LFF 2010: Zero Hours Remain

David from Victim of the Time with one last report from the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

Craig gave you a packed wrap-up earlier today, but I couldn't let you go without getting in another word myself. I caught near to 50 films during the past month (give or take a couple I, er, nodded off during), and I'm happy to say there were an abundance of highs and a general lack of lows - maybe I just chose well, or maybe the programmers did. My standout film remains Kelly Reichardt's menacing Meek's Cutoff (review), while the festival practically brimmed over with stunning female performances, from Michelle Williams' two-hander in Meek's and Blue Valentine (capsule), to Jeong-hee Lee's damaged optimism in Poetry (Nat's review), to Lesley Manville's jittering sorrow in Another Year (capsule). Huge thanks to Nathaniel for hosting Craig and I, huge thanks to the festival for putting on such a great show, and huge thanks to you for reading.

For my final post, let's stick with the positivity, since the year's closing film proved a surprising package from a director I usually dislike...

127 Hours may give you a headache, but Aron Rolston had to hack his arm off, so maybe you I should stop complaining. Danny Boyle rather pre-empts the inevitable intensity of witnessing someone detach their arm with a blunt penknife by assaulting your senses from the very first moment; it’s all split screens, fast edits, impossible pans from inside kitchen units, close ups of taps dripping, and so forth. This is all rather disorientating and it barely lets up, but the film is enclosed in some vague, meaningless allusion to the speed of modern life with shots of commuters that resemble Koyaanisqatsi, and so the headrush of Boyle’s direction is a very straightforward interpretation of living in Rolston’s world. Once he gets trapped in the crevice, these stylisations barrage instead into his mind, continually taking us on flights of delirious imagination and memory.

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LFF 2010: five final festival films to wrap up with...

Craig here from Dark Eye Socket with my LFF wrap-up.

As of tonight the BFI London Film Festival is done for another year. It's been a stellar year all told, if the surplus of reports are to be believed. And I'd willingly add a further approving nod to the list. I didn't manage to see everything I wanted (juggling festival times and dates with travel arrangements is an art – one that's open to fateful intervention...and multiple tube delays), but what I saw was on the whole a bumper crop. Roll on next year, I say. Here are five previous reviews, selected from the films I saw:  Uncle Boonmee, A Screaming Man, Winter Vacation, Rare Exports and What I Love the Most. And below are five final mini reviews of a few festival highlights.

Thomas Vinterberg introduced his new film, Submarino, in a cheeky fashion: “if all goes well, you’ll be depressed at the end of the film. Enjoy yourselves!” It was no happy time sure, but it was an enthralling film, despite its determinedly grim subject matter. It follows two brothers’ hard, poverty-stricken lives in contemporary Copenhagen; a family tragedy as kids has left them scarred and emotionally unable to cope with adult existence. Hope is hard to grasp, but not too far away; redemption comes at a cost but may just stop dead the cycle of despair plaguing one or both of the brothers. The characters' direness isn’t forced or over baked and sympathy is well-earned. Lead actors Jakob Cedergren and Peter Plaugborg are excellent as, respectively, the older and younger siblings. Vinterberg’s humanistic approach is thoroughly rewarding and the tautness of the script ensures we become embroiled in the brothers’ plights. It’s strangely an easy film to like, but not always pleasant to watch. B-

 Submarino

Abel, the second directorial effort by actor Diego Luna, was a complete contrast to Submarino (I saw them consecutively). The story of a boy, the titular Abel, who returns home from a stay at a psychiatric hospital to resume living with his mother and siblings – only to assume the role of patriarch of the house, brought on by his father’s disappearance years earlier. The family go along with the ruse in the hope that it aids the boy’s recovery. It’s an amusing, sweet-natured look at how families are truly peculiar to themselves more so than to others. It also questions the role of the father in modern Mexican life and makes more than a few choice and aptly conveyed criticisms of male-dominated hierarchies.

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LFF 2010: Northern Lights, Black Swans

Dave from Victim of the Time, reporting from the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

We're winding down now. Today's gala screening, the sparky, perceptive The Kids Are All Right, is old news on American shores, so it's a good thing that I've taken so long to ponder over today's films. Today's theme might be... don't expect too much. You'll only get hurt.

Darren Aronofsky’s films consume. They consume the characters, slowly more obsessed with a singular goal or self-destructive impulse, but they consume the audience too. His last film, The Wrestler, was, despite its emotional intensity, less stylistically immersive than is typical of him. We are, in more ways than one, back to ‘normal’ with Black Swan, which simply can’t resist overpowering you with the contrasting black and white thematics of Swan Lake. Any other colour scheme would seem nonsensical, but Aronofsky doesn’t merely prescribe to the ballet’s bald imagery. The whole film seems to mimic the necessarily overdramatic, telegraphed stylisation of the whole artform; the escalating nightmarishness of Nina’s (Natalie Portman) fixations are pitched to the rafters, defiantly relishing the kind of flourishes of red and flashes of madness that Powell & Pressburger would be proud of.

It’s a fine balance, though, and the trappings of imitating such a florid style are easy to fall through even as it delivers vivid, scorching imagery. As a result, it often feels as though it’s in service of an increasingly flimsy set of dynamics. Nina is, physically speaking, a huge step forward for Portman, but as a character to inhabit, she’s reduced to an alarmingly simple ‘coming-of-age’ narrative: a realisation of sexuality, a rebellion, and a descent into madness that, since it is telegraphed right from the off, she is never defined apart from. Confusing, and possibly reductive, suggestions about sexuality (and particularly lesbianism) rear their head, and, coupled with the similarly basic friction between oppressive mother and stunted daughter, Black Swan leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mind at points from the sheer abundance of cliché.

If I sound like I’m being overwhelming negative, it’s merely because my expectations were far higher than any film deserves. The viscerality of the Black Swan experience is such that it’s not difficult to commend, and indeed recommend, and it doesn’t entirely deny Portman the chance to, er, spread her wings. But, ultimately, it feels like a step back for Aronofsky, a triumph of style over substance, and even if the style is slightly magnificent, it’s still a niggling disappointment. (B)

I spent a lot of time sitting watching Aurora, and most of it was spent trying to find the greatness in it. I knew it had to be there somewhere; after all, Cristi Puiu’s previous feature, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, was a majestic, darkly ironic masterstroke, so there had to be at least a hint of it here somewhere. Finally, as the film approached its end, the rather restless audience around me seemed to find some appeal, chuckling away at the film’s sudden change of tone, and I gave up. There is good in Aurora, but not only is it never great, the goodness is drowned. The film’s intriguing treatment of violence as an event barely more notable than an exchange of money or visiting your parents’ house seems to make sense of the extraordinary running time, but the slowness of the building character study never justifies this length. Puiu’s favouring of long shots, with diegetic sound covering dialogue, seem gratuitously inscrutable rather than fascinating, and though the closer shots are alert and responsive, the lethargy of the film is overwhelming. As the film gathers pace and events are felt a bit more keenly, Aurora seems headed to a meaningful apex, but it torpedoes itself with a finale of absurdity within its realist aesthetic, with the sardonic, humourous social commentary suddenly laid on so obviously it’s as if we’re being buried beneath it. As Puiu introduced the screening, he seemed to acknowledge the wearing length, but it seems he couldn’t resist. Depth, Cristi, doesn’t necessarily require length. (C)

It’s unlikely, no, that a film would name itself after something so intriguing and then barely engage with it? For the soap-opera dynamics of the half of Patagonia that actually takes place in Patagonia don’t have any need to be there at all, although I doubt they’d be much more engaging in California or Siberia than they are here. Rather curiously sheathed in half, with two plots that are cleanly unrelated, the film swerves between Patagonia and Wales without much rhyme or reason. There isn’t much sense of Patagonia as a place distinct from any of the rest of South America, except that the characters – two of whom are visitors – speak in Welsh. Showing the disconnect that should likely be the point of the film, the characters in Wales speak in Spanish, though this plot is played much more heavily for the cultural tension. As the soap-opera dynamics of infidelity and a tired coming-of-age plot crowd the film and Wales is inevitably depicted as a rosy, pastoral landscape, any deeper angles that have been vaguely suggested are shunted aside. The brief hints of something more specific that we are given make the film’s overall disinterest even more maddening – there are stories here being ignored, snubbed for ones that have probably been written during a deep sleep. (C-) [edited from full review]

Still left on the LFF docket are Sofia Coppola's Venice champion Somewhere, and closing night film 127 Hours, which Nathaniel just left word on. If you're so inclined, take a look at the screening log on my sidebar and let me know if there's any film you're just desperate to hear my thoughts on, and I'll slip it into my final post in a few days.

LFF 2010: What I Love the Most

Craig reporting from the London Film Festival.

Argentinian film editor Delfina Castagnino makes her directorial feature debut with What I Love the Most / Lo que más quiero, a slight but thoughtfully quiet film full of long takes and extended pauses. The slim plot follows Pilar, who has recently lost her father, visiting her friend Maria, who is absconding from her boyfriend. The two spend their days by nearby lakes, at gigs or on the beach, idling away the time. Pilar ties up her father’s business loose ends and Maria meets a local guy (Esteban Lamothe) who takes her mind off her relationship and the friends begin to drift apart.   


What I Love is a cleanly directed, well-composed film. Each scene is clinically precise in its framing, though often deliberately askew – actors awkwardly shot from just below waist-height, tree-lined landscapes partially obscure parts of the film frame. Most shots outlast their naturally assumed endpoints to further mine seemingly pointless instances of idle banter or connection between leads Maria Villar and Pilar Gamboa.

It feels very much like a hazy-lazy variant of the recent-ish Slow Cinema trend – familiar from Castagnino’s sometime collaborator Lisandro Alonso, and Carlos Reygadas, Antonio Campas etc – but with a foregrounded central female friendship (Celine and Julie Go Floating, perhaps?) Or maybe it’s a film after Eric Rohmer’s heart? But imagine, if you will, Sofia Coppola on holiday and on tranquilisers while remaking Vera Chytilová's Daisies to come close to what Castagnino achieves here. She does draw a pair of natural, unaffected performances from the two leads, but at times the film bordered on the exceedingly wispy, as if all that extended emptiness might just blow away on a vapid, late summer wind. Castagnino’s previous employ seems to have been largely neglected for her debut – once she regains her editor’s touch, and finds a way to better substantiate her themes, a second feature might just be a minor gem. D+

 What I Love the Most is showing at the LFF on Sunday 24th and Wednesday 27th October

LFF 2010: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Like Winter Vacation (reviewed yesterday and also showing today), more snowy desolation abounds in Almari Helander’s debut film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. But this time the setting is a much more grim (bordering on Grimm) and fable-like Finland (bordering on Lapland). There are 24 days to go until Christmas, and high on a mountain a mysterious company called Subzero Inc. are drilling deep, deep down; they discover something, or is it someone, encased in ice. All the local townsfolk are told is that they are to be very very good. A knowing farm boy (Onni Tommila) and his father (Jorma Tommila) latch onto the shady goings-on and decide to investigate further...

It’s a Christmas film for people who hate Christmas: a tale very much about the festive period, but via the quite possibly warped imagination of a Scrooge-like misanthrope. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a kid’s film, essentially, although this is debatable: it uneasily sits as outright family entertainment, but skimps on the potential gore it occasionally teases the viewer with (some judicious cutting occurs at crucial points). There’s fun to be had, but intermittently; the narrative mid-section does drag somewhat. Some moments during the build-up to the tense finale are inspired, however, and far more crafty and well-plotted than I initially expected.

Rare Exports exists in a strange place somewhere between a Tim Burton-esque seasonal romp and a middling horror concept stitched onto a yuletide yarn. Not as good as other quasi-kid-flicks like Joe Dante’s recent The Hole or Takashi Miike’s The Great Yokai War for instilling a light terror into your tykes, but worth seeing for its weird way with tall tales. It's decked in all the festive filmic trimmings, but worn in an oh-so-wrong fashion. One thing’s for sure: you won’t want to meet Santa’s Little Helpers after seeing this film. C

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is at the LFF on Saturday 23rd & Tuesday 26th October

LFF 2010: Winter Vacation

Craig here with more from the LFF 2010


Winter Vacation (Han jia), the acclaimed new film from writer-poet Li Hongqi, arrives at the LFF with prizes from both the Seoul and Locarno film festivals. It languorously tracks the existence of a community of mostly-related residents, chiefly a gang of teens awaiting their return to school,  during the last days of a particularly desolate and weather-soured holiday in a Chinese housing complex. It’s visually chilly, but, despite the intriguing barrage of listlessly austere long takes, its tone is markedly light – but deceptively, drably so (yet it still manages to arouse pertinent issues about contemporary China with sly craft). We’re in the kind of film territory usually dominated by the likes of Aki Kaurismäki and Jim Jarmusch – although neither of those bastions of the brazenly bizarre could have shaped as film as dry and droll as this.

The film is loosely structured as a series of interconnected vignettes: a grandfather and grandson verbally spar in a front room; a couple get a divorce; a vegetable market opens to a few frugally-minded customers; a group of youths squabble and loaf around on discarded sofas or stand comically inert amid the bleak industrial surroundings. Humorous banter is frequent, and is on the whole very funny. These exchanges and the lengthy silences between them create some inspired moments of comic interaction. It’s also beautifully edited by Li: he’s very much the auteur on the film, and he shows considerable directorial style and a great knack for pace. Also worth mention is the film’s alluring, off-kilter soundtrack (courtesy of Zuoxiao Zuzhou and The Top Floor Circus): onscreen noises, both diegetic and non-, and odd acapella voices-off enhance the strange, plaintive rhythm of Li’s direction. Winter Vacation is a minor treat – not solely for those with acquired arthouse tastes – to seek out if and when it gets a theatrical release. B

Winter Vacation is at the LFF on Friday 22nd & Saturday 23rd October

LFF 2010: And It Hurts With Every... Cannon

David from Victim of the Time, reporting from the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

I've been engrossed in this festival for so long now, it already feels like it's winding down; in fact, there's another week to go, with Danny Boyle's 127 Hours the closing night gala next Thursday evening. Perhaps my feeling comes from the fact that my most anticipated film is just around the corner: yes, I too fell under the spell of the Black Swan trailer, and it hits my eyeballs tomorrow. I'm at fever pitch. Today, though, we visit Italia and Quebec, but not before a British perennial delivers once again...


Lesley Manville.

I realise I have a tendency to waffle, so I thought I’d get straight to the point.

I had my problems with Another Year, but, as you’ve heard (and heard, and heard), Lesley Manville is absolutely superb in it. I’d heard that too, but it still didn’t prepare me for the density and devastation mustered by Manville in this character. Manville’s Mary is so magnificently imagined that, despite Leigh’s insistence in the post-screening Q&A that what you see is what was shot, and nothing more, there is the strong suspicion that the film shifted during its realisation to centralise on her. (Echoed by this review – I didn’t set out to focus it so immediately, but it felt honest to do so.)

Perhaps it's reductive to talk solely of Manville. The rest of the cast, from the connecting contentedness of Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen to the chirpy Karina Fernandez, give assured performances just the same, and surely only boost Manville’s power through Leigh’s famous workshopping process. The cinematography expressively, if rather obviously, differentiates the seasons the film shifts through. The editing is extremely deft within the restraints of Leigh’s improvisational approach, notably giving a sparky energy to scenes like Broadbent and Sheen’s first meeting with their son’s new girlfriend that contrast with the more sober, gentler feel of much of the film. But I can’t escape that it is Manville, her mousey, skittish walk, her nervous, misdirected laughter and her sad, defeated glances that are what struck me most heavily, and what continue to live mostly strong in my head. (B+)

If only he wasn’t gay! That seems to be the central lamentation of Ferzan Ozpetek’s dunderheadly jaunty Loose Cannons, which doesn’t just have one gay son of a traditional Italian pasta-making family to pretend to support; it has two! Oh yes; before Tomasso (Riccardo Scamarcio) can make his shocking announcement, his brother Antonio taps his glass and is promptly thrown out, leaving Tomasso to run the business and suffer suggestions he should get it on with the business partner’s daughter Alba. Of course, with its longing musical montages of the pair drinking, eating and laughing together, you could be forgiven for thinking the film is even more desperate for the heterosexual harmony than Tomasso’s oddball family are – even when Tomasso’s boyfriend Marco and their camp friends crash the… well, you can hardly call it a party. Framed with a seemingly irrelevant flashback device involving the wise, accepting grandmother, the unexpectedly poignant finale almost redeems things by not tying up every loose end in a neat little farfalle, but it can’t erase the tiresome, laboured schematics of what precedes it. (C-)


I confess. I have a weakness for young, attractive French people giving themselves over entirely to their lustful urges. Xavier Dolan himself is a young and attractive Canadian person, but he’s from Quebec, and I do believe that’s included in Subsection 1B of my confession. After his vaunted J’ai tue ma mere, Dolan again directs himself in Les amours imaginaires (feel free to explain the disastrous English title, Heartbeats). Dolan’s style boldly cribs from Wong Kar-wai – they may not be accompanied by In the Mood for Love’s striking musical theme, but you can almost see a pot of noodles swinging from the hand as we follow a posterior in slow-motion down the street. Dolan doesn’t merely copy but adapts the techniques he apes, sexualising the characters in saturated single-colour sex scenes; but there’s also a sense of irony and pity in the fierce emphasis on the desperation of the two friends both in lust with the same man. Dolan consumes you in sensuality and focuses you on the mistrustful dynamics of love, so that while you might not match the lust for the particular figure, you lust for this mood in general. It isn’t about liking these characters – the sneering ending makes that clear – but about identifying with how low these familiar feelings have made them, and can, have, and will make you. (B) [edited from full review]

LFF 2010: A Screaming Man

Craig here, continuing a look at films showing at the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

I much admired Chad filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's Daratt/Dry Season from 2007 (it took the #4 spot in my year-end list for that year), and he’s triumphed again with his fourth feature, A Screaming Man/Un homme qui crie. Made in the same refined and frank vein as Daratt, this new film follows Adam (Youssouf Djaoro), a pool cleaner and former swimming champion who works at an exclusive N'Djamena hotel with the assistance of his son, Abdel (Diouc Koma). After a job reshuffle Adam loses his job to Abdel; he sinks into depression fuelled by anger and humiliation, and so takes unexpected action. His situation worsens, just as civil war engulfs the country and rebel armies infiltrate the area.

Much of the film’s drama is underplayed. Haroun’s camera focuses on Adam in a curious, contemplative manner, observing with deftness the way his livelihood is slowly and slyly wrenched from him. Events major and minor are directed with crisp elegance, ensuring the plot never strays into falsity despite the tinge of melodrama inherent in it. One crucial shot, detailing a troubling decision Adam makes halfway in, tells us everything we need to know in a single, slow zoom into Adam’s face as he silently wallows in his demotion. Work is life for him; his job a necessity and cherished position, however lowly, which still holds for him the shine of his former swimming glories.

Djaoro (who also gave a fine performance in Daratt) conveys regret and selfishness with natural ease. That we care about him despite his permanently-furrowed demeanour and questionable ethics comes down to his strong turn. Music is used sparingly, and feels loaded with sombre emotion when it cuts in; it disrupts key moments unexpectedly to underline pertinent visual points. The photography (by Laurent Brunet) boldly highlights areas of respite within dim home interiors as much as it luxuriates in the expansive splendour of the hotel poolside. A Screaming Man details stunted, withheld lives – affected by social pressures and a fraught political climate – with a simple yet devastating awareness of the fragility of responsibility. B+

A Screaming Man is showing at the LFF on Wednesday 20th and Friday 22nd October.

LFF: Picco an Oscar Nominee

David of Victim of the Time reporting from the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

I'd like to stick some exciting star sightings into my little introduction here, but sadly the only famous body part I've laid eyes on (so far) is Freida Pinto's head. Before we get to the enticing capsules -two starkly different Foreign Film Oscar contenders and one harrowing prison drama that trumps them both - a bit on one of the highlights so far:

Meek’s Cutoff feels like the natural evolution of Reichardt’s attitude towards her filmmaking – it is broader than but not indistinct from her previous films, an experiment in how starkly different elements (of plot, of acting, of character) can be understood in the low-key shooting style many admire her for.

More on Meek's here.

Now about that harrowing prison drama... 

It’s part of the festival experience to overload your schedule, and as a result, you sometimes find yourself barely focusing on what you’re watching because you’ve run straight from something that’s rooted itself in your head. And so it was, as I sat watching a film about ye olde French aristocracy besotted with a square-faced princess, that I spent at least half an hour musing instead on Picco. The title comes from German slang for the newest inmate, and Picco dwells entirely in a youth prison. It's inspired by a startling real life incident. First-time director Michael Koch makes oppressive use of tracking shots, circular pans, low angles and square framings to emphasise the trapped, limited existence, cemented by a more subtle use of sound to separate the youths both in sync with and against the image. Slowly but surely, as our ‘picco’ Kevin (Constantin von Jascheroff) becomes more acclimatised to prison life, Koch tightens his focus onto the film’s formidably gripping centrepiece. He coats the film with a dreadful inevitability, providing a naked, uncompromising view of people who, by their own bitter admission, are “all fucked”. (A-)


“I have no one else, anywhere,” says one of the Cistercian monks explaning why he has no reason to abandon the monastery. ‘But what about God?,’ might be the obviously facetious question. But France's Oscar submission Of Gods and Men is really about the struggle between men. The godly presence remains left unquestioned, present only in the ceremonious prayer sessions that are viewed like the clockwork mechanism they are. The kinship the film focuses on is the monks’ brotherly bond, tested in the face of confrontations with the violent fundamentalists in the North African region where they live. We see that the tension isn’t an inherently cultural one through the interactions between the monks and the locals, particularly Michael Lonsdale’s medic and his affectionate patients. Instead, Of Gods and Men questions where religion fits in a violent world, especially one where the violence is religiously motivated (the fundamentalists leave, quietly, on hearing the sacredness of the Christmas Day they have interrupted). But the brief moments outside the monastery don’t seem to exist for more than surface examples – of how the monks are accepted, or the stark violence of the fundamentalists – and the tone is, inevitably, deliberately monastic. Only in a dramatic sequence at the dinner table do we really muster any deep connection to these characters, and it runs the risk here of being done so baldly it only narrowly avoids tipping the scales in the other direction. Finally, despite the technical skill and delicate performances, you feel you would have been just have moved by reading the plot on a piece of paper. (C+)

On the other end of the spectrum completely, and not getting near Oscar with a ten foot altar cross, The Temptation of St. Tony is a twisted, darkly beautiful and morbidly funny piece of Estonian esoterica, shifting unpredictably between bourgeois Buñuelian absurdism and eccentrically dark Lynchian setpieces. A plot is dissected and strewn across the film, though we start out in fairly clear territory as Tony (a deadpan, bewildered Taavi Eelmaa), a factory middle manager, wilfully engages in a midlife crisis after the death of his father. Dinner parties devolve into drunken madness where swinging is a lifestyle, he chases a beautiful but impoverished woman into the darkness of a baroque underground, and a dead dog is dragged across an ice plain. Director Veiko Õunpuu acknowledges his debts – thanking Buñuel and Pasolini in the end credits – but there’s a uniqueness to this nightmarish comedy, making inscruitable comments on the politics, history and socio-economics of its environment and twisting the Eastern European atmosphere to deepen both the hilarity and the tension. Add a delectably discordant sound mix and you have an affront to the senses, but it tickles each one in just the right way. (B+)

LFF 2010: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with the first of several reports from the 54th BFI London Film Festival. Dave started things off the other day with thoughts on festival opener Never Let Me Go and a grab bag of London delights, but first up for me is a trip to Thailand with this year's celebrated Palme d'Or winner.

Ah, Uncle Boonmee. You’ll now be able to add the LFF to your lifetime of recollections. File it alongside your many prestigious appearances at other key festivals this past year – the crowning achievement of a Palme d’Or ushering you toward us here in London. Apichatpong ('Joe') Weerasethakul’s latest hothouse bedazzlement, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, is one of the LFF’s flagship titles. Keen festival followers may already be familiar with its plot, but a truncated version goes something like this: in the Thai countryside Uncle Boonmee is suffering from kidney failure; his final days are spent with family – both dead and alive, human and non-human – before he treks to a cave for his last moments.

Typical plot structure is prone to derailment by uncommon and unearthly visuals at any point; strange episodes (remembered moments from his past lives?) pepper the film. [spoilers] One sequence where a scarred princess has awkward, vigorous sex with a talking catfish is both absurdly compelling and stunningly filmed, and certainly something you won’t see anywhere else this, or any, year. Spectral visitations are a regular occurrence round gentle ol’ Boonmee’s house – making him a kind of lovely, reverse Scrooge – and are initially chilling, then rather becalming, especially the huge hair-covered beast with glowering red eyes who looms on a staircase before... sitting down for dinner. Boonmee’s long-deceased wife drops by, too; she materialises several times to the almost comical astonishment of the flesh Boonmee clan. [/spoilers] These characters baffle, but are indispensably alluring. When the film goes off on its wondrously weird whims it becomes pleasingly enigmatic.

Weerasethakul’s films often get posited as litmus tests of the true filmgoer’s arthouse mettle. (Just below ticking off titles on a Béla Tarr checklist.) There’s always guaranteed something soothingly elegiac to be taken from his work; something not always readily graspable, but inarguably extraordinary and sometimes belatedly fulfilling. But with Boonmee there’s a hint of strained repetition in the way he structures and presents – albeit still subtly, and with delicate, personable care – his sparse story. Familiar conceptual totems are present; wondrous shot compositions are correct. But is Weerasethakul in danger of prematurely recycling his already well-used ideas? Both his last two features Tropical Malady and Syndromes of a Century were delightfully invigorating – even during their moments of stasis – but at times Boonmee often feels more like an extension of the same old, same old. I could recall his past films far too easily. (And, for me, the two film "recollections" from his recent ‘Primitive’ installation, Phantom of Nabua and this film’s precursor/side project, A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, served his core concerns well enough.) Still, more hulking, red-eyed jungle beasts wouldn’t go amiss next time. C+

Uncle Boonmee will be reincarnated at the LFF on Sunday 17th and Monday 18th October
related articles: Nathaniel's review from NYFF and Oscar's Best Foreign Film Competitive List.

LFF 2010: (Self-) Love Gone Blue

David from Victim of the Time, reporting from the London Film Festival.

“Why would I go to London?! No way!”

A wry chuckle greeted this on-screen outburst during my first public screening of the 54th BFI London Film Festival. I may have already sat through two and a half weeks of press screenings, but in that moment I knew the energy had changed now the festival had kicked into gear. Without the abundance of eagerly-awaited premieres and the bidding wars that come with them, Britain's premiere film festival is fuelled mostly by a pure love of the art of film. It’s my fourth festival, my second as a press delegate (follow the ‘London Film Festival’ tag to delve into last year’s coverage), and my first as a resident Londoner, so it’s a strikingly different experience for me. I’ll be rolling out capsules reviews – accompanied by as many full pieces as I can manage over on my own blog – for the next two weeks, and Craig (who writes "Take Three" right here) will be joining the party in a few days. (And if you really want to keep your finger on the pulse, you can track my tweeted first impressions here.)

The Opening Gala film Never Let Me Go already hit and sunk over on US shores (my review) but I won’t dwell. Let’s start with something that’s unfortunately become rather infamous…

"you always hurt the one you love ♫ "

Not a love that has broken, but one that has deteriorated. Blue Valentine never grants us the path of this deterioration, instead splitting the film into two snapshots that mark the beginning and the ending of a young marriage. Despite the different energies to the two narratives, Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling are perceptive enough to make delicate connections between the two, and director Derek Cianfrance understands the inbuilt doubled effect of his techniques, knowingly entwining the two and cutting between them; the sweet sparkle of their chemistry in the happier earlier sequences will inevitably be coloured by the bitterness of the present tense narrative. Subtle elements of the filmmaking work to deepen the narrative - the camerawork between the juxtaposed narratives doesn't seem strikingly different, but the past is youthfully energetic, the present nervy and cautious. It’s hard, though, to really credit the film’s power to anyone but Gosling and Williams, both stronger than ever, translating aspects of their character that brought them together into ones that, perhaps inevitably, tear them apart. (B+)

There’s something oddly amusing about the catalyst for the admitted derth of events that unfold in Blessed Events; the stiff, awkward Simone (Annika Kuhl) is stiff and awkwardly dancing in a nightclub, and, in long shot, we see a man slowly but surely shuffling his rhythmic way over to her. She’s easily had, it seems, because within half an hour of this dry opening scene, she’s pregnant with Hannes’ (Stefan Rudolf) child and has set up house with him in a little country village. The complete lack of conflict seems intentional, and by the time the stubbornly cycling Simone crashes onto her large baby belly, even the rush of POV camerawork as she hurtles down the hill can’t raise our pulse into considering this a critical rupture. Complete disengagement from its simple characters – never do we plumb beyond the depths of Hannes as a cheerful father-to-be – is all very well, but the abundance of lame visual metaphors, comparisons and contrasts merely exposes the complete sterility of the project here. I hardly dare say that it’s a blessed relief when this is over. (D+)


Self Made. Make a different self. The seven volunteers chosen by artist Gillian Wearing for this intriguing British documentary appear to be from a fairly broad spectrum of British society, but there’s a reason they’ve been selected: there’s damage and insecurities to be exposed. Volunteers are, of course, willing, and the ultimate aim of the method acting workshop they collaborate on is to each make a short film where they can play themselves or a character that takes inspiration from their journey of self-discovery. It’s not the most inspired of filmmaking – inserts with Oxford English Dictionary exemplify the certain lack of imagination – but the main problem is in fact that there isn’t enough of a film here. It’s a tight running time that really needs to have been indulged, to let the individual journeys take on the significance that’s fleetingly seen in them. One participant is, for reasons unexplained, entirely unexplored, and some of the films we see are less inspiring than others. Yet once the nightmarish visions of the final participant start being unveiled, it’s hard not to be grimly fascinated by this glimpse into the sadder, dark side of the human experience. (B-)

To look forward to: Foreign Film Oscar submissions Uncle Boonmee, Of Gods and Men and The Temptation of St. Tony, pretty young people in Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats, a screaming man in A Screaming Man, and demonic twinkletoes in Black Swan.

Links: Glenn Shadix (RIP). Plus Jones, Cronenberg, Captain America

/Film first set photos of January Jones as Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class. As I believe I've stated before I love this casting. But it does seem wierd that she is already pigeonholed as "sixties girl". Will this be our first true period piece superhero flick or am I forgetting something? At least they're trying something slightly different with this one.
All Things Fangirl relives the glory of (500) Days of Summer last year with summer concerts in the now featuring JGL and Zooey Deschanel.
Cinema Viewfinder There's a Cronenberg blog-a-thon going on that I didn't know about. Shame. I don't really understand the format to get to the article contributions but I'm certain there's good things to read there. I shall investigate further. Love that David Cronenberg.
/Film long interview with Never Let Me Go director Mark Romanek.
Film Business Asia the upcoming London Film Festival (we'll be covering it again) has a healthy selection of Asian films.
Sina Andy Lau. Let him eat cake (for an early birthday celebration)
Topless Robot would like you to calm the f*** down about that picture from the set of Captain America.
DListed Henry Cavill on the set of The Cold Light of the Day

Finally, in my weekly column over @ Towleroad I've got a brief bit about The Romantics and yet more links including the sad news that character actor Glenn Shadix passed away two days ago. He's best known as "Otho" from Beetlejuice but when I think of him I nearly always think of that funeral scene in Heathers..."ESK-I-MO!!!" I also lovelovelovelove the two-faced Mayor from The Nightmare Before Christmas which he voiced. He hadn't been seen on the screen much lately but he was actually blogging just last week.He will be missed but he sure will live on through those comedy classics.

LFF: I've Been Somewhere, Boy

Dave here, reporting from the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL one last time. It's been my first full-on film festival, and if I said I wasn't dying to lie in my bed for twenty-four hours in a deep sleep, I'd be lying. But it's been a fantastic few weeks, a reignition of my passion for film, and an experience I'll probably never forget. Below, you can read my full review of Nowhere Boy, the John Lennon picture that received its world premiere as the festival's Closing Night Gala, and then my own personal set of "awards". But first, a big thanks to Nat for making it all happen, and I really hope you've enjoyed my coverage and that you'll seek out some of these movies - should you, of course, be given the chance.

Nowhere Boy begins with a couple of coy nods to that which it avoids mentioning explicitly - the Beatles. (Clearly I have no such qualms myself.) The exhilirating screams of a crowd rise on the soundtrack as the young John Lennon races down the road - pursued by no one. It is, one feels, the perfect way to deal with a fact that isn't integral to this particular story, but will inevitably be flitting around the audience's minds. It's not ignored, it's merely unimportant for the portion of John Lennon's life the film choses to focus on. It's also exemplary of the spry, brisk humour that lightens the load of a story that errs slightly too much to the heavily emotional.

Sam Taylor-Wood's debut feature, following her acclaimed short Love You More and almost two decades of artistic work, shows her aesthetic skills to be, thankfully, pushed more in the direction of emotion than style. There remain some striking visual moments, but all are tailored to deepen the understanding we have for the characters that Taylor-Wood has made so empathic. Matt Greenhalgh's script is serviceable but suffers from similar problems to his previous musician biopic-of-sorts, Control, in that, in its choice to follow a similar template - a man stuck between two women - it risks reducing a life to a set of scales. But where Control's romantic triangle remained elusive because the interactions between the trio were limited in their complexity, Nowhere Boy not only has more angles to the three points of its shape but has a better sense of who they are.

It helps, of course, to have such a fine cast, and all three of the lead players here respond with impressive dexterity and emotion to their director, lifting the script's occasionally tired dimensions to a fresher, natural feeling. The film peaks in a powerful, confrontational scene between the three of them - Lennon (Aaron Johnson), his mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) and his Aunt Mini (Kristin Scott Thomas) - where the odd dimensions of this triangle are laid bare. What is Julia to John? A mother? A sister-type? A crush? An obvious dimension to this all sets John as caught between embodiments of the sides of the stark shift that was occuring at this moment in time - Aunt Mimi is the stiff upper-lip, reserved old guard, where the estranged Julia is the free spirit of the rock 'n' roll generation. All three actors finely modulate both the surfaces and the recesses of their characters, never compromising on who they presents themselves as and playing the slips from it as natural, organic moments. Kristin Scott Thomas, you won't be surprised to learn, steals best-in-show honours, her firm, slightly cold attitude mediated with the fierceness of her love for John, expressed in the strict mothering way that seems to be the way that makes the most sense to her. That's not to discredit Duff, whose vibrant exterior cracks as her past is scrutinized by her family, or Johnson, who combines rakish charm with a slightly off-putting arrogance, as it's the combination of the three performers that really makes the film spark.

Nowhere Boy doesn't spring any particular surprises, but it's as good as it could possibly have been. Taylor-Wood's artwork, some of which I glimpsed at her talk a few days ago, was much less visually styled than intensely personal and emotional, and it's this trait she carries so strongly across to her filmmaking. Ultimately, while it's not the film's focus, Lennon's music emerges as important because it makes him individual, it escapes the need of both women in his life. Nowhere Boy is a promising debut from a director who evidently has a lot of passion for what she's doing, and thankfully seems to be quite good at doing it. B+

In the end, then, a very good film to finish with. And now, because no one can ever resist them, my own picks for the best of the fest:

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Niels Arestrup, A Prophet
(runner-up: Oscar Isaac, Balibo)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Rosamund Pike, An Education
(runner-up: Kristin Scott Thomas, Nowhere Boy)

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Aleksei Arsentyev, Wolfy
(runner-up: Stéphane Fontaine, A Prophet)

DIRECTOR
Jacques Audiard, A Prophet
(runner-up: Jane Campion, Bright Star)

ACTOR
Tahar Rahim, A Prophet
(runner-up: Aaron Johnson, Nowhere Boy)

ACTRESS
Abbie Cornish, Bright Star
(runner-up: Yana Troyanova, Wolfy)

FILM
A Prophet
(runner-up: Samson and Delilah)

Thanks for reading, commenting, thinking, and, hopefully, watching.

LFF: Show Me, Don't Tell Me

It's the penultimate day here at the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL, and after a packed day that included the Coens Brothers' latest (not written up here, but let's just say I was... disappointed), Dave came back to the internet to discover than Anjelica Huston and her starry little jury had been busy giving out prizes. Gladly the new top prize for Best Film (or 'Star of London') went to one of my personal favourites from the fest, the stunning A Prophet. The Road, which left me a bit cold despite the technical prowess and solid performances, was their "special mention". (In Contention has the full awards round-up.)

But enough about awards. I'll have my own set of prizes to dish out tomorrow, when I finish off my coverage with a review of the closing night gala film Nowhere Boy, but for today, three more capsules for you from across the globe.


You might surmise from any whispers of plot you've heard that the title of Cracks refers to, well, unsavoury things (unless your minds aren't as dirty as mine). In actuality they prove to be cracks of the metaphorical sort - an oft-told tale of an outsider appearing and shattering the status quo. Ridley Scott's daughter Jordan proves that talent might be genetic in this family's case. Her delicate, sensuous styling suits this tale of boarding school lust and jealousy perfectly, and she does it without going overboard. It's a shame the script isn't quite up to the job, really. The passable plot goes limp for too long in its middle before picking up steam again, but none of it ever really sets alight in either a tawdry or an engaging way. Eva Green, though, makes for an enigmatic, troubling character, using her European bohemian allure to play Miss G, the youthful diving coach. Green's expressive eyes work particularly to make Miss G into a deeper characterization than merely the predictable little fraud she proves to be. Scott effectively portrays the youthful mystification of adulthood, and the dangerous precipice between the two stages of life, but something about Cracks never really blooms. C+

Vincere is BIG. It's DRAMATIC. It's GRAND. Basically it wants NOTICING, and if you're not already paying ATTENTION, it's got some opera music to make your ears pound. This flourishing Italian drama centers on Ida (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), the mistress-cum-wife of Mussolini (Filippo Timi), who fathers his son but, as he grows in power, is shunned and imprisoned in an asylum. Obviously such scandal is ripe for dramatization, but the stylistic approaches to the story is so cleanly sheathed in half you can almost see the join. Saturated, hued colour matches the plummy use of orchestral score flaring up when things get really dramatic, like when they have sex and Mussolini's eyes roll back into his head so that you understand he's a bit bonkers. Then we have the second half, which is the usual faded photographed and sodden despair of tone that's required by law to accompany stories of women being injustly stuck in a madhouse. There's no interest in Ida outside of her obsession with Mussolini, and there's no interest in politics at all - Vincere doesn't explore, it recites, but hopefully if it shouts loud enough you'll be convinced. (I wasn't.) D+



Has Ana Kokkinos changed much since her intensely miserablist Head On over ten years ago? It's probably easy to guess that the answer is no, or else I'd probably not have asked the question. Her latest film, Blessed, slowly descends from low evening light into pitch black darkness, but it forgets to create any kind of feeling for its characters. Split into two halves, 'The Children' and 'The Mothers', Kokkinos makes clear her point - that the relationships between the two need both to work to make them happy, and that just because you grow up doesn't mean you grow cleverer, or happier, or more able to cope with things - and that's about it. The mothers, perhaps because of the more distinguished actors playing them (Frances O'Connor, providing the most harrowing moment, Miranda Otto, and Deborra-Lee Furness), prove the more interesting side of the story. While Kokkinos comes up with a few interesting visual moments and plot points, it's hard to excuse such depressing pessimism when it only seems to exist for the sake of it. C

LFF: Pander, Provoke, Perplex

More from the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL, where Dave had a rather dreadful day at the movies, but I've omitted tearing apart "a new Slumdog Millionaire?", Ride the Wave Johnny (which is, can you believe it, even worse than our newest Best Picture winner), and have instead finally decided to give you my (briefer than I wanted them to be) thoughts on Cannes winner The White Ribbon. But first...

Glorious 39 isn't. Glorious, that is. In fact, it's a remarkable disaster of a film, one of those that slowly goes further and further down the road of dreadful and eventually emerges at somewhere completely laughable, although I'm sure everyone involved saw the ridiculous developments as some masterstroke. Stephen Poliakoff has received critical laudings for his television work over the last decade, but there's no sign of any of that supposed quality here at all. A superb British cast, mixing promising youngsters (Romola Garai, Eddie Redmayne, and a delectably absurd Juno Temple) with seasoned performers (Julie Christie, Bill Nighy, Christopher Lee), is wasted on a story that is delivered in so hackneyed and laughable a manner that it never convinces. If you've missed ripe thriller cliches such as the message from 'beyond the grave' through a piece of film, the disembodied wails of a lost baby, or, most delightfully, our heroine becoming gothically unhinged, then maybe it is worth checking this out - it is entertaining, just in all the wrong ways. D-

Harmony Korine clearly loves his title of provocateur, for Trash Humpers is as repulsively erratic as you'd expect. However, while it slowly becomes more and more embroiled in the darkest of places with this group of elderly people - whose favoured pastime is, literally, humping trashcans - it's really less striking than it wants to be. A few moments of absurdity strike the funny bone, and a few strike the gag reflex, but mostly this is an unbearably boring piece of work, featuring actors wearing masks that make them look more like Freddy Krueger than OAPs and one with laughter so piercing I repeatedly had to stick my fingers in my ears. There's some vague point about how these people "choose to be free", all handily spelt out for us in one scene, but mostly it's an excuse for Korine to try and baffle and disturb. Instead, he merely bores. D

There's some edge taken off the clinical deconstruction usually so typical of Michael Haneke in The White Ribbon. Perhaps it's the black-and-white photography, so glowingly attractive that it's markedly different from the perverse, bare visual appeal of his other features. Perhaps it's the surprising presence of romance and acidic humour. Perhaps it's the mediation of a cypher in the uncommonly nice young schoolteacher, a inclusion that seems a bit too designed to make the audience like the film more than Haneke usually allows. Haneke's searing portrayal of the gradual undoing of a hypocritical bunch of people - in this case a small German township just before World War I - is as insidiously intriguing and deliberately constructed as ever, but ironically the attempt to make an audience more emotionally invested had the opposite effect of pushing this viewer away. The lack of conclusions, and the lack of importance in the offered solution is as effective in making the film linger as Haneke's work always is, but despite the strong ensemble work and Haneke's technical supremacy, something about the film's project feels disconnected. It doesn't quite fascinate and enthrall with the same punchy strength Haneke has made his trademark. B

LFF: Time To Grow Up

Dave here, still at the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL, and apologising profusely for his absence - it's been a busy few days of film, and having an hour staring at Julianne Moore and ten seconds staring at Eva Green. (Both are as stunning as you've been led to expect.) There have been some big names and some big films the past few days, and so this is a triple-threat of things-you'll-actually-have-heard-of - and all this without The White Ribbon, thoughts on which are lingering on my computer, waiting for me to approve of them. For now, you'll have to make do...

By far the loudest applause I've yet experienced at the festival was given at the end of Precious. The film's status as a crowd-pleaser seemed odd to me - granted I'd avoided as much press on it as I could, but I knew the basic story. It seems obvious in retrospect that the harshnesses Precious deals with serve to make the audience investment that much deeper, and coupled with the generous, poignant amount of humour the film also emits, it's a hard film to argue with the pure love it might inspire. The education storyline errs a bit closely to the Dangerous Minds, Dead Poets' Society cliche, and the fantasy sequences and vibrant, distorted flashbacks are a bit too overtly flashy (even as these artistic choice makes sense narratively), but the performances are as powerful as you'll already know. Sibide and Carey project a subdued, painful honesty, while Mo'Nique's erratic, monstrous character sears through the screen almost too heavily - the film ends almost unbalanced in her favour. But reservations about the narrative construction and aesthetic flourishes seem churlish in the face of such emotion, such a refreshingly unpretentious attitude, and such vibrant human feeling. B+ [I know this is my show, but if you've yet to read Nick Davis' review of the film, it's one of the best pieces I've read in quite a while and says everything I wanted to, even things I hadn't yet understood I even felt.]

Jacques Audiard's A Prophet retains the nervy, lucid, enthralling energy of his previous films, and objectively speaking it's surely his most assured, controlled piece of work yet. It helps, of course, that newcomer Tahar Rahim is so superb in the central role, progressing from a nervy but proud young offender and, gradually, becoming a top dog. But the greatness of this film lies in the complexity of the arc - the Malik of the beginning is recognisable in the Malik of the ending, and there is no pretence that these experiences mean Malik is anything impressive or worthwhile - a notable conclusion here is of how narrow prison life is, as Malik's youthful wonder remains in his brief experiences of the outside world. And despite the intensely personal, close shooting style that really involves the audience with Malik's story, the story opens out wider, from the toweringly magnetic Niels Arestrup as a prison don to the tragic, intriguing figure of Adel Bencherif's ex-con who proves Malik's only connection to the outside world. The film's compass is more observant than incisively judging, a film that could be - and likely sounds like - a sprawling epic is instead a deeply engrossing personal story, lingering in the mind with its dark, inconclusive ending. A-

Leaving starts with the deadening bang of a gunshot. But as we flashback months previously to see how we reached this mysterious act of violence, we find that Leaving is anything but dead. It's almost too alive. Kristin Scott Thomas, acknowledging her English roots but once more making use of her French-language skills, stars as a married, bourgeois housewife who cannot resist an affair with a builder (Sergi López), much to the violent outrage of her husband (Yvan Attal). Catherine Corsini rattles through the cliched processes of affair melodramas so quickly it's vaguely absurd - "I can't live without you" is uttered about twenty minutes in - but this leaves plentiful room for such dramatics to be expanded upon. Leaving self-consciously seems to acknowledge, in the speed of its melodrama, the childish, impulsive attitudes of all three main characters. The actors, especially Attal with his torrid, merciless anger and Scott Thomas with her naive, wilful, rebellious passion, play up to the faintly hysterical tone, making Leaving both perversely enjoyable and oddly insightful. B

LFF: Women With Emotional Problems

Back to the LONDON FILM FESTIVAL with Dave, with an actressing overload today. Coming within the next few days, sanity pending, will be thoughts on Precious (yes, again), A Prophet and, finally, The White Ribbon.

A vague plot synopsis, like the one found in the film festival's literature, makes Chloe's icy erotica seem coyly alluring. A full plot synopsis might reveal the more tawdry aspects of the film, but what delight there is within Atom Egoyan's latest may well remain within the unfolding, so I'll keep as mum as I can manage. But something doesn't feel right from the start. You can film a cold place but it takes something more to make the film cold itself - and Chloe is too heavily photographed, too close to really appropriate that at all. There's no law that says a film set in Canadian winter has to send chills down the back of your spine, but what Chloe's atmosphere is instead is just a bit vulgar and melodramatic. Egoyan can wax for as long as he wants about how this is an adult, complex psychological drama about 'human interaction' and 'mature relationships', but the truth will out - it's an erotic thriller with remnants of French intrigue that can't help overloading on inexplicable obsessive madness, blowing all subtle humanity to the wind. Or out the window. C- [Taken from my extended thoughts, which you can read here.]

The crisply fascinating The Last Days of Emma Blank is a cool, drolly amusing critique of the assumptions of social classes, and an intriguingly played plot of family interactions. The titular madam is dying, so she says, and cruelly controls the servants - who, as we gradually discover, are in truth members of her family she's somehow convinced to perform servantile roles (one even acts like a dog, dry-humping and all). The main source of humour is never really knowing where you stand - there's something odd about a middle-aged man being called like a pet, but the script plays it's cards one at a time, each revelation or surprising turn changing perceptions. Shifts and nuances in the interpersonal relationships are craftily conveyed by the observational, connective camerawork, with helps partially disguise the stage origins of the film, and plays the same games with the characters as Emma tries to with her household. One particular plot element undoes the film a little in the end, but it remains a darkly comic little treat. B

London River is a quietly affecting drama bolstered by two strong lead performances - you might expect such from Brenda Blethyn, more restrained than usual, but the rakish, frail Sotigui Kouyaté delivers an equally affecting performance through the quiet. The pair are parents searching for their just-adult (21) children in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings (Britain's first suicide bombers, back in 2005), but despite the appropriation of a keenly felt event it never lapses into histrionics. It's almost too low-key, really - the tense percussive score is used sparingly, and the heavy sound makes the location feel dull and realistic. But the characters make a fascinating pair - Blethyn's French-speaking, slightly xenophobic widow isn't always sympathetic, nor is the eerily calm Kouyaté, who hadn't seen his son since he was six years old. But these flaws make them feel more engaging, more involving, precisely because we can't get comfortably involved behind their plight. Instead our response to the characters shifts as much as their fears and predictions as regards their children do. It's a lonely, sparse drama, but winds a tangible emotional connection through its uncommon rhythms. B