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There’s also quite a bit of homegrown violence, but very little in the way of laughs to leaven the thriller Blood. Directed by Nick Murphy (who made his promising debut with the ghost-story Awakening at last year’s festival) this is another kind of genre piece altogether, set in a fading coastal town where the police have a tendency towards retribution with or without the crucial evidence. Brothers Paul Bettany and Stephen Graham are coppers on the same force, just like their dad before them, the effortlessly excellent Brian Cox. And when they make a major, brutal mistake, they are forced to spend the rest of their time covering their tracks and selling their souls.
Shell is the remarkable debut of writer-director Scott Graham, set in the windswept wilds of Scotland, at a remote service station run by a father and daughter. Dad (Joseph Mawle) is an efficient garage mechanic who also suffers from epilepsy. His teenage daughter, Shell (the remarkable Chloe Pirrie), pumps gas, fends off unwanted attention from the regular male customers, and only has eyes for her father. Though the landscape is vast and stretches far away, Graham gives the film an unsettling, claustrophobic feel and coaxes two superb performances from his leads.
The best of this gritty British trio, however, is Broken (above), the cinematic debut from theatre director Rufus Norris. It’s a hot summer day, and as 11-year-old Skunk (a sensational performance by Eloise Laurence) wanders back to her home in a North London cul-de-sac, she sees a single, almost casual, violent act that unravels everything that knits the neighbours and her life together. Rory Kinnear is a doting single dad whose idea of Sunday dinner is cramming slices of processed ham directly into his gob, while his three wayward, spiteful daughters twist him round their little fingers. Robert Emms is the simple son of overprotective parents Denis Lawson and Clare Buckley, and he is suddenly beaten up by Kinnear. Skunk’s dad, Tim Roth, is a lawyer dragged into the whole situation, which is further complicated by her new teacher being Cillian Murphy, their childminder’s ex-boyfriend, who also gets attacked by Kinnear. But nothing is quite as simple as it seems, and there is at least one unexpected twist reminiscent of the unlikely redemption in Paul Haggis’ film Crash. Suffused with sunshine and sadness, this feels like a perfect snapshot of an imperfect bunch of people.
A couple of ambitious films are adapted from famous, prize-winning novels with mixed results, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, and Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. On the plus side, Hamid’s book is more compact and open to interpretation by director Mira (Monsoon Wedding) Nair, and Hamid tackles the screenplay alongside two other writers. It also has the likeable Riz Ahmed in the title role, with Kiefer Sutherland impressive as his rapacious, driven boss. On the minus side, Kate Hudson is woefully miscast as Ahmed’s American girlfriend, and the clever “narrative within a narrative” structure of the book doesn’t quite come off in the film. But if you don’t know the story, it still works as a thriller.
With Rushdie’s remarkable novel, Midnight’s Children, voted the “Booker of Bookers”, I guess it’s understandable that the praise might go to his head. However, Rushdie has not only tackled the screenplay alone, but also provides the narration throughout. Quite frankly, I think I can safely say that all these roles are better served by specialists. It’s undoubtedly terrific subject matter: the real, rich story of a country as it gains independence from Britain, with the focus on two boys, Saleem and Shiva, born at the exact moment this occurs – two “midnight’s children”. If you love the book, you’ll no doubt be shaking your head at the bits they omit, but for the ordinary viewer the film is quite simply too long. Two and a half hours offer some action and romance, rather a lot of magical realism, plus a handful of winning performances. But these are crushed by the continuous Rushdie voiceover. It’s like trying to watch a film for the first time with someone behind you talking through the whole thing – or perhaps the writer’s self-satisfied commentary getting in the way with no way of removing it. Too much tell and not enough show, as they say. It probably seems picky to note that some of the phrases seem out of place (“gobsmacked” in the sub-continent in 1957?), but this is probably the least of the film’s problems.
Finally, for this part of the festival round-up, Beasts of the Southern Wild. Yes, it’s won best this and that, Sundance loved it, the posters make it look positively amazeballs, with multi-star ratings all over it. But I can reveal that this movie is the Emperor’s New Clothes in almost every way. The single saving grace is the incredibly young star, Quvenzhané Wallis, playing the main character, Hushpuppy. She is a revelation and stands out even more amongst a cast that cannot act their way out of a paper bag. It’s churlish to say this, I know, as they’re not actors, the budget was tiny and was probably set aside for the CGI work on the big, fantastical beasts that threaten Hushpuppy’s feral, watery community, the Bathtub.
This is the director’s first feature, based on a play, and attempts to say Big Apocalyptic Things about survival and the End of Days in the wake of Katrina. But what it ends up doing is prettifying, fetishising and patronising rural poverty, drenching it in a southern-fried soundtrack and constant alcohol. Ain’t they cute? Hell, it even romanticises a bunch of working girls, including Hushpuppy’s “magical” mom. It also boasts one of my least favourite cinematic tropes, the all-knowing voiceover, crammed with hackneyed truisms, from a child wise beyond her years. Okay, I didn’t hate the first half, but by the end it was too annoying for words. So be warned! Don’t believe the hype! Don’t get taken in again like you did with The Artist!
Coming next: part two of the festival review includes the best from the rest of the world – including The Best Film Of The Year – and we’ll tell you about the documentaries too…