Grant the Mad Max fans a magic wish and they’d conjure up a new film from George Miller, right here and right now, not a moment to lose. It’s probably what they’ve been wanting since Fury Road trundled off into the desert back in 2015. Now their prayers have been answered, God help them, as Miller arrived at the Cannes film festival to uncork a picture he describes as “the anti-Mad Max”: a loquacious Arabian Nights-style fantasy about the relationship between an ancient genie and a London academic. These people really should have read the small print. Every magic wish comes with a consequence, a cost.
Adapted from a 1994 AS Byatt novella, Three Thousand Years of Longing casts Tilda Swinton as Alithea Binnie, a professor of narratology, telling stories about stories. Alone in her Istanbul hotel suite, she opens a glass bottle and out hops the Djinn (Idris Elba in pointy ears), vowing to deliver her heart’s desire. He’s spent millennia in confinement and has lots to say for himself. And so the pair sit in white towelling bathrobes as he recounts his various adventures and incarcerations, telling Alithea about the Queen of Sheba and the Ottoman Empire while periodically chivvying her to come up with a wish. The professor, perhaps for the first time in her life, is stumped. “This wishing is a hazardous business,” she complains.
