London Flm Festival: Carancho Review

After a grand performance in the Oscar winning The Secrets in Their Eyes, Ricardo Darín impresses once again in Carancho, which is also being submitted by Argentina for the next Academy Awards.

Can Darín go two for two?

Beginning with some stunning statistics regarding the number of road deaths in Buenos Aires (which number in the thousands every year), we meet Sosa (Darín) and Luján (Martina Gusman). Sosa is essentially an injury lawyer 4 U specialising in road accidents and Luján is a paramedic, again specialising in saving victims of road accidents. The pair meet and begin a tenuous friendship which eventually blossoms into romance, in spite of the conflict that arises from the shady nature of Sosa’s business and their age difference.

The corruption in Sosa’s compensation company eventually forces him to turn against his sinister employers, but not before he has helped/taken advantage of (depending on your point of view, which is difficult to ascertain in the hazy moral murk of the film) one client in a brutal and truly shocking manner. The film is at times stunningly violent but never less than enthralling. The two leads give great performances, Darín displaying his thoroughly natural charm and Gusman heartbreakingly honest.

Pablo Trapero’s direction is strong, the near perpetual darkness and glowing lights of Buenos Aires reminding of the Urban beauty of Michael Mann’s Heat. Carancho is a remarkably good film, from its slow burn start to its all too inevitable final frames. A true festival highlight.

London Flm Festival: Copcabana Review

This would be the second Isabelle Huppert film I have seen at the London Film Festival thus far and Copacabana is a far superior film to the disappointing Special Treatment . Babou (Huppert) is an initially very annoying Frenchwoman who has flitted from place to place in her life, enjoyed her travels and perceived rebellion against bourgeois society, yet failed to put down roots and now finds herself unemployed. She has a daughter, Esme (played by Huppert’s real life daughter Lolita Chammah), who is much more strait-laced than her mother and is marrying a boring executive. The final straw comes when Esme tells her mother not to attend her wedding, partly to save her from paying for any of it but mostly because Esme is embarrassed by her. Distraught, Babou finds work as selling time share apartments on the Belgian coast, where she starts to rebuild her life.

Babou soon begins to compel rather than irritate and Huppert’s performance is laudable. Though the film is a little on the long side as the plot meanders its way towards conclusion, it was genuinely heart warming and even cathartic to see Babou find limited success in her new role, in spite of competition and jealousy from her unfriendly colleagues. Babou finds the time to adopt a homeless couple, which provides an interesting parallel to her daughter and her partner – would Babou really prefer her own child to be destitute rather than bourgeois?

The film is not flawless and two instances are somewhat unbelievable – firstly her driving three hundred kilometres in a single evening to France and back to repair her daughter and son in law’s relationship behind the scenes and the clumsy deus ex machina that ends Babou’s problems. However, the film is an unpretentious and enjoyable light comedy that will provide relief from some of the festival’s more heavy-going films – and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

London Flm Festival: Home for Christmas Review

Bent Hamer demonstrates restraint and poise in this collection of interlinked Christmas tales, set on Christmas Eve in a small Norwegian town. An estranged father must find a way to get his presents to his children, a doctor is called away from his home to assist a desperate couple, a Muslim girl forges a friendship with a fellow non-celebrator, a woman hopes to finally lure her lover away from his wife, an old man prepares for a guest and a homeless man struggles to get back to his hometown.

On the face of it, little seems to appeal: interlinked vignettes are somewhat old hat and it seems a little unseasonal for Christmas movies just yet. And besides, everybody knows that the only Christmas movies worth watching are Muppets’ Christmas Carol and Die Hard. But somehow, Home for Christmas works and works well. The script is tight and nothing on screen goes to waste. The cast are good and give understated, believable performances.

When several storylines are presented in this way, it’s unavoidable not to pick a favourite, and for me, the tale of the estranged father was the highlight of the film, the high water mark being a scene that is simultaneously frightening violent, poignant, surreal and blackly humorous. Another of the film’s strengths is in its appeal both to the traditional and secular aspects of Christmas in the twenty-first century and Christians and non-believers alike should enjoy the film. The only flaws are a rather mawkish song played over the Northern Lights as the credits begin, which seemed like a rather obvious cliché that the film could easily have avoided. There’s also a rather incongruous and explicit sex scene that seemed wholly out of place in what would otherwise been a family-friendly affair. Despite this, I left the screening room feeling warm and Christmassy. Job done.

London Flm Festival: Truce Review

Truce was the winner of the best film award at Russian film festival Sochi, which should draw attention to this odd and perplexing feature. Egor (Dobranravov) is a truck driver in a rural backwater in Russia and the film follows a series of increasingly unusual events over what appears to be one very long and trying day. His friend Quasimodo blows his finger off, his uncle requires him to stand guard with a rifle whilst he withdraws money from a bank and various friends, all of who appear to criminals, attempt to rope him into various schemes. Then he sets off to find himself a wife. As you do.

I’d be lying if I said I fully understood exactly what I was supposed to take away from Truce. As far as I could tell, it seemed to be an exercise in Kafka-esque alienation and mundane frustration. Dobranravov gives a good and enigmatic central performance and the supporting cast are fine, if sometimes annoying. The film is occasionally humorous and dallies slightly with magical realism in the third act. I had been expecting some sort of final reel revelation in which I would cry out, ‘of course! It all makes sense now!’ but alas, the film just sort of ends, albeit with some impressively bleak photography of the cold Russian countryside.

It is by no means a specifically bad film – I’m wary to criticise it as clearly everything put on the screen has be done so with deliberate intent – but Truce is definitely the kind of film you appreciate rather than enjoy. Svetlana Proskurina is clearly an intelligent and interesting director and the film invites a kind of post match analysis that others do not. Go see it and make yourself feel clever.

London Flm Festival: Special Treatment and Hands Up Reviews

Special Treatment (Sans Queue Ni Tête)
In this French ‘comedy’, Jeanne Labrune directs Isabelle Huppert as a high class prostitute who crosses paths with psychoanalyst Bouli Lanners. Both are seeking redemption and attempt to help each other out in their professional capacities.

The film provided no laughs whatsoever – what it tried to pass off as funny was generally grotesque and what it tried to pass off as wit was slight. The characters were unlikable and unsympathetic. Beyond its initial hypothesis – that prostitution and psychiatry share more than a little common ground, which is made clear within ten minutes then repeated for the film’s duration – the film has little more to say, other than ‘prostitution isn’t fun’, a conclusion I had already reached on my own.

The film struggled to maintain my attention and went down several unnecessary tangents. I was bored rigid. Nil points.

Hands Up (Les Mains en L’air)
In present day France, undocumented immigrant children and their families live with the fear of deportation at any minute and without warning. Eleven year old Chechen Milana is one such alien and, after the abduction of one of her classmates, is taken in by her best friend’s family for her protection.

The film is narrated by an adult Milana many years in the future, but aside from the elegant opening soliloquy, this interesting device is not implemented effectively. No matter; the film is nevertheless an excellent and enthralling political drama that also proves to be a poignant paean to childhood, growing up and lost innocence.

The child cast are truly brilliant and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi excels as the valiant, progressive mother who takes in Milana. Highly recommended.

London Flm Festival: Robinson in Ruins Review

‘Cinema essayist’ Patrick Keiller (pictured above) returns with Robinson in Ruins, which claims to be a found-footage film made by the titular scholar Robinson and narrated by Vanessa Redgraves in which our hero, to quote the LFF programme, ‘…believing he can communicate with a network of non-human intelligence, and wanting to investigate the possibility of ‘life’s survival on the planet’, … travels to sites of scientific and historical interest, exploring the development of capitalism since the 16th century, and moments and movements of resistance’. Keiller looks to such topics as literature, politics, the financial crisis, mass extinction and philosophy in his essay, which is narrated over images of the English countryside.

Frankly, it’s a total mess. For an essay, there is no distinct hypothesis (what does he mean exactly by ‘life’s survival on the planet’?), no development of an argument and no true conclusion. Keiller flits from subject to subject almost at random. There is little in the way of wit, no characters appear on screen and the narration pauses for endless minutes at a time while we are left to appreciate a foxglove swaying in the wind. Several journalists around me slept through chunks of the film and even Redgraves’ narration sounds tired.

I’m all for artistic creativity and the application of thought and intelligence in cinema, but under one condition – that it remains cinematic, which Robinson in Ruins is patently not. A book, radio play or even the theatre would be a better medium for Keiller to discuss his not uninteresting ideas, which are reduced to utter tedium through film.

London Flm Festival: Leap Year (Ano Bisiesto) Review

Laura (Del Carmen) is a young woman living by herself in an apartment in Mexico City, who is counting down the days until the 29th of February. She is clearly bored, lonely and in mourning. Through the day, she works a little, spies on her neighbours and exaggerates the extent of her social life to her family. By night, she heads out into the city and returns with strangers to sleep with in what appears to be an effort to quell her grief.

Set entirely, except for an introductory scene in a supermarket, in Laura’s flat, Aussie director Michael Rowe expertly conjures a pervading air of desperation, sadness and bittersweet humour. Del Carmen is amazing and gives a truly standout performance as a woman turning to increasingly dangerous sex as a release. Gustavo Sanchez Parra is also good as the lover Laura turns to in her darkest moments.

Leap Year keeps you guessing as to the true nature of Laura’s grief almost until the final scene and is a master class in subtly. Having won the Camera d’Or at Cannes (the award for an outstanding debut feature), Rowe and Del Carmen are sure to pick up much more well-deserved praise at the LFF. Whilst some may question the sexual politics of the film and the misogynistic sexual acts that Laura seems to desire, they would be overlooking the wonderful performances, minimalist script and taut direction. Make every effort to catch this.

London Flm Festival: Patagonia Review

Did you know that back in the 1800s, a community of Welsh folk set sail for a new life in South America and settled, after many years of toil, in Patagonia? Did you also know that there are still vestiges of this Welsh-speaking colony in Patagonia today? I didn’t and therefore found Marc Evan’s film (also called Patagonia) utterly fascinating.

Patagonia follows two pairs of travellers – a Welsh couple whose relationship is in the balance, Rhys and Gwen who are in Patagonia due to the former’s photography assignment and old Argentine lady Cerys and her teenage neighbour Alejandro, whom she has tricked into accompanying her to Wales to seek out her descendants’ farm, from which they immigrated to South America.

With its twin tales of travel told in parallel and only tenuously connected, the film boasts one of the more original set ups I’ve had the good fortune to see play out, bearing only a superficial semblance to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel in its variety of languages (including Welsh, Spanish and English), international connection theme and beautiful cinematography. The cast are excellent and Evan’s proves to have a capable directorial hand. The third act does wear out its welcome somewhat though, and the film perhaps lacks profundity. However, I was enthralled and touched by the film, even if the filmmakers may have overestimated how many Welsh people actually speak Welsh. Also, surprisingly, popular songstress Duffy is in it. And she’s actually quite good too.

London Flm Festival: Sensation Review

Following the death of his father, young Donal (Gleeson) inherits the family farm. Unfortunately Donal has no interest in agriculture; moreover he is almost wholly preoccupied with the five-knuckle shuffle. With his father no longer around, Donal is driven by his loneliness, grief and near total lack of social skills to arrange a meeting with call girl Kim (Gordon). Circumstances conspire to bring the two together and they begin both a relationship and a business partnership when Kim reveals her ambition to start her own brothel.

Sensation is a very black comedy that surprises and provokes in equal doses. The central conundrum of the film that both the audience and Donal are forced to question is the true nature of the relationship between the two leads. Is Kim exploiting Donal or vice versa? Are they actually in a romantic relationship or is it merely a business partnership? While the viewer is trying to figure out the enigmatic puzzle, Sensation also provides a fairly even-handed assessment of the sex industry. At first seeming murkily glamorous, the true, grim nature is slowly revealed through terrified young prostitutes, filthy old men and the moral degradation of the characters.

Though far from a masterpiece, Sensation is an entertaining film with an excellent tonal arc that spans from slyly smirk inducing to something altogether nastier. The actors are naturalistic and believable and writer-director Tom Hall proves more than capable at the helm. The film’s only real flaw is its slight predictability and that it doesn’t go quite far enough in its indictment of the sex industry.