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.

Possession Review

Upon rejoining his wife (Adjani) and child (Hogben) after a period of absence, Mark (Neill) discovers his spouse is leaving him. Initially, he believes she is leaving him for her lover, the portentous Heinrich (Bennent) but Anna (Adjani) has an even more sinister lover. One with more tentacles.

A bright eyed and bushy tailed Sam Neill stars in this wacky psychological horror, directed by Andrzej Zulawski, in which a couple’s marriage breaks down in cataclysmic mental and personal destruction. Although Possession was one of the original banned video-nasties, it also won an award for best actress in Cannes and nominated for a BAFTA.

More than one critic has compared Possession to Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist and not without reason. Both films study the simultaneous romantic, mental and sexual destruction of warring couples and physical manifestations of their psyches punctuate each film. Both films also boast some particularly ‘interesting’ dialogue – characters in Possession shout things at each other like, ‘I can’t exist by myself because I’m afraid of myself, because I’m the maker of my own evil!’ and ‘What I miscarried there was sister Faith, and what was left is sister Chance. So I had to take care of my faith to protect it!’And believe me, there is an awful lot of shouting in it, as well as sickening self mutilation and disturbing sexual congresses. It is not for the faint of heart.

Despite its wilfully alienating sequences (including a scene where Anna screams in a subway for a few minutes before oozing a bucketful of unmentionable goo from her orifices), Possession is oddly compelling and artfully straddles the borderline between unwatchable and unmissable. In spite of my reservations in regard to taste and decency, I was surprised and impressed by the film. However, Possession is far from a mainstream crowd pleaser and I’m sure many will be less forgiving of its fault than I. If you’re into European, plot-less psychological horror films involving tentacled beasts humping mentally unstable women in a metaphor for the pain of divorce, though, Possession is the film for you.