Watching Broken English, the 2025 doc about Marianne Faithfull that I saw in Venice three and a half months ago, would be a perfect thing to stream on this cold and snowy Connecicut day. Is it streamable as a stand-alone rental? Apparently not. Okay, maybe it is but I’m just too fucking dumb to figure it out.
Posted on 9.7.25: Just because I failed to post a review of Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard‘s Broken English doesn’t mean I wasn’t won over and in fact melted down. I caught a late-night screening at the Venice Film Festival, and have been thinking about it — warmly — ever since.
It’s not a typical shake-and-bake summary of a pop star, but a free-form docu-portrait of a quirky, cultured individualist who, for a short period, seemed to live by the light of camera flashbulbs as she wrote and performed a few songs (she penned the lyrics to “Sister Morphine“), and was, for a certain period, a junkie, and was later a radiant, raspy-voiced pop poet and vocal stylist.
I’m not allowed to say that I still prefer the thin and willowy Faithfull of the ’60s and ’70s to the wise, seasoned, heavy-set Faithfull of the aughts and 20teens. Anyone who says this deserves to be scorned, kicked, spat upon and thrown into a wolf pit.
I can’t wait to see Forsyth and Pollard’s doc again.