So the first week of the 54th BFI London Film Festival (or LFF as I’m now calling it, as if everyone in the world knows what I’m talking about) is almost done already but I’ve been lucky enough to see some great movies already.
My own personal opening film was Love Like Poison, a French coming of age drama set in rural northern France. Youngster Clara Augarde plays Anna, a fourteen-year-old unsure about religion and confused about her sexual awakening. It was an interesting start and it finished with that choral version of Creep by Radiohead, which can be heard in the trailers for The Social Network .
Next up was Another Year, the latest film from British director Mike Leigh. As ever with Leigh, plot is virtually discarded in favour of character study and it’s a funny and moving portrayal of middle aged people in a middle class life. Moving across the pond (the setting of the film, not me) I then saw Conviction starring Hilary Swank as the sister of Sam Rockwell who she believes has been wrongly accused of murder. As courtroom dramas go it’s decent but without ever being exceptional, despite the great performances.
Everything Must Go is probably my favourite film so far with Will Ferrell as an alcoholic who loses his job, his wife and his house all on the same day. Despite the depressing situation it’s a very funny film and one which I think will enhance Ferrell’s reputation as an actor, as opposed to simply a comic actor. Unable to get into Never Let Me Go (booking in advance is crucial where possible), I took a punt on Silent Souls, a Russian film about death and love. Although slow and at times bizarre, it was a quite interesting insight into another culture.
By the weekend I’d got my planning sorted and secured a ticket to see Let Me In, the Hollywood remake of the Swedish vampire tale, Let The Right One In. As a standalone project, it’s a perfectly fine horror thriller and well played by Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz, but in the end this injection of pace detracts from the quiet beauty of the original, and I found the CGI really irritating. Sweden 1 USA 0.
Finally, on Sunday evening I went to see Le Quattro Volte , an Italian film described in the LFF programme as containing ‘anarchic goats’ which was all I needed to get me along. It was a slightly weird quasi-documentary but also strangely engaging. Not only that, but we were treated to an impromptu Q&A with the director Michelangelo Frammartino afterwards, which was as illuminating as it was entertaining.