It's an intelligent film, carefully cast and immaculately performed.
A seance-narrative of cemetery, canal, boarding house, immaculately performed in gesture and growl.
Immaculately performed and produced, this is the kind of album to keep handy for when things get a bit much and you need a bit of - well - easy listening.
Completing the program, the children of the BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble, immaculately rehearsed by Pat Dye, performed in savvy African dance-based choreography by Eric Mensah, Karen Thornton and Chuck Davis, the festival's infectiously joyful founder and master of ceremonies.
His native city was celebrating Marvin Gaye Day and the singer turned up, immaculately stoned, to perform the album's songs and a sprawling medley of his 1960s hits with a full orchestra driven by Motown's first-choice rhythm section: Robert White on guitar, James Jamerson on bass, Uriel Jones on drums, the percussionists Eddie "Bongo" Brown and Jack Ashford, and Gaye himself at the piano.
It's performed like a dream, of course: Rampling and Courtenay play an immaculately synchronised duet of ache, watching each other through repeatedly refocused lenses throughout.
The Tallis musicians sang immaculately in this harmonically rich and texturally sumptuous Mass, after which two motets by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, performed after intermission, sounded almost barren.
In fact, the exhibition shows immaculately preserved, cosmetically perfect bodies performing stunts on skateboards and saving goals.
Unlike the immaculately choreographed boy bands of the late nineteen-nineties and early two-thousands (your Backstreet Boys, your 'N Syncs), Liberty Deep Down takes it cues from more recent iterations of the form (your 5 Seconds of Summers) — which is to say, each of its members plays an instrument, and they do not perform any synchronized dance routines.
Barry McGovern takes extracts from Samuel Beckett's novel and performs them immaculately and modestly: "My earnest hope is that those who enjoy the show, and particularly those who don't, will read the book".
Listening closely, you could hear how immaculately crafted these performances were.
