Skip to content
BFI 63rd London Film Festival Part 1: What a cornucopia of delights in this year’s London Film Festival. Rather remarkably there’s been a genuine move to get more female filmmakers than ever before showcased – and into all the awards shortlists too. And there are big name directors including Martin Scorsese, Noah Baumbach and Michael Winterbottom. Plus some very promising debuts. Mind you, there are a couple of avoid-at-all-costs movies in here too. So we’ll be giving you the inside info so you can give them a swerve.
Rather than overwhelm you with everything at once, we’ll split the coverage into two parts. Starting with those that really grabbed us and just wouldn’t let go, including one new (to us) filmmaker from Guatemala who knocked both our socks off with not just one, but two films. Plus the opening and closing prestige films, and then it’ll be those with promise and worth a look. And, as previously mentioned, those to skip.
Solid Gold Masterpieces
If your mark of an outstanding feature film is (like mine) one that packs a punch, lingers long in the memory, and immediately makes you want to see it again, then we have some treats to disclose. Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona (above), Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Sarah Gavron’s Rocks (which is neatly reminiscent of Sciamma’s Girlhood), Noah Baumbach’s masterpiece Marriage Story, post-war Russian drama Beanpole from Kantemir Balagov, David Michod’s stunning Aussie spin on the Henry V story in The King, and Taika Waititi’s broad wartime comedy (with topical undercurrents) Jojo Rabbit.
None of whom came from anything like the conventional routes or mainstream US or UK film industries. And these are just for starters.
Even now the imagery in La Llorona (above), from Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante, is so vivid, so haunting and chilling, and the acting and storytelling are so fully realised that it’s hard to believe that this is only his third full-length feature. Hugely atmospheric, with a sense of dread that builds throughout, this starts with an impending trial hanging over the rich, entitled family of a general implicated in the genocides of the early 1980s – and based on real events. The early court sequences are amazing, with the Mayan widows of the dead and disappeared wearing traditional dress, contrasting with the stiff suits on trial. Even as the general is found guilty, then the verdict controversially overturned, the family’s servants are leaving – all apart from one loyal maid, Alma, and a mysterious new, younger recruit. But are they really loyal or is revenge on the cards?
The casting is perfect, from the wary servants to the patrician faces of the aristocrats, and there’s a constant sense of ghosts from the past gathering amongst the crowds of protesters clamouring for justice outside. Further cementing Bustamante’s reputation and underlining his distinctive visual style, he had a second feature in the festival, Tremors.
With several of the same actors also appearing, this plunges straight into another family crisis afflicting the upper class, with the backdrop of an actual earthquake (literal tremors) while a gay affair sends metaphorical tremors across the family structure. Fed up with living a double life, the golden boy of the family (Don Pablo) throws it all away, and there are repercussions for his wife, children and parents – with the ‘flawless moral code’ of his employers also ensuring he’s fired. The one constant – and genuine moral core of the film – is their loyal maid, Rosa (as with La Llorona and Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma).
Stirring up the hornet’s nest of passions, inevitably, is the influence of the evangelical church that pressures, stifles and persuades him. Two films that should propel Bustamante to the top table of Latin American filmmakers, alongside Cuaron.
I was already a fan of Celine Sciamma’s previous and very contemporary work, notably Girlhood, and intrigued to see how she’d tackle a potentially tricky period drama in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (above).
Of course, being the extraordinary director that she is, she passes with flying colours and delivers something so viscerally exciting and romantic and thrillingly modern that you almost forget it’s set on a remote island in the 18th Century. There have been other films where artist and subject fall in love, but this has the added pitfalls of the subject (played by Sciamma’s own muse, Adele Haenel) being observed without her knowledge, and Noemie Merlant’s female painter following in the footsteps (and ruined canvases) of those who have failed before. Long silences, intense conversations, meaningful gazes, clifftop walks and the aching void between the protagonists all ramp up the unbearable tension and release. And even as she casts her spell, Sciamma also manages to challenge the prescribed roles for women in historical dramas.
After Brick Lane and Suffragette, both about strong women fighting against the odds, maybe it wasn’t such a stretch to visualise Sarah Gavron making such a stunning – and multicultural – female coming-of-age film as Rocks. But this really is step up and a bit of a surprise, due in no small part to the casting of the central, titular character (Bukky Bakray), her loyal friends, and her younger, sparky brother (D’angelo Osei Kissiedu). Inspired by and channelling the energy of Sciamma’s Girlhood, Gavron embeds herself in this protected, intimate world of young teenage girls alternately looking out for and fighting each other, and builds something very special. Put this on your must-see list.
A couple of the festival films are already out on Netflix, notably Marriage Story and The King, but the collective experience of seeing them in a cinema, especially the epic scenes of Agincourt in the latter, makes me glad I didn’t wait for them to jump onto the small-screen streaming service. After the highs of Frances Ha and the lows of The Meyerowitz Stories, the odds were even on Noah Baumbach coming up with something as scintillating, emotionally rollercoastery and highly personal as Marriage Story, allegedly about the breakup of his relationship with Jennifer Jason Leigh. The narrative rolls back and then forward to reveal the unravelling of the enviable and apparently perfect marriage of the likeminded Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, she a successful actress and he an edgy off-Broadway theatre director. The exploration of the minutiae of their love kindling, exploding and then crashing and burning is merciless and quite bruising to witness, even for the audience (yes, I cried). What also elevates this from potential soap territory is the performances, with Johansson and Driver exceptional, but the support from their respective divorce lawyers, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta and especially Laura Dern, all too convincing in their aggressive venality. Have a hankie handy.
The King (above) tells the familiar tale of King Henry V – as mined by Shakespeare and filmed by the likes of Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh – but this breaks free of the bard’s words. An Aussie combination of director David Michod and producer Joel Edgerton (who also makes a fine Falstaff) bring a fresh perspective to the story, which is further elevated by the casting of the angelic Timothée Chalamet as Henry. His otherworldliness and his pacifism contrast with the grisliness of the conflict we see in widescreen and intimate detail. There’s a Last Supper-esque opening scene, a brutal, fully-armoured, hand-to-hand fight, and the gradual transformation of Henry into monarch throughout. Yes, it goes a bit Brexity in the middle section, warning of the dangers of standing alone – and we also discover the lies their course was based on. And yes, Robert Pattinson as the Dauphin has a risible Franglais accent (audience actually LOL-ed every time he opened his mouth). But you get the feeling of the weight of destiny hanging heavy on Henry’s shoulders, you see the logic of his journey from pacifist to warmonger, the pinpoint planning of their military tactics, and all the ensuing Agincourt battle scenes are amazing, a band of brothers in the endless muddy grey with sudden splashes of colour, all showing the horrific futility of war. Superb stuff.
Set in Leningrad in 1946, its infrastructure crushed and crumbling and its citizens barely getting by, Beanpole is the story of two young women, Beanpole and Masha, friends and wartime survivors with their own PTSD. Harrowing, haunting and with just a few chinks of light to illuminate their plight, Kantemir Balagov’s drama is based on real stories from interviews by Nobel prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich. Quite apart from the jaw-dropping performances of Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina in the lead roles, this bleakly beautiful study of people just hanging on, clinging to dreams that are just out of reach, has a couple of crunching moments that you watch through your fingers, then you’re hopeless in its grasp and willing the key players to endure.
Jojo Rabbit is a very different wartime film, with director Taika Waititi going for high comedy, verging on satire, to reappraise the final days of the Third Reich in Germany. Admittedly a Marmite film for many, in the same vein as Mel Brooks’ The Producers, it goes for the jugular with gags, and will likely offend as many as it engages. We are led to believe that Hitler is as popular an idol as the Beatles became, with his own superfans (like 10-year-old Jojo) and ‘Hitlermania’ buoying him up, and Waititi boldly casts himself as a ‘jovial’ Fuhrer, who becomes Jojo’s imaginary friend. Roman Griffin Davis excels as the impressionable title character, with Scarlett Johansson shining as his mum, and Sam Rockwell and Rebel Wilson giving it their all as zany Hitler Youth group leaders. Of course, nothing is quite what it seems, and the plot twists away into another direction when Jojo has a conflicting moral choice to make. Plus it shows how easy it is to fall prey to propaganda. It’s not for everyone, of course. But I loved it and laughed throughout.
Grabbing The Headlines
As a fan of the novels of Charles Dickens and the satirical works of Armando Iannucci, especially The Thick Of It, I was already predisposed to the combination of the two in the festival’s opening film, The Personal History Of David Copperfield (above). Iannucci opts to go helter-skelter, pell-mell through the plot, and it does help to already be familiar with the narrative, with British stars coming thick and fast. Look, there’s Tilda Swinton as Betsey Trotwood, Hugh Laurie as Mr Dick, Paul Whitehouse as Mr Peggotty, Daisy May Cooper (This Country) as Peggotty, Peter Capaldi as Mr Micawber, Ben Whishaw as Uriah Heep, Gwendoline Christie as the ghastly Jane Murdstone, Morfydd Clark playing both David’s mother and his wife (how very Freudian), and the effervescent Dev Patel as David Copperfield himself. The director deliberately doesn’t turn away from eternal issues like the homeless in the streets, admitting he wants to celebrate what he thinks Britain is, but also its variety, while not shying away from the issues. And like Dickens he’s not embarrassed to want to entertain. He aims to capture the essence of the book, the language and modernity, and even did one draft with just Dickens’ dialogue before realising what to remove and what to keep. But Iannucci never wants to be so reverential that he wouldn’t change anything, so with the caveat that it really helps to know the plot, I’m going to fly my kite high for the delights of this film.
The closing, much-hyped Martin Scorsese epic, The Irishman certainly got everyone talking in hushed anticipation, and feels like a smart publicity coup for the Netflix studios that helped fund it. There’s been a lot of talk about the ageing and de-ageing techniques and prosthetics that allow actors of the calibre of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel and Joe Pesci to cover decades of action without missing a beat. But the real triumph is plunging the viewer straight into a world of flashy ties and hats, doo-wop and big-band music, Jimmy Hoffa fever, shopfronts and scams, crime scene photos and meat market stitch-ups. Holding their own against the quartet of Scorsese stars are Bobby Cannavale, our own Stephen Graham, and Sopranos and E Street band regular Little Steven Van Zandt as Al Martino. Based on a true story, dripping with nostalgia and casual violence, this 3½ hour long film sometimes feels like an early Scorsese tribute act, but maybe that was always the point.
Writer William Nicholson (perhaps best known for Shadowlands) makes his directorial debut with the starry breakup pic, Hope Gap, led by Bill Nighy at his most impenetrable and Annette Bening as his oblivious, doting wife, mysteriously playing it with an English accent, even though her own voice would have suited the role perfectly. He’s a teacher who relaxes by editing Wikipedia pages; she’s a proper poet. He has a wandering eye; she sees nothing. Josh O’Connor, best known for God’s Own Country and now as Charles in The Crown, is their disaffected son, trying to keep it – and them – together, even while his own life is a constant challenge. It almost feels like On Chesil Beach might have been if that couple had stayed together and grown apart later, and it’s almost too painful to witness their icy relationship dwindle into insignificance.
The Aeronauts (above) feels like it was taken straight out of an adventure book, thrusting shy Victorian scientist Eddie Redmayne and bold stuntwoman Felicity Jones up into the skies in a hot air balloon, to jointly explore what makes the weather. It would have been easy for writer Jack Thorne and director Tom Harper to confect a romance out of the daring duo’s relationship, but they keep it professional and it feels stronger because of this. And Redmayne and Jones look so similar they almost seem like siblings by the end of their voyage. Charming.
It’s all about the ensemble in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, a Cluedo-Christie-esque ‘country house’ thriller. When Christopher Plummer is found dead, detective Daniel Craig and his team are brought into investigate the mysterious dysfunctional family that leech off Plummer, and await the reading of his will. And what a family: Toni Colette, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, and their downtrodden maid, Ana de Armas. It almost feels like a Comic Strip mystery, so big are the caricatured characters, and the director admits he’s always wanted to “put a Hitchcock thriller engine in a whodunit.” Pure entertainment ensues, the cast excels and there are some knowing references to make it feel contemporary.
This seems to be the year for Shia LaBeouf projects, with The Peanut Butter Falcon grabbing at the heartstrings from the first minute. This unashamedly sentimental drama stars the amazing Zack Gottsagen as a twentysomething man with Down’s Syndrome who is confined to a care home for the aged, and keeps trying to escape. If you can swallow the idea of one of the care workers being Dakota Johnson, and LaBeouf being a rowdy-but-loveable troublemaker on the run, who both want to take Gottsagen under their wing, then you’ll be able to sit back and enjoy the rose-tinted view of the American dream being the road to somewhere like Florida. But if you have an ounce of cynicism, you might find it a tad saccharine – Gottsagen’s impressive presence aside.
Utterly delightful in its richly colourful animation style and execution, gala film Bombay Rose was conceived and made by Gitanjali Rao, and focuses on a Romeo and Juliet couple of star-crossed young lovers, one Muslim and one Hindu. It took Rao two years to make, and she is justly proud of her epic work, taking in poverty, politics, myth, music and the vital, vibrant, migrant community. With magical realism swirling around the couple’s romantic odyssey through Mumbai, and setbacks thwarting them at every turn, it’s hard not to be swept up with their story. It’ll be fun to see what Rao does next.
Go to Page 2 for more from BFI 63rd London Film Festival Part 1 Review!
My Aim Is True
Sometimes a true story is best tackled by dramatising it – and one of France’s finest filmmakers, François Ozon, has turned his hand to a story of abuse in the Catholic church. Even with Ozon’s cool, measured treatment, By the Grace of God (above) feels like a very personal film, delving deep into the suppressed memories of men who had their trust abused decades earlier, who are now horrified to discover that the priest who abused them is still working with young people. In order to move on, they must confront their own past, which brings great pain, especially when the statute of limitations and the time that’s elapsed means they must encourage more recent victims to step forward. Some can barely function, some have stayed faithful to their church, and some have abandoned all belief, as the priest has left an appalling trail of destruction. And this is a fine tribute to their courage in coming into the spotlight, when it might have been easier to stay in the shadows.
Agnieszka Holland has folded together intertwining narratives in Mr Jones, starring James Norton as real-life reporter Gareth Jones, investigating the true state of Stalin’s 1930s regime, but also bringing in George Orwell’s parallel writing of Animal Farm. Having interviewed Hitler, Jones aims to speak with Stalin, but finds himself thrown in at the deep end of the Moscow high life, which resembles Berlin at its most debauched (epitomised by Peter Sarsgaard’s character). Intrigue, propaganda and treachery swirl around his search for the truth, as he takes a train journey to discover what’s really going on in the impoverished Ukrainian countryside. No grain, in fact, no food is getting through to the starving locals, and Holland shoots many of these desperate scenes of famine with the colour entirely bleached out, and just one detail – like Jones’ peeled orange – jumping out. Screenwriter Andrea Chalupa bases much of the narrative on her own grandparents’ diaries; they lived in Donbass, and she grew up hearing their stories. And although we cannot know for certain whether Jones and Orwell did meet, it’s entirely plausible as they shared the same agent. Definitely a film which resonates with what’s happening right now, with journalists being suppressed and silenced not just in far-flung regimes, but also closer to home in places like Malta and Slovakia.
Ripped from the front pages of the newspapers, political thriller Official Secrets is sharply directed by Gavin Hood, and set just before the planned invasion of Iraq in 2003. Based on the story of courageous, conflicted whistleblower Katharine Gun, and the reporting of journalists Ed Vulliamy and Martin Bright – with their roles filled convincingly by Keira Knightley, Rhys Ifans and Matt Smith – it has all the tension and release of a conventional edge-of-the-seat thriller, with the added layer of knowing it’s all true.
More whistleblowers might have sped up the mammoth task for the investigators in Scott Z Burns’ film, The Report (above), another Adam Driver vehicle, with excellent support from the likes of Annette Bening (as Senator Dianne Feinstein) and Jon Hamm. Based on the ‘Torture Report‘, the story starts in 2003, and spans many years as the complexity of the cover-up unfolds. Much like Steven Soderbergh’s own film, The Laundromat – and he’s a producer on this one too – it’s a Russian Doll of revelations, as it shows the kind of torture that Errol Morris featured in his documentary Standard Operating Procedure, with CIA techniques like waterboarding waved through and normalised.
Bad Education initially feels like a broad high school comedy, and boasts Hugh Jackman as its lead, along with the always wonderful Allison Janney. But as it plays out, we soon realise that there’s corruption deep in the heart of the college they’re running – and this is another true story. Tonally, this might sound light years away from director Cory Finley’s breakthrough film, Thoroughbreds, but look a little deeper and you find the sudden shifts into darker territory, the twisted characters, and the extraordinary sound design are actually rather reminiscent of his fine debut. Set just two decades ago, it’s the story of widower Jackman’s power-driven school superintendent, who keeps the results high, the parents at his feet, and everyone seemingly happy. until some accounts don’t quite add up. He doubles down and covers his tracks by sacrificing a few colleagues to make it look like he’s squeaky clean, but can he keep up the pretence? And could his vanity and lust be his undoing? Lots of laughs, worth seeing for Janney alone, plus Finley is a genuine talent.
Back in the news again thanks to Elon Musk’s unfortunate tweets and his day in court, the rescue of the young Thai football team, the Wild Boars, is the subject of The Cave. Against the odds – in the actual circumstances and in the making of the drama – they’ve pulled it off, with the director Tom Waller deliberately using many of the real participants in his recreation of their skin-of-their-teeth escape from Tham Luang cave in monsoon season.
Funny Business
Comedy in Britain and beyond appears to be in rude health if the festival is a good barometer. Michael Winterbottom’s latest film, Greed (above), is a rollercoaster of laughs, mainly due to the the perfect casting of tan-tastic, teeth-whitened Steve Coogan as someone uncannily like Philip Green. All the vanity, hubris and narcissism of his character are in plain sight from minute one as the plot builds to his 60th birthday celebrations, while also giving us generous flashbacks of his upward trajectory and dodgy dealings. Will his purpose-built amphitheatre in Mykonos – just for his birthday – be his glorious signature piece or his downfall? He is shown with no taste, heart or boundaries, so the audience isn’t exactly rooting for him. An ace supporting cast includes David Mitchell as his unlikely, unwilling, but official biographer, plus Shirley Henderson and Tim Key. Meanwhile, the dense plot skewers constructed reality TV shows, reveals how much the fast fashion industry often relies on squeezing and abusing its workers, while constantly tugging at the threads of his empire to see if he’ll get his comeuppance. Kudos to Coogan and Winterbottom for creating an all-too-plausible monster.
Days of the Bagnold Summer is the directorial debut for Inbetweener Simon Bird, and his best move was to instantly sign up the simply superb Monica Dolan as a dowdy librarian at the heart of the story. She’s trying to get through the interminably long summer holidays in which her miserable, stroppy teenage misfit son, Daniel (Earl Cave) has to stay at home with her, when his father in Florida inevitably lets them down. There’s a sitcom vibe throughout, overlaid with a gorgeous Belle and Sebastian soundtrack, and we see her life measured not just in coffee spoons and library life, but in encounters with her not-exactly-supportive sister, Alice Lowe, hippy friend Tamsin Greig, and the odd awkward date with teacher, Rob Brydon. One of the best scenes involves a day out with Daniel, when they visit a fudge factory, with a priceless scene involving Tim Key as the overly friendly fudge-maker. It may all be a tad nostalgic, but there’s a nice edge of cynicism keeping it in check.
Having seen the stage musical based on the same 1998 novel, The Sopranos by Alan Warner, I was agog to see how Michael Caton-Jones’ movie would tackle the same characters and plot. Obviously, the main difference is shooting the story on location, with a larger cast and other actors taking major roles. But the incredible music (including Edwyn Collins’ Girl Like You), the cheeky humour, camaraderie, revelations and warmth are all still there. And the structure – leading up to the choir competition in Edinburgh – remains. But the characters do jump out even more, and even though the actors are perhaps just a few years too old to be playing school leavers, they somehow manage to be convincing.
On the surface, Dude In Me is just another classic body-swap comedy, much like Big or Freaky Friday. But this would be to ignore the fact that it’s a Korean take on the trope, with signature twists from director Kang Hyo-jin. Bigwig boss and one-time gang leader (Park Sung-woong) somehow manages to end up in the body of a bullied, nerdy teen (Jung Jin-youn) and vice versa, with the boss’ old love (Ra Mi-ran) coming into his life again to complicate matters, and his teen image undergoing something of a makeover. Played for laughs, the film shows the prevalence of bullying and corruption in businesses and schools, even as the boss rediscovers his moral compass.
In Competition
There’ll be more about the festival’s Main Competition winner, Monos, in Part Two of our round-up. Suffice to say it is not up our street. At all. Much better is Saint Maud, which also happens to be the debut of Rose Glass, and is approximately 85 per cent brilliant. There’s a slight lull – a dip in the middle – but apart from that it’s very strong and most promising. Starring the ubiquitous Morfydd Clark (as seen in two roles in David Copperfield) as Maud, the young carer for ailing ex-ballet star Amanda (a towering performance from Jennifer Ehle), this has a sustained, Gothic, Grey Gardens feel. Set in Wales, we see Amanda’s huge mansion on the hill overlooking a superficially glittering, washed-up seaside town. And there’s a religious fervour driving Maud, pushing her to the limit and hinting at the compulsive life of addiction she’s trying to leave behind – much as Amanda also wants to move beyond her own feted past. Lighting and sound design emphasise the gaps between what Maud wants, what she’s facing now, and what she’s careering towards. Naïve, possessive, even possessed, she wants a religious ecstasy, but there’s a heavy feeling of inevitability as the film builds to a huge climax. Keep an eye out for Rose Glass – and Morfydd Clark – definitely ones to watch.
Wadjda was Haifaa Al Mansour’s justly feted debut, made despite the restrictive film-making culture in Saudi Arabia, and she’s followed it up with a solid, documentary-like, political drama, The Perfect Candidate (above). Fed up of banging her head against a brick wall of misogyny and bad management in her everyday life as a hospital doctor, of being patronised and ignored at every turn, suddenly, almost by accident, Maryam finds herself standing in an upcoming election. She aims to fix everything, the potholes in the road next to the hospital, the attitude of male patients and colleagues, even her sceptical musician father. And Mila Alzahrani excels in the role, especially as she has to be behind the veil for much of the film, forcing her to act only with her eyes, gestures and voice. Her simple message is just to get elected, but nothing is easy on her journey.
Set just in a divided middle England in 1657, post-Civil War, when everything was up for grabs (making Brexit comparisons inevitable), Thomas Clay’s film Fanny Lye Deliver’d is mainly remarkable for the mighty Maxine Peake in the title role. Living in a muddy enclave of a home with an authoritarian husband, Charles Dance, and their not-too-bright son, Fanny seems the epitome of a devout and devoted wife. But when a fleeing couple (naughty Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds) descend upon them with their new fangled ideas about love, freedom and female emancipation, before darker forces threaten all their lives, Fanny is forced to reconsider what she really wants out of her own life.
Irish drama Rose Plays Julie, from joint directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, aka Desperate Optimists, starts off as a bit of a mystery. Rose (Ann Skelly, aka the Irish Jodie Comer) is studying as a vet, and wants to find her birth mother, Julie (the dependable Orla Brady), who gave her up for adoption. When pushing to find out what was behind Julie’s decision, Rose finds some unpleasant truths about her birth father (Aidan Gillen), and how she was conceived, and the plot gets altogether darker, echoed in some of the brutal, bloody scenes in her veterinarian school. Is confronting the past always a good idea? Is revenge on the cards – and if so, will Rose achieve her aim?
Lingua Franca (above) is Isabel Sandoval’s highly topical, well-made tale of a transwoman, Olivia, (played by Sandoval) living in Brooklyn, undocumented and afraid, yet still managing to carry out her care duties and look for love. She is anxious to sort out an arranged marriage to get the documentation to prevent her deportation, but she’s also highly romantic, and falls fast for the grandson of the woman she’s caring for. Above all, you are cheering for Olivia, as you see through her eyes how often she is let down. Political points are pretty obvious, as in the background we see crackdowns on immigrants post-Trump and hear of the hostile environment back home in her native Philippines. An uncomfortable, illuminating film.
Honey Boy is more fodder for Shia LaBeouf fans, and this one’s close to home, as it dramatises his own upbringing at the hands of an emotionally abusive father. Written by LaBeouf himself and directed by Alma Har’el, this drama has Noah Jupe playing the young LaBeouf, with Lucas Hedges taking up the role as a young man, while LaBeouf basically plays his own unreliable, sleazy father. A cautionary tale about child stars and their sometimes terrible parents, it somehow manages to be sentimental while showing some pretty dark episodes. Kind of a romanticised coming-of-age tale that’s messed up and toxic at its heart.
So, that’s our BFI 63rd London Film Festival Part 1 Review all done. In the second part of our round-up we’ll look at the debut directors, plus new dramas and thrillers. There are some fine documentaries too, plus what you’ve all being waiting for: our 2019 DVDfever Awards. including many films that fill us with optimism, and some that make us despair!
Also, check out the London Film Festival website.
| 1 | 2 |