BFI 62nd London Film Festival Part 2 Review by Helen M Jerome

Facebook0 Tweet0

BFI 62nd London Film Festival Part 2: Having delivered our verdict on the biggest, splashiest releases from the 2018 London Film Festival in Part 1 of our annual round-up, in Part 2 we now turn your attention to the very best of the rest. These other runners and riders might get less attention from the rest of the media, but rest assured, we’ll point you towards those you should not miss – from the ones you might need to hunt down with deerstalker, clues and compass, to those that’ll pop up on Netflix or iPlayer.

START ME UP

Everyone likes to encourage new talent, and the London Film Festival is no exception. The First Feature Competition is your annual chance to get in early and remember where you saw them first… so what rose to the top this time? First off, there’s huge promise in every single one of these, not just the main prize winner. Hard to believe a couple of these are debuts, and when you see what they’ve achieved on the first rung, you’d be made not to mark them down as ones-to-watch on their inevitable journey up the ladder.

Ta-dah! The winner of Best First Feature was Girl (above), from Lukas Dhont, which might tick all sorts of boxes, tackling body dysmorphia, peer pressure, and bullying in a topical tale of a transgender, would-be ballet dancer, but rises above any perceived agenda with its cool, empathetic narrative. The penultimate scene is unexpectedly shocking, though, so be prepared. Apart from Dhont’s superb directorial debut, Girl is also remarkable for the extraordinary central performance of Victor Polster as Lara, who wants to be her true self, and become a ballerina. “I don’t want to be an example,” says Lara. “I just want to be a girl.”

Among the other contenders were semi-autobiographical, unsentimental Ray & Liz from Brit-artist Richard Billingham, who might just follow Steve McQueen and Sam Taylor Wood in changing medium. You can almost smell the lack of hope among the home brew in this tale of everyday neglect, where people take more care of their pets than their kids.

You must catch the wonderful Wildlife (above), directed by actor Paul Dano, which is based on lesser-known Richard Ford novel, boasts Dano’s old chums Carey Mulligan (completely fabulous) and Jake Gyllenhaal as buttoned-down, stubborn spouses. Their teenage son, who turns out to be more of a grown-up than either of them, is played by the excellent Ed Oxenbould. On this evidence, both Dano the director and Oxenbould the actor will go far. For Mulligan, as we already know, the sky is the limit.

Not quite there yet, but promising is Brit-pic Only You (Harry Wootliff) with Josh O’Connor and Laia Costa who fall in love pretty much at first sight – despite their 10-year age gap, then get to know each other (in a plot that treads similar ground to Private Life). Then there’s gangster thriller Holiday (from Denmark’s Isabella Eklöf), set on the Turkish Riviera and portraying an innocent abroad among a group of entirely unsympathetic characters who treat everyone appallingly.

Debuts like The Chambermaid (Lila Avilés) about a Mexico City hotel-worker trying to better herself, but trapped by lack of money and prospects, and Dead Pigs (Cathy Yan) are much closer to the finished article, with the latter already winning a Sundance Special Jury Prize and presenting an fantastical characters on an unpredictable trajectory where nothing is quite what it seems. Aviles and Yan, and even Eklöf are female filmmakers to watch. With a bigger budget and the right project, they should soon be established.

HOT DOCS

The festival always boasts documentary treats from all over the world. I didn’t catch the main prize winner (What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire?), but it must have been remarkable to beat the likes of Bisbee ’17 from Robert Greene, which parallels the lives of immigrants now and then by taking placing the story of an old mining town on the Arizona-Mexico border, (Bisbee) at its heart, and restaging a heart-breaking event using its current population. This is an extraordinary, matter-of-fact retelling of the deportation of workers in a small Arizona town in 1917, when hundreds of mainly immigrant mineworkers were gathered up at gunpoint, and taken away to New Mexico to basically die, and never seen again. Was it ethnic cleansing… a cover-up? It wasn’t talked about; just brushed under the carpet, and even today people are still taking sides.

Another lump in the throat bit of filmmaking came from Virunga director Orlando von Einsiedel in Evelyn, which looks at grief in his own family as they finally confront the reality of their brother’s suicide a decade earlier, while walking together along favourite, remote paths. Multiple perspectives, memories and unpicking a life, death and the effect it’s had on all of them brings back their raw loss, almost like opening a fresh wound.

There’s something mesmerising in John McEnroe: In The Realm Of Perfection from Julien Farau, based around footage from the French Open in the mid-1980s, when the tennis icon was at his most brilliant, unpredictable and mercurial, and “hostility was his drug”. In the same vein as the Zidane doc, but not as dreamy and arty, this is essential for serious sports devotees, and particularly Mac fans.

And it’s hard to look away from Dreamaway (above), a doc where Marouan Omara and Johanna Domke revisit Sharm El Sheikh, the now-deserted holiday resort that used to be crammed with tourists before the Arab Spring of 2011 and subsequent terrorist attack. Everyone still turns up for work and carries out their daily duties, but there’s literally no-one to serve or cater for, giving a surreal feel to the film.

Outside the competition, there were several memorable docs, including Yours In Sisterhood from writer, director, producer Irene Lustig, which chooses a different method to present ideas around feminism. Lustig has today’s women of all ages, races and backgrounds read direct to camera from a vast number of unpublished 1970s letters to Ms magazine. Many of them give their own comments afterwards, as one says “hopefully things have changed.” Some notably lived through that time, and one actually reads from her own letters and Ms magazine’s replies to her – and the film is never remotely preachy or judgemental.

Ordinary Time is a Portuguese part-doc, part-drama from writer director Susanna Nobre set in Lisbon, and examining the bonds and strains of the first stages of motherhood. The film’s very personal view has a measured pace, and again shows huge potential.

Morgan Neville’s documentary, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is a patchwork film about Orson Welles’ famous lost feature The Other Side of The Wind (which you can also catch on Netflix), with glimpses into Welles’ genius and working methods, compiled from bits and pieces, and best watched as a companion piece.

Comic doc, Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned From A Mythical Man (above), shows director Tommy Avalone’s unabashed affection for the Ghostbusters star, and reveals the truth behind rumours of Murray turning up to help tend bar, gate crashing college parties, getting strangers into sports arenas and being an all-round legend. Seems it’s all true!

KOREA ADVICE

As a die-hard fan of Korean film, I try to see everything that cinematic powerhouse of a country shows at the festival. And apart from the stunning thriller Burning (reviewed in Part 1), I can heartily recommend several others. If you like your dramas colourful, with edge-of-the-seat thrills, an explosive beginning, debauchery, glamour, and a flipping clever plot, then Lee Hae-young’s Believer, which revisits and remakes Johnnie To’s Drug War will get your head spinning.

On a more serious note, true story The Spy Gone North, dramatises the tale of a South Korean spy, who worked with the DPRK, right up to the dear leader, Kim Jong-il, and it constantly feels like he could cross over to the other side at any minute. As the terrific, labyrinthine, multi-layered Cold War story uncovers secrets and truths, uncomfortable, harsh discoveries come to light about the treatment of North Korean citizens. Almost le Carré-esque.

Best of the lot is family drama Last Child, a superb, dark debut from Shin Dong-seok, which is about grieving for a dead son, and focusing on keeping busy while the rest of your life is put on hold. It touches on forgiveness and bullying, and all three main actors are tremendous… but will they ever get closure, and is there more to the story?

Go to Page 2 for more from my look at the BFI 62nd London Film Festival…

GOING GLOBAL

If you have an arthouse cinema nearby, or subscribe to one of the artsier streaming services, or can access Kanopy online, you might just track down some of the outliers among the global fare on offer at the festival. Otherwise you’ll have to wait for them to pop up on Film4 in a few years time, or maybe sooner if you subscribe to the BFI Player.

Let’s look at some of the films that should get a wider release first. The Hate U Give, from George Tillman Jr, is based on the YA novel of the same name by Harry Potter-loving Angie Thomas, and is already out. It stars Amandla Stenberg living a double life and ‘code-switching’ between her white middle class school and the black working class neighbourhood in which she lives. It has some terrific performances from the likes of Common as her cop uncle and Anthony Mackie as a gang pin king, but it’s very much Stenberg’s movie as a 16-year-old working out where she stands in the Black Lives Matter world.

Uncategorisable feature, Border, by Swedish-Iranian director Ali Abbasi is also based on a novel, from the writer of Let The Right One In. Main character, Tina, is a highly skilled, diligent customs guard who can sniff out crime… as well as “shame, guilt and rage” like a sixth sense, even helping the cops. When Tina meets a fellow outsider, Vore, the film becomes a drama-thriller-romance-horror that embraces otherness and identity, as the couple seem entirely at one with nature and engage in bestial, transgressive foreplay. Remarkable performances too, from both Eva Melander as Tina and Eero Milonoff as Vore, who convey huge emotion despite major prosthetics. And whatever you’re expecting, you’ll still be surprised.

Adapted from an Israeli film of the same name, Kindergarten Teacher (above), from Sara Colangelo, stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a teacher of a precocious young child who composes poetry, that she writes down and passes off as her own. Part psychological study, part earnest drama, this doesn’t quite succeed, but throws up some interesting ideas and questions along the way, and the two main characters keep you enthralled.

School’s Out is a much more satisfying portrait of the relationship between teacher and pupil(s), from French writer-director Sebastien Marnier. Brilliantly building tension with sound, and focusing on six students who would freak the living daylights out of anyone, this places a substitute teacher in their midst, who has hang-ups of his own. The cult-like group (brilliant ensemble work) are far ahead of their fellow teens in class, yet still have time to mess with everyone outside their tight-knit set – reminiscent of Donna Tartt’s novel, Secret History. Meanwhile the chilling soundtrack adds to their menace, as we witness their menacing behaviour and cruel rituals. Filled with doom, paranoia, and Kafka-eque projections, their questioning of everything makes you think there’s a bigger message wrapped up inside this impressive and haunting film.

Also from France, and adapted from a novel, comes Catherine Corsini’s An Impossible Love, once again proving Corsini can do no wrong. It captures the first, heady stages of love for young Rachel – despite the controlling, man-splaining behaviour of her beau, Philippe – then brings her crashing down to earth when he refuses to take any responsibility and leaves her with their baby, Chantal. Despite this, Chantal grows up to idolise her father, making Rachel jealous, but there’s more to this triangle, which Corsini explores with cool, unsentimental precision.

Our own Jessica Hynes makes her impressive directorial debut with The Fight (above), set in smalltown England, and starring Hynes as a stressed ‘sandwich’ mum juggling elderly parents, a job as a carer, and two kids. Carrying a guilty secret about her bullying past, this inevitably comes back to haunt her when her own daughter is bullied at school. Gentle, yet gritty, and very promising.

If you want to see a completely gripping political thriller, then check out Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Realm. You can almost smell the corruption from the opening scenes, when eight Spanish politicians feast on lobsters and general excess in 2007. They are larging it, until the arrests and shredding of any paper trails start… as the net closes in and recordings and ledgers are discovered. Seems they’ve been indulging in some large-scale fraud, including skimming from the EU. One man, Manu (Antonio de la Torre), seems to be at the centre of it all, but is he the fall guy for the entire party’s corruption? Surely he won’t go down without a fight? Does he have material on the rest of them? If so, who will he take down with him? A menacing soundtrack keeps the tension bubbling. Highly recommended.

Edoardo De Angelis’ Vice Of Hope follows on neatly from his previous minor masterpiece, and debut feature, the unforgettable Siamese twins film, Indivisible. Again his characters are just about getting by, in a vision of hell in a lawless area on the edges of Naples, with one young woman, Maria (Pina Turco) tougher than the rest. As dreamlike as its predecessor, and again set by the water, with an ace soundtrack, this presents a stark portrait of prostitution and crime. But can Maria escape?

If you liked The Lives Of Others and Locke, then imagine a film that combines the claustrophobia of a single, fixed location, with the idea of monitoring and even trying to help avert crime. That’s what Gustav Möller does in his Danish thriller, The Guilty. Jaded ex-cop Asger (Jakob Cedergren) is on the switchboard, dealing unsympathetically with reported crimes (which is initially reminiscent of Red Road’s CCTV-centred plot). One unusual call from a woman stops him in his tracks; the tension is suddenly ratcheted up when we hear what he’s hearing at the switchboard, making him feels powerless to help from his deskbound position. Meanwhile, in parallel, we learn that Asger’s been having psych treatment and his wife has left him. He can’t help himself and gets involved in the situation, but has he misread it? Tightly filmed, this never leaves the emergency switchboard office, and the entire narrative plays out across the excellent Cedergren’s face and voice. Another gripping must-see.

Neither comedy nor drama, but wavering in the grey area between, In The Aisles is suffused with sadness by director Thomas Stuber. Sandra Huller (from Toni Erdmann) stars as cheery Marion, one of the co-workers in a German warehouse store where a close-knit team are joined by a new, naive guy, Christian, fresh out of jail. He isn’t the sharpest, but he’s quickly and entirely devoted to the job and to Marion – even hearing the sea when he looks at her. As well as being a fine portrait of awkward, inconvenient love, and office politics, this also takes a long hard look at post-reunification East Germany.

Based on a true story, El Angel from Luis Ortega is notably produced by Pedro Almodovar, and follows the adventures of Buenos Aires teenager Carlos during his 1971 crime spree. Living almost entirely for pleasure, as a compulsive criminal and liar with no moral compass, he says: “We all have a destiny; I was born a thief.” With glorious seventies soundtrack, including Latino versions of big hits, plus bold fashion choices, this is a nihilistic, narcissistic yet darkly funny film – and Lorenzo Ferro is astonishing as Carlos.

Epic in length, Ash Is Purest White from writer-director Jie Zhang-ke, has a hugely atmospheric opening, and plunges us into China’s criminal underworld. Violent in places, and definitely showing a man’s world, our central character is nevertheless a resilient woman, Qiao (Zhao Tao), who sees the changes and rapid developments around her country on the train to her run-down hometown. She will not be defeated.

Almost too painfully real to watch, Utoya – July 22 (above) is Erik Poppe’s retelling of the 2011 massacre by Anders Breivik in Norway. We see the raw footage of his bomb going off in Oslo, then move to the sylvan scene on Utoya, where young people are camping, talking and having fun – before gathering to watch TV coverage of the Oslo bomb. Then it’s 72 minutes of one-take, real-time reconstruction of the Utoya massacre as Breivik comes to the island. Poppe apparently interviewed survivors to get the authentic dialogue for these composite characters, and uses one hand-held camera to move between them, mainly through the point-of-view and reactions of one young woman, Kaja. The camera lies low and huddles when they do, and runs and hides when Kaja does, as she tries to find her sister – and we crucially never see Breivik. A hard, compelling watch.

If you’re a sucker for Mads Mikkelsen, then Joe Penn’s freezing cold survival drama Arctic is made for you, as it relies totally on the Nordic star’s magnetism. His features are as magnificent and unmistakable as the icy landscape around him and his crashed plane. And this weather-beaten face must convey everything, as there’s almost no dialogue, even when he eventually finds a badly injured survivor from another crash. Reminiscent of 127 Hours and Alive, this is a primal, brutal, painful epic.

Short, but never sweet, Shock Waves: Diary Of My Mind comes from a true story, which was originally part of a Swiss TV series on real crimes. Ursula Meier’s film stars Fanny Ardant as the teacher at the centre of the drama, to whom pupil Benjamin (Kacey Moffet-Klein) confesses his horrendous crimes via his journal. Meanwhile he turns himself into the police. She’s unsettled when she receives his confession in the post and questions whether the task she set the class might have enabled him. Might she find closure by visiting him in prison? Provocative stuff.

There’s more postal drama in Etangs Noirs from Belgian writer-directors Pieter Dumoulin and Timou DeKeyser. Jimi is trying to pass on a package that’s been mis-delivered to him in a block of rundown flats. The real recipient is never around and he makes it his mission to find her. With handheld point-of-view filming, we feel we’re in Jimi’s shoes as he starts dreaming and obsessing about his mission. Promising.

Two teenage boys are on the run in Winter Flies, by Czech Republic director Olmo Omerzu. They’re in a stolen car, and seemingly filled with bravado, yet the reality is rather different. In fact, their shaggy dog story contains an actual shaggy dog as the local police interrogate the leader, Marek. A gentle film, with jagged edges and winning performances from both boys, on a dreamy, foggy, wintry Walter Mitty-ish journey.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Asako I & II is a Japanese romantic comedy that poses the question of whether you can fall in love with someone who looks exactly like your lost love. And what if the original, lost love returns? And what if he’s now rich and famous? With fireworks at the beginning, and literal earthquakes happening around them in Tokyo in 2011, plus a sly sideways dig at fame, this is a lovely, complicated study of what love means.

NOPE

I love Carol Morley’s previous films, and Patricia Clarkson seems to choose her projects carefully, so my expectations were high for Morley’s follow-up to The Falling. But her detective thriller Out Of Blue sadly fails to work on any level. Clarkson has terrible lines to deliver, co-stars like Jacki Weaver and James Caan are wasted, the plot is pure hokum (based on Martin Amis’ novel, Night Train) and I felt cheated, disappointed and rather empty.

Not quite as awful, mainly because I had no expectations, writer-director Nilja Mumin’s debut, Jinn (above), doesn’t quite work, but gets a gold star for effort in tackling a story of conflicting faith, family and teenage issues in California. And again, Crystal Swan, from Darya Zhuk of Belarus, should be commended for its ambition in showing the pilgrimage of one young woman across the country as a fish-out-of-water, but it was definitely placed in the wrong category of ‘Laugh’ (it includes a sexual assault on the main character). I cannot recommend either of these, but it shouldn’t put you off checking out what they do next.

And now… (cue drum roll), here are those 2018 DVDfever Awards in full!:

25 Best Films

Rising Talent

Best Comedy

Runners-up: The Breaker-Upperers, Woman At War, Thunder Road

Best Thriller:

Runners-up: Widows, Destroyer, The Realm, The Guilty, School’s Out

Best Drama:

Runners-up: If Beale Street Could Talk, Sunset, Border, An Impossible Love, In The Aisles, El Angel, Beautiful Boy

Best Director:

Alfonso Cuaron, Roma, and Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite;

Best Actress

Runners-up: Juli Jakab, Sunset; Carey Mulligan, Wildlife; Nicole Kidman, Destroyer; Virginie Efira, An Impossible Love; KiKi Layne, If Beale Street Could Talk; Eva Melander, Border; Pina Turco, Vice Of Hope.

Best Actor

Runners-up: Jakob Cedergren, The Guilty; Lorenzo Ferro, El Angel; Eero Milonof, Border; Antonio de la Torre, The Realm.

Best Ensemble

School’s Out (above); The Sisters Brothers.

Best Duo

Best Ending:

Woman At War, Destroyer

Biggest Labour of Love:

Colette (took almost two decades of gestation for director Wash Westmoreland)

Annual Festival Ubiquity Award (aka the Kristin Scott Thomas Award)

Most Disappointing

Out Of Blue

Best Documentaries

| 1 | 2 |

Related posts:

Follow DVDfever.co.uk