Lady Macbeth

Based on the Russian novel "Lady Macbeth of the Matensk District" (not the Scottish Play), this moves the action back from the novel's Russia to 19th century rural England, where a young woman, married into a fairly hideous marriage in a rather un-grand property, finds herself left alone by her husband and starts to seize her own power as she falls into an affair with a stablehand. Of course when her husband and father-in-law return, she doesn't want to give up her new-found autonomy, and the results are, as the title suggests, rather lethal.

This is deliberately minimalist stuff (there's virtually no score until the final scene), and scenes are played starkly, somewhat like Thomas Hardy if the oppressed characters suddenly took brutal control of their own fate. The main attraction is Florence Pugh, who is extraordinary in the lead role - she's fierce and brutal and thoroughly determined to seize what she can out of the situation and not let go.

This is the kinda thing that is right up my alley, a short-sharp-shock to the usual frou-frou of period movies, with a mordantly dark heart.