We all value, or claim to value, ideas. We want them in our movies, our books, our music; otherwise, the thinking goes, we’re just ingesting empty calories. But not all ideas are created equal. Sometimes they’re floating too freely within the material to be tethered to any meaningful interpretation; other times they’re so ploddingly instructive that we feel pummeled. The ideas embedded in A Different Man, written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, hover somewhere in the milky middle between being too amorphous and too obvious, though by the end, you will most certainly have gotten the point. Yet this is a movie in which the performers make all the difference—the actors embody the ideas so wholly that the messages layered into the script are just superfluous embroidery. It’s worth seeing A Different Man for the two performances at its heart, given by Adam Pearson and Sebastian Stan.

Stan, at first wearing prosthetic makeup, plays Edward, a struggling actor whose employment consists solely of the occasional workplace-training video. Edward has a rare genetic condition known as Neurofibromatosis, which causes tumors to grow on the skin and in other parts of the body. It affects his facial appearance and his speech, and marks him as “different.” We see one of the clumsy videos in which he’s featured, apparently enacting some kind of by-the-water-cooler fainting spell; his co-workers in the video ostensibly treat him as an individual by condescending to him—exactly the sort of behavior these videos ought to be working against. But in the movie, this video handily makes an important point: this is the sort of behavior Edward has to field every day. No wonder he seems to be shuffling through life, deferential to others almost to the point of obliterating himself. If he can make himself invisible, he won’t have to suffer the cruelty of other humans, both those who mean harm and those who mean well.

Edward, who lives in a dismal apartment somewhere in New York (both this flat and this New York somewhat resemble Ari Aster’s vision in Beau Is Afraid), has a new and very attractive neighbor, Renate Reinsve’s Ingrid. She startles visibly when she first sees him; then she offers friendship, and possibly something more. She’s an aspiring playwright, and Edward talks to her, glumly, about his nearly nonexistent acting career. Her beauty and her brightness seem to make him feel more morose than usual. He’s used to living his life in comparison to others, and it brings him nothing but suffering.

Then he’s offered a chance to try an experimental facial reconstruction treatment. It works! His old face gradually peels away—the process resembles the stretching of melted mozzarella, or maybe a time-lapse rendering of one of Francis Bacon’s screaming popes—revealing a very handsome young man beneath. Now Edward can finally find out how the rest of the world lives. He becomes a high-flying real estate honcho, as well as, of course, a success with the ladies. Then Ingrid comes back into his life, in a roundabout way—she of course doesn’t recognize him. And he meets another individual who somewhat resembles the man he used to be, but only physically. Oswald (Adam Pearson) is a jaunty Brit who favors pocket squares and bright, patterned shirts. He’s a charmer—everyone loves him, especially women. In him, Edward sees the man he, with his old face, might have been. Oswald represents both a rebuke and a missed opportunity.

And when he appears, the film suddenly levitates. Schimberg has worked with Pearson before, in his 2019 film Chained for Life. (Moviegoers might also know the actor from his appearance in Jonathan Glazer’s haunting parable of loneliness Under the Skin.) Schimberg was so inspired by Pearson’s confidence and charm that he wrote the part of Oswald specifically for him, and the moment he shows up, a light turns on: Edward, in his old persona, has invited our pity, and probably gotten it. Oswald brushes right past the idea of pity—we’re so drawn to him that we can’t even imagine feeling it.

That right there is a lot for a movie, and for two actors, to carry. Stan is terrific as the eternally surly Edward: his handsome pout, post-transformation, isn’t something that gives us pleasure. If anything, it makes us wish we could have the old Edward back, who at least had some shambling charm. And Pearson is off the charts as Oswald: he swaggers through the movie like its dazzling, unofficial mayor, meeting and greeting and encouraging openness, rather than closure, in the world around him. The dynamic between Oswald and Edward is rich territory by itself. The problem is that Schimberg keeps adding layers of plot to drive his points home, instead of just stepping back to let his characters do their thing. The movie sends us home with a message—let’s say it’s something along the lines of “Think hard about how you view others who are different”—even as the actors open out another way of thinking: Since we’re all individuals anyway, why see differences as differences at all? That’s an idea that goes beyond our concept of what an “idea” even is. It’s a basic tenet of living—or at least it ought to be.

The winds of change blowing through the financial world mean more of us feel under pressure to make big money decisions — yet many feel ill-equipped to make the right choices.

Warnings of painful tax rises in October’s Budget have prompted readers to give away inheritances early, sell shares and property and, depending on their age, pay in or withdraw large sums from their pensions. But have we done the right thing? Added to this is the uncertainty of how our investments might perform in a turning interest rate cycle, what size of cash buffer to hold and when the optimum time to remortgage might be.

Decisions, decisions! So, when I saw that HSBC had researched how more than 17,000 people in 12 countries went about making different calls with their cash, I was intrigued to learn more.

The study found the best financial decisions involved mindset and method. Having optimism about the outcome, an openness to change and the opportunities this might bring, while acknowledging that things might not go to plan was the optimal mindset, researchers concluded. So, a bit different from the Budget-induced panic of recent months.

As for the process, your head, heart and network are all important, the study found. Planning, research and hard-headed analysis of the facts are obviously key. It may be awkward, but talking about potential decisions with a wider network of people — including those who might disagree with us — was vital. And while our emotions should not be the sole guide of financial decisions, imagining how we’d feel if we did or didn’t make a certain decision had particular value.

If you’re grappling with a decision of your own, the researchers told me that a big predictor of having the confidence to act is if your plans are adaptable: I’ve weighed up the risks, I think this is the best option but, if X happens, I’ll do Y.

What I noticed was that there was nothing different that you or I could see in the [good or bad] classes of decision

It all sounds so easy. However, the current climate of uncertainty is making financial decisions so difficult, we might risk putting them off for even longer. That also carries a cost.

A conundrum that’s occupying UK financial regulators is why Britons are hoarding an estimated £430bn of “excess cash” rather than investing it in the stock market.

So, what mindset would get more of us investing? And what lessons can those who are invested but nervous take from this?

“The key thing about making decisions under uncertainty is that you have to accept that you cannot know [the outcome],” says Professor David Tuckett, who acted as an academic adviser to HSBC on the project.

In his 2008 book Minding the Markets, he asked more than 50 active fund managers to list three examples of investment decisions they were happy with, and three they were not.

“What I noticed was that there was nothing different that you or I could see in the two classes of decision,” he says. An equal amount of research, discussion and tyre-kicking had gone into both. “The only thing that was different was the outcome. And that is because, fundamentally, the outcome is uncertain.”

Even managers who had made the right investment calls admitted that sometimes their outperformance was powered by a factor they hadn’t originally considered.

However, when he asked managers why they thought certain investments had failed, they tended to blame themselves: “They said things like I didn’t work hard enough, that’s why I didn’t succeed.” Interesting — though you can be sure they were still rewarded handsomely for trying.

For retail investors, accepting that not all of our investment decisions are going to work out can be hard to do (especially when we start out). Experience, taking a long-term view, being diversified and having a strategy in place to regularly review your portfolio all help. And as every index investor knows, while some active managers beat the market, it’s virtually impossible for them to outperform consistently.

Feeling remorseful undermines confidence and adds to the self-limiting belief that you are bad with money

We’re all finding it hard to make financial decisions but the HSBC study identified one group who found it even harder — the neurodiverse. Some readers might dismiss this as just the latest buzz term but, if you or a family member have autism, ADHD, dyslexia or dyspraxia, then you will know the struggle is real.

Nearly two-thirds of neurodivergent respondents felt ill-equipped to manage financial decision-making, and more than half often regretted decisions they’d made about money — significantly higher than the neurotypical respondents.

Clare Seal, the author of Real Life Money, uses the term “the ADHD tax” to describe how being neurodivergent has had an impact on her own finances. She says being indecisive about money management has a cost — such as late fees if you don’t pay on time, and higher interest rates on debt if you damage your credit score.

Plus, impulsive spending is a very common issue. If you can’t budget effectively, there’s less chance of having so-called “excess cash” to invest. She has introduced more friction in her own finances to counter this. “If all you need to do is tap or click one button to buy something, you’re much more likely to give in to that impulse.”

Harbouring regret about poor decisions is the flip side of this coin. “Feeling remorseful undermines confidence and adds to the self-limiting belief that you are bad with money,” she says. This can contribute to what’s called pathological demand avoidance, which she describes as feeling like “a concrete barrier” has prevented her from engaging with her finances in the past.

We are both hugely encouraged that banks are finally showing more interest in this very under-researched issue. What’s more, some are developing new services to help neurodivergent customers.

Monzo, the digital bank, promotes a suite of digital budgeting tools to customers with ADHD, including its automated salary sorter, plus the ability to opt out of borrowing entirely and set custom daily limits for ATM withdrawals and card transactions. Its business account offers the ability to set up a “tax pot” to automatically hive off a set percentage of payments and save towards future bills.

Of course, you don’t have to be neurodivergent to make use of these features. But thinking about the needs of different customers is what’s resulting in the kind of innovations that can help everyone feel more confident managing their money.

As the financial regulator moves closer to enabling simplified financial advice and targeted support, I’m hopeful that much more will follow in the investment world too.

Claer Barrett is the FT’s consumer editor and the author of ‘What They Don’t Teach You About Money’. claer.barrett@ft.com; Instagram @Claerb

Up to 30,000 people in two cities in central Japan have been ordered to evacuate after weather forecasters warned of major flooding caused by heavy rain.

About 18,000 people in the city of Wajima and another 12,000 in Suzu have been told to seek shelter in Ishikawa prefecture, Honshu island.

The Kyodo News website has published a picture showing an entire street flooded in Wajima.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (Jma) has issued a heavy rain emergency – the highest alert level – for parts of the prefecture.

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK quoted government officials as saying 12 rivers in the prefecture had breached their banks.

The region is still recovering after a deadly magnitude 7.5 earthquake on New Year’s Day.

The trail of head torches twinkled between cloud and rock above us, slowly gaining height, disappearing one by one into the pre-dawn darkness. They were on their way to the summit of western Europe’s highest mountain, and I longed to follow.

The previous evening in the Refuge de Tête Rousse, the first overnight stop on the usual route up Mont Blanc, there had been an army of Gore-Tex-clad men, recounting summit stories while comparing the latest technical gear. Huddled in the corner, mountain guide Karen Bockel, filmmaker Grace Taylorson Smith Pritchard and I, the only women in the room, were weighing up our options. A storm was rolling in.

“We will need to skip the second night in the hut above, continue straight to the summit and come all the way back down before the storm hits at lunchtime,” said Karen. “I’m sorry Lise, but I don’t know if you’ll be fast enough in those hobnail boots and that bonnet . . . ”

The history of adventure has mostly been written by men, and still today the narrative is mainly told in male voices, whether through books, television or social media. My project, Woman with Altitude, aims to highlight women adventurers from history who achieved astonishing feats but whose lack of visibility continues to have knock-on effects for women in the outdoor world. Only around 2 per cent of fully certified mountain guides are women; our guide Karen, who teaches at Chamonix’s renowned École Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme, told us that out of the 44 students who graduated this year, only two were female. All too often we still find ourselves the only women in a hut full of men.

Previous trips have included following in the footsteps of Alexandra David-Néel in Sikkim and Jane Inglis Clark in the Scottish Highlands, but from the hundreds of adventurous women I’ve researched, I was particularly drawn to Henriette d’Angeville. In 1838, she became the second woman to reach the summit of Mont Blanc — and the first to do so unaided (Marie Paradis reached the top in 1808 but was carried some of the way by guides).

Mountaineering was not an activity for women in the early 19th century, and in her memoir My Ascent of Mont Blanc, Henriette writes that news of her planned attempt caused “a general outcry of amazement and disapproval, followed by, she must be prevented from such madness”. In The Summits of Modern Man (2013) Peter Hansen calls her a “gender radical” who challenged the status quo — “by making the ascent at all, she occupied a transgressive position”. Yet, she did it anyway, setting off to “a chorus of good wishes from a disapproving crowd”.

In the footsteps of . . . 

This is the latest in a series in which writers are guided by a notable earlier traveller. For more, see ft.com/footsteps

To understand what Henriette and women like her would have gone through, I recreate their expeditions using clothing and equipment available to them at the time. This is how I found myself down a cobbled London street in early August, collecting boots from Tricker’s, which was founded in 1829 and made boots for some of the first explorers and alpinists. Its master shoemaker Adele Williamson expertly crafted the leather sole for my boots, including a metal horseshoe heel and hobnails hammered in for grip.

In the early 19th century, outdoor clothing for women didn’t exist, so Henriette created her impressive outfit herself, carefully documenting it in her journal. Controversially, it included a pair of trousers — though these would be hidden by a Scottish woollen dress. The complete outfit weighed 12kg and “everyone declared, feeling the weight of it in their hands, that I could not walk for even half an hour so caparisoned!”

With only notes and pencil drawings from Henriette’s expedition to go on, I took some artistic licence with the colours for my own version, opting for a Scottish tweed of yellow, red and green, all common colours of the 1830s. To finish the ensemble, I added a matching bonnet, silk-and-wool stockings, a black feather boa like Henriette’s, and even Victorian undergarments with a buttoned crotch (very useful indeed).

Henriette also packed 24 roast chickens, 18 bottles of wine and a carrier pigeon, to deliver the good news of her reaching the summit. Her only piece of “technical” equipment was her alpenstock, a traditional staff with a sharp metal point, adorned with a chamois horn for hooking on to rocks. Without the luxury of porters chiselling foot holes for me in the ice, my only modern kit was crampons, which I felt justified using where necessary.

As our train pulled into Chamonix on August 29, the weather was far too hot for a 12kg woollen outfit. More seriously, it was too hot to climb Mont Blanc. When Henriette arrived here in September 1838, snowstorms threatened her summit attempt. Now, we had the opposite problem, a series of warm summers melting the permafrost and prompting increased rockfall — particularly in the Grand Couloir, across which climbers must dash on the main route to the top.

We started with four days of training in the mountains around Chamonix, tackling peaks such as the Aiguille du Tour and getting used to crossing glaciers and navigating deep crevasses. In the pink morning light, I teetered out from the Refuge Albert Premier on to the Glacier du Tour, dressed in my outfit for the first time. The hobnails scraped on the rocks, so I drove the sharp point of my alpenstock into the hard ice, steadying my balance. It was a surprisingly effective replacement for a modern ice axe.

The next day, while hanging off a rock overlooking the Pèlerins glacier near the top of the famous Aiguille du Midi, I found myself doing battle with the bonnet. Its oversized brim caught on the rock faces as I looked up or down, knocking me backwards and making it impossible to see my feet. On steeper sections I had to hitch the dress to my waist to avoid stepping on the hem as I pushed upwards.

A sudden drop in temperature allowed us to take our chance with Mont Blanc. Initially, I wanted to walk from Chamonix on Henriette’s original route, but with a short window of opportunity we couldn’t afford the additional eight hours. Instead, it was into the cable car at Les Houches with the rest of the climbers on the modern route, then the Tramway du Mont Blanc to the Nid d’Aigle at 2,372 metres, where we’d begin our ascent.

After days of training with heavy crampons, my feet were a state. It was harder to trust the hobnails on the sharp rocks and steeper ledges, and my steps were slow. It should have only been a two-hour climb, but it was four weary hours before we slumped into the Refuge de Tête Rousse at 3,167 metres.

At 3.30am the next morning, as we prepared to leave in the cold pre-dawn hours to avoid rockfall, Karen assessed the latest updates on the approaching storm. Reluctantly, we accepted that it would be foolish to push on, though it was tough to watch the other climbers head out in their modern gear as I sat alone in my woollen outfit, the very thing that had ruined my chances of summiting.

Following a disheartening descent, Karen and Grace convinced me all was not lost. After her success on Mont Blanc — on the summit the guides interlocked arms to make a platform so that she could climb on top and thus reach “a height which, pace masculine pride, was never attained by my predecessors” — Henriette became a dedicated climber for the next 25 years, a career that culminated, aged 69, on Switzerland’s Oldenhorn. We decided to head there, driving from Chamonix over the border to the village of Les Diablerets. From there, a cable car takes tourists up to the Glacier 3000 ski area in the shadow of the lonely 3,123-metre peak, but unfortunately for Karen, Grace and my feet, I insisted we walk up, just as Henriette did.

Away from the busy car park, late Alpine flowers were in full bloom, filling the mountainside with patches of hazy pinks and purples. As we followed the path, feasting on wild raspberries, I thought of Henriette’s description: “Nothing spoke of the earth as we know it. I felt I had been transported into a new world . . . A voice spoke to me from the sky and said: Do what is right, and follow your path with confidence.”

To the hum of machines building a new ski lodge, we buckled up our crampons and crossed the glacier. The storm that ended our chances of Mont Blanc caught up with us just as we tackled the last rocky section of ascent, four hours of climbing on slippery granite. We reached the summit in a cloud of mist, unable to see our surroundings, but I didn’t mind. Maybe none of this was about the glory of getting to the top and gorging on the views.

In the past two weeks, four more climbers have lost their lives attempting to summit Mont Blanc. It’s a stark reminder of how unpredictable high mountains are, even with the latest technology to guide us. And it underlines the achievements of early alpinists like Henriette, the risks they were taking and their bravery in pushing boundaries, not only physically and mentally but, for women, culturally too.

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Ashlee Crumpton

Ashlee Crumpton

Ashlee Crumpton

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Ashlee Crumpton