This always interesting film-maker displays impressive technical control in this painful, sombre story about a boy who meets the father he never knew

After the spiritual ordeal of his Holocaust movie Son of Saul, and his complex, nuanced drama about prewar Budapest, Sunset, Hungarian director László Nemes comes to Venice with a valuable, interesting picture: another painful, sombre story from 20th-century central Europe composed in his familiar sepia visual palette, and executed with impressive technical control.

Set in the aftermath of Hungary’s failed uprising against its Soviet masters, it is a story about sons rebelling against fathers, but also about coming to terms with (or having to swallow resentment at) the reality of a new order of power – just as the Hungarian people had to come to terms with Moscow’s rule and with finding their proud spirit of independence stigmatised as quasi-fascist. With no support for their self-determination, Hungarians in 1956 were orphaned by the times.

Critics say marriage will kill her creativity. Not likely for an artist who’s made billions from songs about redefining women’s limits

Taylor Swift is off the market. She’s engaged to marry the NFL player Travis Kelce in what will be the US’s first proper royal wedding, and yes of course I know you’re far too high-minded to care about any of that, but what’s striking is how many people seem convinced that this is the end of any kind of interesting life for her. As if a woman had no drama, no edge, no stories to tell, and – let’s be frank, here – no commercial value to speak of once she is no longer at least theoretically sexually available. The fairytale ends when the princess marries the prince: who cares, really, what happens to her after that?

Music critics are already gloomily debating whether marriage will kill her creativity, or whether she’ll be left for dust by one of the younger rivals already nipping at her heels if she does take time out from music to have the children she’s always said she wanted. Poor Taylor, mummy-tracked before she’s even pregnant, like an old friend of mine whose engagement in her 20s prompted her male boss to tell everyone in the pub afterwards that that was her out for the count. He meant that she’d presumably have babies now and lose her professional edge – right on the first count, very wrong on the second – but also perhaps that she had somehow put herself in a different category: no longer young and promising, but practically matronly overnight. Even the Today programme devoted breakfast airtime to pondering where Swift will get her material, once she’s a smug married with no toxic exes to write about – though of course she was never just about break-up songs, and women have been known to have interesting interior lives even over the age of 35.

The first novel from the Send Nudes author moves from a Brighton club to baby feeding

Gunk opens with new divorcee Jules sitting at home cradling a baby who is 24 hours and 17 minutes old, feeding him colostrum from a syringe. After being fed, the baby cries, which Jules interprets as a howl of rejection: “He has no language to tell me I’m not right for him.” We learn that Jules isn’t the child’s biological parent; the birth mother is Nim who, shortly after being stitched up, left the hospital ward and seemingly vanished. Concerned for her wellbeing, the hospital called the police who questioned Jules. “Nim has run away before,” she told them. “And she’s good at hiding.”

Set in Brighton, this is Saba Sams’s first novel, the follow-up to her much-admired short story collection Send Nudes. Where that book examined the lives of girls coming of age, Gunk has an older heroine in Jules, who is desperate to have a child. Her alcoholic ex-husband, Leon, who ran a student nightclub and with whom she tried and failed to conceive, cheated on her multiple times with his young staff. When one of the bartenders he slept with, Nim, discovered she was pregnant, she and Jules came to an arrangement and moved in together.

Tired of throwaway presents? From a 30-year-old nail file to a sewing machine, here are the gifts you’ve given or received that have stood the test of time

• Everything I’ve learned about secondhand shopping

In our throwaway consumer culture, giving gifts can feel like a whole lot of pressure: get it wrong and that present will end up in the back of a cupboard, being given away again or, at worst, in landfill.

The trick is finding something timeless but not boring; something well made and useful. We asked you for the gifts you’ve given or received that are still treasured (and going strong) years – often decades – later.

Exclusive: Analysis of responses shows firms are urging parliamentarians to limit regulation of ‘forever chemicals’

Chemical firms are lobbying MPs not to ban “forever chemicals” in the same way as proposed in the EU, using arguments disputed by scientists and described as “big tobacco playbook” tactics, it can be revealed.

Pfas, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and commonly known as forever chemicals owing to their persistence in the environment, are a family of about 10,000 chemicals, some of which have been linked to a wide range of serious illnesses, including certain cancers. They are used across a range of industries, from cosmetics to firefighting.