The London Film Festival 2009

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Helen M Jerome reviews

The London Film Festival 2009

London Film Festival 2009…

Some say the film industry is on its last legs. That the very life is being squeezed out of it by the credit crunch, piracy and endless, brainless remakes. But, as HELEN M JEROME discovers at the 53rd London Film Festival, it actually seems to be in rather rude health. Movie-makers from every single corner of the world are on a creative hot-streak, innovating like crazy, tackling new subjects and championing fresh talent.

Five fabulous films stand out: a gritty French prison drama, a Korean thriller, an Aboriginal love story, an apocalyptic American epic, and a black and white Chinese war movie. And the pick of these is A PROPHET (right), made by Jacques Audillard, previously best known for The Beat That My Heart Skipped, but now moving up a gear. This is a full-on, no-holds-barred, adrenalin-fuelled crime drama with a flavour of The Sopranos mixed with the humanity of The Birdman Of Alcatraz, and not a jot of the sentimentality of overrated stuff like The Shawshank Redemption. Casting the virtually unknown Tahar Rahim as ‘the prophet’ Malik is Audillard’s masterstroke. Sympathetic, initially hopeless and friendless, but increasingly ruthless and single-minded, Rahim is simply stunning as the pawn who educates himself to become everyone’s trusted friend as he’s propelled ever upwards through drugs, guns and deals, all masterminded from behind bars. It’s long, but never drags, and you can expect A PROPHET to mop up in awards ceremonies, and perhaps even get a Departed-style American remake, from Marty…

MOTHER (right) director Bong-Joon Ho is best known for his 2006 chiller, The Host. And this latest from the Korean auteur is equally excellent, mainly due to his surreal flourishes, the dark story, and the performance of Kim Hye-Ja as the Mother, desperately defending her simple son while the evidence piles up against him. Equally dark, but with a flicker of hope and redemption, is SAMSON & DELILAH (right), the debut feature from Warwick Thornton. Set on the fringes of an Aboriginal community where every day is Groundhog Day, stultifying in its dull sameness, the story really kicks off when two lost souls quit the place for the nearest city. Neither is able to express themselves, surviving through petrol sniffing and petty theft until tragedy strikes, in this virtually dialogue-free film. Moving and very promising.

THE ROAD is the much-heralded, bleak rendition of Cormac McCarthy’s celebrated novel. Filmed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition) in bleached-out tones, on the sites of countless natural disasters from post-Katrina New Orleans to Mount St Helens, this is an utterly dystopian, yet remarkably human portrait, of the world unravelling while a father and son (Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee) struggle to cross what’s left of the country to reach the ocean. Surpassing this – and pretty much everything else – in epic scale and shock-value is Lu Chuan’s CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH (right), the true story of the siege and massacre of Nanjing in 1937. Boldly shot in beautiful black and white, employing handheld cameras to get to the confused, swirling heart of the action, this has a cast of thousands, but it’s the gripping performances from Liu Ye and Hideo Nakaizumi that linger in the memory.

So what about 2009’s opening, centrepiece, and closing films?

It’s hard to better last year’s SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and FROST/NIXON festival bookends, which both garnered huge popular and critical acclaim. But this year’s animated opener, FANTASTIC MR. FOX, manages to propel director Wes Anderson from wacky boy wonder of indies to mainstream family film-maker. Who’d have thought a film version of yet another bedtime story from Roald Dahl – joining Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, the BFG, the Witches, and James and the Giant Peach – would entice big stars like Meryl Streep, George Clooney and Bill Murray to flex their vocal talents? Appealing to adults and children, with its considerable charm, its utterly wonderful soundtrack, its live-and-let-live message, and its Oceans Eleven-style heist plot, Anderson also offers an alternative to swearing, imaginatively using ‘cussing’ as a substitute for all epithets. Lovely stuff.

Poised at the centre of the festival, Jane Campion’s BRIGHT STAR (right) is the love story of romantic poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his Hampstead neighbour Fannie Brawne (the remarkable Abbie Cornish), played out against the fecundity and brutality of the seasons, which reflect the couple’s vital, thrilling and ultimately doomed passion. And if you’re a connoisseur of costume, you’ll simply adore the endless, gorgeous outfits that Fannie and her family sew and wear.

Following on from Steve McQueen’s remarkable film HUNGER last year, fellow visual artist Sam Taylor Wood chooses less controversial subject matter with a biopic of the young John Lennon, NOWHERE BOY, the festival’s closing film – and her own full-length debut. Mainly, it feels like a rather safe, nostalgic recreation of fifties Liverpool, but the three main actors manage to make it worth watching. Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff are the sisters with different parenting styles (sensible and dull vs flighty and unreliable) who both dote on John, fiercely played by Aaron Johnson in this bizarre love triangle.

Talking of parents, one of the bright young directors is none other than Ridley Scott’s daughter, Jordan, who has made a breakout debut in the shape of CRACKS (right). Dominated by the effortless glamour of Eva Green, playing a 1930s teacher at a remote, girls boarding school, this is a movie of highly-charged adolescent crushes (mainly revolving around Green). Reminiscent of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, this also has something of the haunting mood of Picnic At Hanging Rock. And it’s lifted high above other clichéd, schooldays films by fantastic performances from Green herself, Imogen Poots (who may be the new Kate Winslet), Juno Temple and Maria Valverde as the outsider who threatens their clique.

Another solidly British film is famously based on journalist Lynn Barber’s own 1960s adolescence, adapted by Nick Hornby, and directed by Lone Scherfig. But AN EDUCATION is most remarkable for the central role of Jenny, played to perfection by Carey Mulligan. She is a studious schoolgirl, bound for Oxford until she’s catapulted into the sophisticated, glittering world of a predatory older man, David, played by Peter Sarsgaard, plus his chums, Rosamund Pike and Dominic Cooper. And because Jenny’s parents are also seduced by David’s easy, oleaginous charm, virtually delivering their only child into his arms, the final revelatory scenes are made even more powerful.

A couple more British directorial debuts come from Tom Harper with THE SCOUTING BOOK FOR BOYS, and Malcolm Venville with 44 INCH CHEST. Venville’s East End gangster film features one of the best casts around, with Ray Winstone’s cuckolded husband, Joanne Whalley’s wayward wife, John Hurt’s foul-mouthed old-timer, and Stephen Dillane and Tom Wilkinson’s thugs set against Ian McShane’s deliciously camp turn. It’s violent, has some of the most creative, unflinching swearing you’ll hear, and isn’t for the faint-hearted. But it’s Scouting that’s been getting the plaudits, probably due to its wistful Norfolk holiday camp setting and remarkable central performances from youngsters Thomas Turgoose and Holliday Grainger, rather than the over-praised writing.

Far better and darker is Stephen Poliakoff’s GLORIOUS 39 (right), set in familiar Poliakoff territory: a country house and London on the very brink of war. A huge swathe of our best acting talent also turns up, from Julie Christie and Jenny Agutter to Bill Nighy and David Tennant. But this is very much Romola Garai’s film, as Anne, the adopted child of a wealthy family who stumbles upon a plot to push for appeasement rather than war. But who can she trust, when everyone she confides in ends up dead?

From the US come some small, indie hits and some very big hitters, like Steven Soderbergh’s return to form, THE INFORMANT!, the true story of the biggest corporate whistleblower in the US. Matt Damon really gets under the skin of the title role, as he sinks deeper into conspiracy and corruption, constantly comparing his experience with Grisham and Crichton heroes as he narrates his own badly-dressed downfall, and he’s matched all the way by the wonderful Melanie Lynskey as his loyal wife.

Jason Reitman follows up Juno with UP IN THE AIR (right), featuring George Clooney on top form, making you root for a frankly unlikeable, selfish character with his charm turned all the way up to eleven. Reitman cleverly toys with the viewer by hinting at a happy-ever-after, Hollywood ending for Clooney with his soulmate, before heading off in another direction. And the evidence of Tom Ford’s directorial debut A SINGLE MAN, it seems that anything fine artists like McQueen and Taylor-Wood can do, a fashion darling can do just as well. Predictably, every shot looks gorgeous, but Ford also coaxes an astonishing performance from Colin Firth as the bereaved gay professor who has a fear of just going on living.

At the other end of the scale, US indies to recommend include Joe Swanberg’s latest mumblecore movie, ALEXANDER THE LAST, plus Bradley Rust Gray’s slacker homage to friendship, THE EXPLODING GIRL, and WAH DO DEM, directed, scripted and shot (mainly in Jamaica) by boyhood chums, Sam Fleischner and Ben Chace. And poised somewhere in the middle is Todd Solondz’s LIFE DURING WARTIME, a dark, dysfunctional dollop of sprawling family life. Among the star turns are Allison Janney and Ciaran Hinds, alongside forgotten talents like Paul ‘Pee Wee’ Reubens, and Ally ‘Breakfast Club’ Sheedy playing a screenwriter who declares that she is “crushed by the enormity of my success”. Does Solondz’s mastery of the ensemble cast now make him the true heir to Robert Altman?

So how has the rest of the world fared – starting with Europe? Rising to the top of the French fare is another feather in Kristin Scott Thomas’ beret, LEAVING (right). She seems to be having an Indian summer in her career, reinventing herself by acting in thoughtful, grown-up Gallic films about real people, rather than just playing archetypal posh Brits in period pictures set in draughty country piles. But this is closely rivalled by Mia Hanson-Love’s FATHER OF MY CHILDREN, a deeply personal tribute to the late Humbert Balsan, who wanted to produce Hanson-Love’s first film. This is a film of two halves, which starts with the non-stop life of film producer Gregoire as he tries to juggle family, work and mounting debts, then explores what happens to those left behind when such an inspirational figure takes his own life – and it manages to be affecting without being maudlin.

BURROWING from Sweden’s Fredrik Wenzel and Henrik Hellstrom, and DOGTOOTH from Greece’s Yorgos Lanthimos may not yet be the finished articles, but both hold huge promise for their innovative directors. HELP GONE MAD is an absurdist, modern study of a simple country loser transplanted to Moscow and adopted by a paranoid eccentric – and it’s definitely not an advert for visiting Russia’s capital!

From Italy comes GIULIA DOESN’T DATE AT NIGHT, suffused with sentiments like “happiness is sadness doing backflips” and focusing on a writer’s growing obsession with his swimming teacher and her secret, terrible past. But can he save her from herself? Following on from his remarkable Romanzo Criminale, THE BIG DREAM is director Michele Placido’s full-throttle “film of his life”, set during the revolutionary fervour of 1968, with love getting in the way of politics, and once again starring the charismatic Riccardo Scamarcio.

Italian epic THE MAN WHO WILL COME, and Czech film PROTEKTOR are both World War 2 dramas, but the former manages to be utterly moving, with its true story of a village making a stand against the bloody occupation. The latter instead surrenders substance to a highly-stylised look and feel, which though beautiful, manages to distance the audience from empathising with the plight of occupied Prague. An important Serbian film about the futility of war, ST GEORGE SHOOTS THE DRAGON (right) is set on the eve of the previous, Great War, and directed by Belgrade-born Srdjan Dragojevic. It’s an extraordinary, almost surreal portrait of a small community decimated by conflict. A rag-tag bunch of disabled ex-servicemen are forced to fight again, and we see how ridiculous acts of bravery can unite and divide comrades, how physical and psychological wounds never heal, and how their stoical womenfolk must cling on in the aftermath.

Described as a Basque Brokeback Mountain, ANDER comes from Spanish director Roberto Caston, though it hasn’t yet been shown in his home country, because, as Caston explains, they’re not too keen on the Basque subtitles, and “it’s gay, but it’s not a comedy”. Instead, it’s a bold study of a middle-aged farmer who injures himself and has to hire a younger, Peruvian man to help him. And against the odds, their friendship quietly develops and flowers into love. According to the director, they spent three days milking cows and feeding pigs on a remote farm to achieve just the right level of realism before filming. Take that, De Niro!

Moving further afield into World Cinema, Argentina’s Marco Berger takes a similar theme for his debut feature, PLAN B. Two straight guys, Bruno and Pablo, are vying for the love of one woman, and Bruno’s cunning ‘Plan B’ is to befriend Pablo and remove him from the triangle. But when the plan goes awry and the guys start to prefer each other’s company, will they admit their mutual passion, or will their macho posturing get in the way? This witty modern love story promises much for Berger’s future, and remarkably only took ten days to shoot. Rightly grabbing headlines with its daring use of parallel plots and two directors – one Palestinian and one Israeli – AJAMI is an all-too-believable underworld thriller. Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani took seven years to develop this complex film and worked with a multitude of non-actors. Their cameras never rest and the pace never slackens, so utter confusion rules, until the plot unravels at its climax. Similarly brutal, and based on real events, BALIBO shows what really happened in East Timor when Indonesia invaded, not just to the people, but to five reporters who were filming there. The shocking story is shown through the eyes of crusading journalist Roger East, played by Anthony LaPaglia, and the audience must piece together the truth from what he discovers, as he goes back to East Timor to reveal the atrocities. Robert Connolly’s film not only demands to be seen, but is also one of those rare examples of art changing attitudes, as after 30 years of denial, even the director’s home country, Australia, is finally confronting the war crimes that took place.

In surely the strongest, most varied line-up of documentaries for years, MUGABE & THE WHITE AFRICAN shows what’s really going on in Zimbabwe through the experience of one family of white farmers, while BEHIND THE RAINBOW reveals the true story of the ANC in South Africa through unique footage and interviews with all the main players, including Mbeki and Zuma. There’s a more playful tone in OSADNE, a Slovakian village that needs to rejuvenate itself or face extinction; in the delightful Irish study of generations of mothers and sons, fathers and daughters in HIS AND HERS; and in 45365, which shows smalltown America in cheesy, charming detail, from little league and racing pigs to the world’s smallest woman.

American popular culture gets definitive treatment in BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE, the story of the late, great, incredibly seedy, New York club CBGBs, which launched the careers of everyone from Talking Heads and the Ramones to Blondie; in WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE: A FILM ABOUT THE DOORS, which captures the self-destructive charisma of Jim Morrison and his musical chums as they conquered the world with dark poetry and organ-based tunes; and in THE AMERICAN: BILL HICKS STORY (right), lovingly pieced together from rare film and photos of the influential comedian, driven by narrative from those who knew Bill best, and excerpts from his routines.

And the other side of fame, and how it’s manipulated and misused, gets the full, polemical treatment in Chris Atkins’ STARSUCKERS. This starts out as an entertaining romp, focusing on the pushy parents and attention-seeking wannabes who demand their fifteen minutes, through to the likes of Max Clifford, who groom, protect and control their clients as commodities. But it’s the final segment that’s truly shocking, homing in on the sacred cows of Live Aid and Live 8, and revealing how their actual and self-assessed achievements simply don’t match up. Or, as Bob Geldof might say, eight out of ten.

The second annual TOBY JONES AWARD for appearing in the most festival films goes to George Clooney, who is all over Leicester Square like a rash. Apart from his vocal talent in FANTASTIC MR. FOX, he almost makes THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS bearable, and gets the movie his talents deserve in UP IN THE AIR, a clever comedy focusing on his character, Ryan Bingham, who aims to build up his frequent flyer miles while downsizing companies. But will he be downsized? And the runners-up are: Melanie Lynskey as Clooney’s sister in UP IN THE AIR, and also fantastic in THE INFORMANT! Kristin Scott-Thomas showing her range by playing young John Lennon’s straight-laced aunt Mimi in NOWHERE BOY, and the conflicted wife who falls in love with her handyman in the very grown-up LEAVING. And rising star Juno Temple, who is fabulous in period bob, thirties threads and manners in both CRACKS and GLORIOUS 39.

Plus there’s the magnificent Michael K Williams (Omar from The Wire) as an ex-addict in Todd Solondz’s LIFE DURING WARTIME, and in a cameo role in THE ROAD. And baby-faced Thomas Brodie Sangster ringing the changes (and finally moving on from playing that love-struck kid in Love Actually) as Fannie’s brother in BRIGHT STAR and the young Paul McCartney in NOWHERE BOY. And there’s John Hurt, Julianne Moore, Dominic Cooper, and Bill Murray. Snap!

  • STANDING OVATION: But onto the proper ‘awards’ for the 53rd London Film Festival.

  • RISING TALENT (MOST PROMISING DIRECTORS):
    • Warwick Thornton for SAMSON & DELILAH (right)
    • Jordan Scott for CRACKS
    • Fredrik Wenzel & Henrik Hellstrom for BURROWING
    • Yorgos Lanthimos for DOGTOOTH
    • Marco Berger for PLAN B
  • RISING TALENT (STARS):
    • Abbie Cornish in BRIGHT STAR
    • Manuel Vignau in PLAN B
    • Greta Zucchi Montanari in THE MAN WHO WILL COME
    • Aaron Johnson in NOWHERE BOY
    • Christian Esquivel in ANDER
  • CAREER BESTS:
    • Jane Campion for BRIGHT STAR
    • Kristin Scott Thomas in LEAVING
    • Hye-Ja Kim in MOTHER
    • Colin Firth in A SINGLE MAN
    • Matt Damon in THE INFORMANT!
  • BEST DOCUMENTARY: DEFAMATION, Yoav Shamir’s quirky look at the organisations that thrive on revealing anti-semitism

  • MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENTS: THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is based on one of Jon Ronson’s terrific non-fiction books, but loses something in the translation, and in the acting-by-numbers of Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey – though Clooney and Jeff Bridges almost save it. Jim Jarmusch’s LIMITS OF CONTROL is lovingly filmed by Chris Doyle, but the plot plods along rather aimlessly – like a tai chi Tarantino. And the Coen Brothers’ latest, A SERIOUS MAN, may be a faithful recreation of the sixties, full of in-jokes and semi-autobiographical material, and I really wanted to like it, but it quite simply fails to spark into life.

    • AND FINALLY… THE 12 MUST-SEES:

    • A PROPHET
    • MOTHER
    • THE INFORMANT!
    • LEAVING
    • FANTASTIC MR FOX (right)
    • CRACKS
    • BRIGHT STAR
    • CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH
    • SAMSON & DELILAH
    • THE ROAD
    • UP IN THE AIR
    • ST GEORGE SHOOTS THE DRAGON

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

    Review copyright © Helen M Jerome 2009.

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