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[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “My Brilliant Friend,” Season 2, Episode 5, “The Betrayal.”]

Nearly every moment of “The Betrayal,” from the unstable Dutch angles of the cinematography to Max Richter’s chilling score, is building up to the episode’s final third like a horror movie. “My Brilliant Friend” has been operating on this track all season, with morbid flourishes in the visuals and sound design mounting toward an awful inevitability. Directed by Alice Rohrwacher, this episode is the season’s darkest and strongest hour yet.

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This week, that came on the shoulders of a cast-aside Lenu (Margherita Mazzucco), now an enabling third wheel in the ongoing illicit affair between Nino and Lila, surrendering her virginity to Nino’s father, the shady railroad worker Donato Sarratore (Emanuele Valenti). Don fancies...

A couple of Italian gems along with a more sugary offering are screened at the London film festival, which this year has been reorganised by themes

For a working critic based in the capital, the London film festival is an enticing prospect — and yet a frustrating experience. The regular round of UK releases must be attended to; those films have to be reviewed (including the inevitable sprinkling of duds) and so Lff films have to be squeezed in wherever possible.

What makes it all more agonising is the fact that the Lff programme is somehow always the most mouthwatering document produced by any festival: a juicily thick brochure, packed with great stuff, and an unmissable-looking film on every page. The Lff may not have as many premieres as Toronto, Venice and Cannes, but so what? That's the sort of thing that preoccupies industry types. Regular filmgoers in London are surely...

★★★☆☆ One of eight Italian films to screen at this year's London Film Festival, director Leonardo di Costanzo's The Interval (L'intervallo, 2012) boasts Gomorrah (2008) screenwriter Maurizio Braucci as one of its co-writers - predictably presenting an exceedingly unfavourable depiction of Naples. Salvatore (Alessio Gallo), 17, is ripped away from the Lemon Ice stand he runs for his father by the local Camorra. He's asked to perform a 'favour' and guard over Veronica (Francesca Riso), a precocious young girl who is being held captive in a dilapidated, abandoned and heavily fortified house.

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