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The London Film Festival 2015‘s first part of our festival round-up saw us take a look at the big hitters from the US, UK and Australia. Now, over the course of three pages, it’s time to see what the rest of the world came up with, starting with two outstanding movies from European directors who like to push the boundaries in very different ways.
We know Greece’s Yorgos Lanthimos for his stylistic but horrifying Dogtooth, but he’s now gone all big time and English-language with his follow-up, The Lobster. Good news is, he hasn’t sold out, far from it. In fact, he’s just got better, funnier and weirder. Much weirder. But with a starry, mainstream cast. Singles nervously converge at what is surely the world’s weirdest hotel, run by Olivia Colman’s strict manager. They’re given an ultimatum: either find a partner here – after a set amount of time – or be turned into the animal of their choice. Colin Farrell (accompanied by a dog, which turns out to be his brother) chooses to be a lobster, deemed to be a good choice by Colman, who drily observes that a wolf and a penguin could never live together.
Fellow singles include Ben Whishaw, John C Reilly and a desperate Ashley Jensen. They undergo lots of contrived bonding sessions, dinners, dances and one evening featuring Colman memorably duetting on Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart. Throughout, the cool voice-over is supplied by Rachel Weisz, who turns out to be one of the loners holed up in the woods not far from the hotel. The singles aim to hunt them down, but instead Farrell escapes, falls in love with Weisz, and they pair up and run away. But how will they fare in a world where people are arrested for being single? As well as being endlessly entertaining and provocative, Lanthimos’ film also poses questions: what would you do and exactly how far will you go for love? Perhaps we finally have a successor to darkly comic maestros Caro and Jeunet?
From Hungary comes Laszlo Nemes’ Son Of Saul, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, and is not for the fainthearted. There’s constant, horrific noise and the stench of death hangs over the prisoner-workers in Auschwitz as they get on with the business of mass murder. The camera is extremely close to Saul (Geza Rohrig, remarkable) at all times as we see the everyday minutiae of the Jewish workers cleaning the gas chambers, hearing the last desperate cries of their own dying people, and collecting up their belongings. In the midst of this relentless vision of hell there are tiny moments of tenderness, notably Saul when spots what he believes to be the body of his son, and wants to get a rabbi to help him with a proper burial. Set over just two days, this film clutches us in its crunching claustrophobia, asks big moral questions, and lingers long after the final credits.
Latin America continues to produce some of the most talented and original film-makers around, who are now spreading their wings and their outlook across the world. Nasty Baby, from Chilean writer-director Sebastian Silva (who made The Maid) is set in Brooklyn. And not only does Silva take a central role himself, but he’s also managed to secure the talents of Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids) and Tunde Adebimpe, from the band TV on the Radio. This tight-knit trio of friends have to face up to life and death in what starts out as a romantic, domestic drama before unexpectedly turning into a much darker genre, close to a crime thriller. And Wiig successfully tries on a new kind of role.
Made in Los Angeles, Chronic is a drama written and directed by Mexico’s Michel Franco, and starring Brit Tim Roth. He plays a devoted, almost obsessive carer who tends to get too involved with his patients. And he faces daily dilemmas – throwing up uncomfortable, very timely questions about mortality. What if one them wants to end it all? Should he get involved?
The eternal, yet urgent issue of migration is addressed by Mexico’s Jonas Cuaron in Desierto. Front and centre is Gael Garcia Bernal who wants to get across the border and into the US. He throws in his lot with a group of would-be migrants ill-equipped for desert conditions, cacti and snakes, especially when their truck breaks down in 120-degree heat. Waiting just on the other side of the border is a self-appointed, vigilante redneck, patrol-man who aims to pick them all off, one by one, equipped with only his rifle and his dog. As their numbers are whittled down, the film turns into a tense chase like The Fugitive, with Bernal’s character improvising to survive. But will he manage to make it alive?
How do you solve a problem like Paula’s? She has few prospects in her position as nanny to a well-to-do family, but views the prospect of pregnancy with dread – and no savings. There’s no easy melodrama, just the slow feeling of fate approaching and her fortune unravelling. A very promising debut from Argentine director Eugenio Canevari and young star Denise Labbate.
Dog Lady, aka La Mujer de los Perros, from Laura Citarella gets so close to its subject and her existence that it almost feels like a documentary. The semi-feral woman lives on the edges, from scraps and leftovers of the urban community of Buenos Aires, with only canines for company. She somehow manages to get through the seasons in this spare, almost dialogue-free study.
In Cesc Gay’s Truman, Julian is dying of cancer, but seems to be more worried about whether his dog, Truman will suffer grief at his owner’s passing. When Julian’s friend Tomas is summoned over from Canada they walk around Madrid, arguing, meditating on mortality and revisiting their pasts, yet Julian still cannot bring himself to tell his own son of his imminent demise. Both Ricardo Darin (right) and Javier Camara are on top of their game as the middle-aged friends, giving restrained, measured, masterly performances.
An unusually searching examination of a religious quandary is at the heart of The Apostate from Uruguayan director Federico Veiroj. Gonzalo is a confused young man attracted to his cousin and also to his neighbour. At the same time he wishes to leave the church, get un-baptised, apostatized and be erased from baptismal records. Full of real and dreamed self-examining scenes, he wanders into a nudist conference where even here he finds he doesn’t belong… but this dream merely reflects his self-doubt. Alvaro Ogalla is very good as Gonzalo, and the excellent soundtrack echoes the precise state of his mind at any time.
Short at just 70 minutes, yet somehow sprawling, the impressionistic Romantic Exiles from Jonas Trueba is bright and upbeat, showing a trio of idealistic Spanish chums setting off… somewhere. They discuss almost anything and give the film its semi-improvised feel. It may feel a little indulgent, but it’s also wistful and warm.
Looking further into Europe, Italy has its customary crop of solidly made movies. A good friend introduced me to Paolo Sorrentino’s Consequences of Love many years ago, and I’ve been a devotee ever since. But how does this very Italian director fare with Youth, his most mainstream English-language film yet? By casting two ageing icons, Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel, as ageing icons – albeit as a legendary composer and a film director – Sorrentino has struck gold. These best friends are holed up in an exclusive Alpine spa resort, populated with mountaineers, models, musicians, actors (like Paul Dano), and sports stars like Maradona (played by a very convincing lookalike), all in search of peace and privacy. The fly in the ointment is that Caine’s daughter, another subtle performance from Rachel Weisz, is being divorced by Keitel’s son… who has fallen for the pop singer, Paloma Faith, who plays herself in primary colours. The ageing duo walk, talk and muse on mortality, love, art and fidelity like a latter-day Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. There is much to savour as you luxuriate in the film’s location and quirky characters, but they’re all upstaged when Jane Fonda enters the fray as Keitel’s muse and they have a ding-dong slanging match.
Hugely topical, writer-director Jonas Carpignano’s debut feature, Mediterranea follows a couple of refugee brothers coming from Burkina Faso via Algeria and Libya to Italy. Across deserts, encountering criminal gangs, on unseaworthy vessels, losing almost everything en route, they are still unprepared for the racism that they face once they reach a Europe in the grip of recession. One brother is determined to fit in and graft; the other is more easily deterred. But how much will they be able to take when they’re both badly treated and attacked?
Set in the bleak rural landscapes of Albania and urban Italy, Laura Bispuri’s Sworn Virgin confronts the viewer with a totally alien, but traditional concept: that Albanian women who do not wish to marry can choose to live as men, and as ‘sworn virgins’. So tomboy Hana, who loves hunting and pursuing other manly activities with her father, becomes Mark. Which works out fine until she moves to Italy to be reunited with her sister, Lila, many years later. But can she remain as Mark? What will happen if she falls in love with a man? Can passion transcend outward appearance?
Mesmerising in conveying joy, pain and grief, Juliette Binoche is the main reason to see The Wait, the debut feature from Piero Messina. She is Anna, devoted and recently bereaved mother, who is so unable to process her own grief that she cannot bring herself to tell her son’s girlfriend that he has died. So together they wait for his reappearance. Set in Sicily, with a backdrop of extraordinary religious celebration and intense natural beauty, this focuses on the central relationship and pretence, but mostly allows us to luxuriate in Binoche’s beautiful performance.
Go to page 2 for many more films from the festival!