‘Broken English’ review: Marianne Faithfull’s life explored in inventive documentary with starry cast

Dirs: Jane Pollard, Iain Forsyth. UK. 2025. 99mins

Made with the complete collaboration of its topic, the late singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull, over the past years of her life, Damaged English is not only a documentary about Faithfull, it’s a movie which is absolutely infused along with her distinctive spirit – it’s free, candid and rebellious to the core. Faithfull’s involvement within the movie skews its focus away from the tabloid-fodder particulars of her non-public life and in direction of her journey as an artist, which is comprehensible, definitely, however does go away tantalising query marks over sizable chunks of her life. Nonetheless, what she offers of herself, she offers with generosity and honesty. It’s a becoming and really affecting tribute.

Suitably maverick and unconventional

Created by artist filmmakers Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth, along with a starry raft of collaborators, the image shares the creativity of method and immersive high quality of 20,000 Days On Earth, the pair’s Sundance prize-winning movie about Nick Cave (who, together with fellow musician Warren Ellis, additionally seems on this image). Faithfull’s title and status alone needs to be sufficient to tempt audiences throughout and after what’s prone to be a wholesome pageant run (the image premieres in Venice earlier than happening to display screen at TIFF).  

The involvement of abilities akin to Tilda Swinton, George MacKay and Courtney Love additionally gained’t harm the image’s prospects going ahead. It’s an attention-grabbing distinction to Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill’s Catching Fireplace: The Story Of Anita Pallenberg, a relatively extra typical documentary about an equally sensible and influential girl who, like Faithfull, was regularly dismissed as little greater than an ornamental footnote within the story of the Rolling Stones.

The intention of this suitably maverick and unconventional documentary is not only to excavate the reality, it’s to seek out one thing that ‘resonates’. Or so says ‘The Overseer’ (Swinton) of The Ministry For Not Forgetting, a fictional organisation that gives a framing machine for this picture-come-art set up. It’s an necessary clarification, this query of reality and resonance – there are factual truths within the story of this intentionally misunderstood and misrepresented artist, after which there are the non secular and emotional truths, which, like reminiscences themselves, tend to morph and evolve.

With George MacKay’s Document Keeper as an interviewer (he’s an agile and appreciative inquisitor), a notably frail Faithfull is walked by way of the intensive archives of her historical past. She’s visibly moved by some clips of her youthful self, however bristles with irritation at a few of the extra strident newspaper headlines. 

The Ministry For Not Forgetting, atmospherically designed and realised by Alison Dominitz, is an appropriately theatrical machine – Faithfull, in any case, is a performer who immersed herself in every music like a personality to be inhabited. It’s additionally a tool that leans into the tactile, analogue high quality of the cultural footprint that Faithfull leaves behind. We leaf by way of dog-earred and lovingly adorned scrapbooks of cuttings assembled, with out her data, by her father. We take heed to cassettes, watch tapes get minimize and spliced again collectively. We squirm by way of prurient and intrusive tv chat present interviews, recorded onto scratchy VHS. Faithfull’s legacy, the movie suggests, is one thing that may be touched, one thing with which we’re inspired to work together or be impressed by.

To this finish, the movie assembles a panel of ladies – Edith Bowman, Sophie Fiennes, Sophia Guillory, Katy Hessel, Natasha Khan and Harriet Vyner – to debate her affect and work. And it invitations different musicians, together with Beth Orton, the strikingly androgynous Suki Waterhouse, Love, Cave and Ellis, to reinterpret Faithfull’s songs. Probably the most highly effective second, nevertheless, is Faithfull herself, half-singing, half-growling ’Misunderstanding’ (from her 2018 album ’Unfavourable Functionality’) accompanied by Cave and Ellis, in what turned out to be her remaining efficiency.