The London Film Festival 2007

Helen M Jerome reviews

The London Film Festival 2007

London Film Festival 2007…

Helen M Jerome witnesses themes old, new, borrowed, and quite a few to make you feel blue – at the 51st London Film Festival.

The high profile festival opening and closing films – David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES and Wes Anderson’s DARJEELING LIMITED (right) – certainly drew paparazzi and autograph hunters to the red carpet, and put bums on seats. Their respective themes were Russian gang violence in London, and American comic capers by train in India, but it’s doubtful this pair will win awards or even linger very long in the memory, unlike last year’s festival ‘bookends’ Last King Of Scotland and Babel.

Fortunately, nearly everything sandwiched in between was meaty and greeted with relish by cinephiles. Major themes included health, in documentaries tackling neurosurgery in THE ENGLISH SURGEON, and depression in Tokyo in Mike Mills’ brilliant DOES YOUR SOUL HAVE A COLD? plus of course, Michael Moore’s high profile and justifiably angry examination of US healthcare, SICKO.

But that’s just the start of it. Dramatic films also took health as a central theme, including Spanish domestic meltdown flick, LA INFLUENCIA, plus five of the festival’s finest: THE DIVING BELL & THE BUTTERFLY, SATURNO CONTRO, THE TRAP, THE SAVAGES, and SECRET SUNSHINE.

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DIVING BELL (right) is the true story of Vogue editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who emerged from a coma to discover that ‘locked-in syndrome’ meant he could only communicate by blinking one eye. And he was left with just two further things that weren’t paralysed: his imagination and his memory. Director Julian Schnabel coaxes an extraordinary central performance by Mathieu Almaric in this beautiful, impressionistic, and almost impossibly moving film.

SATURNO CONTRO might superficially sound like an Italian version of The Big Chill or Return Of The Secaucus Seven, focusing as it does on a close-knit group of friends of a certain age. But although director Ferzan (Hamam) Ozpetek takes the main character’s cerebral haemorrhage as its jaw-dropping dramatic gear change, he neatly divides his melodrama into three acts broadly covering disclosure, denial and acceptance as he and his wonderful group of actors forensically examine themes of loneliness, loyalty, wealth, sexuality and infidelity. And boy oh boy, I cried my eyes out!

THE TRAP is perhaps the festival thriller that lingers longest in the memory. Like the previous year’s sleeper hit, The Lives Of Others, it uses a conventional, tense, twisting, turning narrative to reveal deeper truths about the country in which it’s set. Here it’s Serbia, post-Milosevic, outlook bleak, health service inadequate, underworld activity thriving. Thrown bang into the centre of this is a man with a moral dilemma. His young son has a heart condition and will die if he does not take action. But what is his son’s life worth – and what about his own soul? Based on a novel by Nenad Teofilovic, directed by Srdan (Absolute 100) Golubovic and starring the remarkable Nebojsa Glogovac as our compromised everyman, Mladen, this is a finely plotted, edge-of-the-seat treat.

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THE SAVAGES tells the story of two pill-popping, permanently-adolescent, neurotic siblings, Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who are forced to confront their own mortality and grow up when their estranged father (Philip Bosco) develops dementia and is passed into their hands. Richly comic, despite its dark subject, director Tamara Jenkins’ film is a journey into the beating heart of today’s very modern dysfunctional family.

SECRET SUNSHINE (right) is one of this year’s gems from Korea, a country that right now ranks alongside Romania and Mexico as one of the most creatively fertile centres for film-making. Directed by ex-culture minister Lee Chang-Dong, it features Jeon Do-Yeon on riveting form as the single mother constantly teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown, making her ripe for recruitment by evangelical Christians, yet oblivious to the persistent charms of car mechanic Song Kang-Ho.

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Dropping a train-load of hyped-up NATO troops into a slow small town peopled with young women and Kafka-esque officials, the black comedy CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ comes off like a cross between Whisky Galore and Local Hero – if these Scottish comedies were set in Romania. Frequent wry humour, lots of lost-in-translation moments, and a shockingly violent ending would have marked out young director Cristian Nemescu as a name to watch, but sadly this will remain his one and only full-length feature, as he died in a car crash when he was editing the film in 2006 – so it has been left exactly as it was at that point, and subtitled ‘Endless’.

Mainstream English language features were plentiful, but the pick of them came direct from the heart of America. INTO THE WILD is Sean Penn’s lyrical dramatisation of the true story (from Jon Krakauer’s recommended original book) of doomed young adventurer, Christopher McCandless, whose voyage of self-discovery made him flee civilisation.

JUNO is a surprisingly perceptive, laugh-out-loud comedy about teen pregnancy, with notable performances from Ellen Page in the title role and Allison Janney as her reluctant step-mom. Part Napoleon Dynamite, part Ghost World, this is even better than director Jason Reitman’s previous outing, Thank You For Smoking.

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THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (right) is theoretically Brad Pitt’s film, but in an audacious raid that James himself would be proud of, scene-stealer Casey Affleck runs off with the acting honours as the admirer-turned-assassin Ford. Doe-eyed and grinning in his hero worship, darkly calculating in his revenge and bitterly introspective in the aftermath, Affleck is a revelation.

And though the documentary IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON was made in Britain, using glorious new footage of the Apollo missions and candid interviews with all the astronauts (except Neil Armstrong) its subject is a reminder of America in better, nobler times.

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If your tastes are more catholic and you fancy something a bit different, then take your pick from comic Korean gangster film NO MERCY FOR THE RUDE; immensely stylish Italian drama VALZER, shot in one continuous take; frothy English language period piece ANGEL, directed by Francois Ozon and with a barnstorming starring role for Romola Garai.

Carlos Reygadas’ glacially-paced, painterly SILENT LIGHT (right), which tells the strange, spiritual story of a Menonite farming community in Mexico; insightful French animation PERSEPOLIS, based on a series of graphic novels about the Iranian Revolution as seen through one girl’s eyes; Iceland’s biggest-ever box-office hit, the puzzling and fast-food-obsessed thriller JAR CITY; or the Coen Brothers’ welcome and violent return to form in the shape of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

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But which films and talents can be recommended without reservation. Well, since you ask…

Next Big Thing (Directors):

• Srdan Golubovic (The Trap)
• Christian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days)
• Andrew Dominik (Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
• Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell & The Butterfly)

Next Big Thing (Stars):

• Jeon Do-Yeon (Secret Sunshine)
• Tang Wei (Lust Caution)
• Ellen Page (Juno)

Have a Flutter with our Oscar Tips:

• Benicio Del Toro (Things We Lost In The Fire)
• Cate Blanchett (I’m Not There)
• Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
• Casey Affleck (Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
• Mathieu Almaric (The Diving Bell & The Butterfly)

3 Documentaries to change the way you think about health:

• Does Your Soul Have a Cold?
• The English Surgeon
• Sicko (right)

10 Must-Sees: without reservation, check out:

• The Diving Bell & The Butterfly
• Secret Sunshine
• Saturno Contro
• The Trap
• The Savages
• California Dreamin’
• Into The Wild
• Juno
• Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
• In The Shadow Of The Moon

Check out the official London Film Festival website at: LFF.org.uk

Review copyright © Helen M Jerome 2007.