’s the backbone of fashion.”

Those patisserie-style frocks are exhibited alongside other modern-day interpretations of the queen’s impeccable wardrobe, from Milena Canonero’s Oscar-winning costumes for Coppola’s film to Galliano and Lagerfeld’s designs for Dior and Chanel, respectively. The result is an impressive sartorial tribute that maps Antoinette’s lasting impact, which Grant attributes to the simple fact that hers is a great story. “All of this plays out against one of the most seismic episodes in history, which is the French Revolution. So I think it’s this perfect storm: this tragic, doomed life and this fashionable, incredibly sparking personality,” she said.