LFF 2016: Certain Women

In the last ten or so years of reviewing films and witnessing the beginning of genuine brilliant careers and attending film festivals around the country, you get to see films from all walks of life, that gestate somewhere and manifest into a whole project that appears in your home city. It is a privilege to witness them when they come to fruition.

And yet you sometimes search for the roses amongst the odour. You always miss the boat on certain auteurs or writer-directors who are swooned over by peers and critics of the current age, and yet you miss their coming out party. You try to second guess yourself and wonder maybe it is your point of view or background that is not doing justice to the film, and sometimes it just cannot be helped.

Certain Women, is that sort of film.  Kelly Reichardt, is rightly acclaimed as a light for female directors in the still male dominated world of popular cinema from her feminist western Meek's Cutoff to her fable Wendy and Lucy. Reichardt comes from a less heard voice of middle America, telling stories rarely seen and sometimes pushed to the boundaries of social documentary. 

Reichardt has also hit upon a budding relationship with Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) as her muse of sorts. This film is based upon the short stories of Maile Meloy who herself is from Montana, where the film is set.

The palette of the film is stark and grey, the tone of the film is ponderous and plodding. From the start of the film with a long cargo, freight train coming from the east to the west - establishing the new settlers coming out west perhaps - the shot goes on for as long as the cast and early production members are listed. We then cut to a clandestine affair taking place between lawyer, Laura Wells (Laura Dern) and Ryan Lewis (James Le Gros). The set up looks clandestine due to the lack of discussion between the two and his abrupt departure.

We follow Laura as she deals with an injury lawsuit client Fuller (Jared Harris) who took an early pay-off and thus denied himself a big pay day in court. His own shortcomings come to a head when he takes a security guard hostage when seeking evidence of his being screwed by the system, this belief becomes fact when Laura recites to the illiterate Fuller her statement to the corporation she was meant to be fighting.

From his arrest, we cut to Gina Lewis (Williams) who is married to Ryan, the guy we saw having an affair earlier. Gina has aspirations of building a house with sandstone and attempts to take some from an elderly man who lives on his own, there is tension between Gina and Ryan which serves as reason
for his affair.

Then we cut to a horse handler, Jamie (Lily Gladstone) who on an evening drive goes into a night class where people are. There she meets the teacher Beth (Kristen Stewart) who gives the class as extra income despite the 8 hour round trip to Belfry from Livingstone.

Jamie seeks solace from her loneliness by listening to Beth's classes and their brief discussions in a diner before her long journey home.  Beth stops coming to the classes due to the arduous journeys prompting Jamie driving to Livingstone to see her one more time.

That is the synopsis as best I can describe, not a lot else happens throughout the film, with the ponderous framing and narrative taking shape as I describe it.  There is not a lot of incident and a lot of plot points are not resolved or concluded; Gina does not learn about Ryan's affair, Laura is forgiven by Fuller for her shortcomings and the film ends with Jamie back in the stables with her horses.

To be cruel you could call this film boring, having seen versions of slow cinema, it felt stale that with a cast of this much talent there was not a lot asked of them in terms of character development.  However, the film is an attempt to comment on the alienation and loneliness felt by people in the less populated states of America, where you work to live and live to work. Yet you hoped for more of an emotional impact, however, this perhaps Reichardt's modus operandi, she wants you to see how other people live in poverty.

The role of farm hand Jamie, is beautifully played by Lily Gladstone who does the most with what she is given, gaining the most emotional resonance when she departs Beth and Livingstone, welling up as she drives away from what she felt was a genuine connection with somebody else.

It is those sort of connections that were lacking throughout the film that was reaching for contemplation but left this reviewer frustrated.  Overall a shame as it does not do justice to the beautiful landscape photography captured by Christopher Blauvelt (The Bling Ring).

Certain Women will be released in the USA by IFC Films on October 14th.

The 2011 London Film Festival

Trying to navigate the London Film Festival schedule can be a daunting task, do you attempt to go see films from tried and tested tastes.  Do you seek out something new.  Do you follow a word of mouth hit or take a chance on something new and be bold.

I try to sample all manner of tastes - mainstream Hollywood glitter (The Descendants), French arthouse fare (De Bon Matin), the best of new British (Weekend and Wild Bill), independent American fare (Natural Selection and Return) and obscure European arthouse (Volcano).

In this article, will be a brief overview of all I saw - I could not see everything and I wish I did see Shame, Ides of March, The Artist and The Deep Blue Sea - yet these films are bound to get a general and perhaps nationwide release so the chance to see a film that will not see the light of day again is always tempting.

What follows is a brief overview of what I saw, with full reviews available through links or in depth when the films are released:

Weekend remains the one film I saw that has stuck with me, a tried and tested format but with amazing results thanks to the incredible lead performances by Tom Cullen and Chris New, and I hope this film is richly rewarded by a huge box office and award recognition.

De Bon Matin (Jean-Pierre Montout, France, 2011)
Moutout's film focuses on the life of Paul (Jean-Pierre Daroussin) a successful executive conglomerate bank. Paul slowly comes to see his job for what it is worth, as the higher-ups find himself more blameful for the debt the bank has created and how heads may have to roll.

The film has a complex narrative structure, with the outcome of Paul's action coming at the start of the film as we witness in flashback the downfall of him in the structure of the office workplace and how prevelant the politics of the workplace are. At times though, the narrative complexity works against what the film is trying to say - the film tries to paint Paul as a saint, yet his professional life too often darkens the lighter mood of his homelife and benevolent philantrophy.

The film does have some good moments, yet for me it left me a bit confused as to what it was trying to say, and yet had it not had the beginning of the film it does, I would not have stuck with it.

Volcano (Runar Runarrson, Denmark, 2011)
Hannes (Theodor Juliusson) is a retired school janitor who without a job contemplates suicide in the first five minutes, yet he decides to spend more time in his fishing boat. Yet the boat proves a metaphor for his life as it springs a leak and he then has to remain at home more. Hannes children visit with their grandchildren; the children are spiteful and condescending to their father and pity their mother, Anna (Margaret Helga Johannsclottir) for putting up with him for so long.

Yet following a late night sex session shot with genuine affection and tenderness for the elderly couple (similar to Cloud 9), and things seem to have taken a turn for the better. Hannes gets her fresh halibut from a friend so she can cook her favourite soup, and as they start to enjoy their food an unexpected and tragic event occurs to Anna.

Following her hospitalisation, Hannes takes it upon himself to look after his wife as much as the children feel he cannot do it and he is only doing it out of guilt. From there on in the action is restricted to the family home as children visit and Hannes attends to his wife and goes about fixing the leaky boat, with help from his grandson he has never really spoken to before.

The film is a strikingly honest portrayal of elderly care and the concessions people make to alter impressions of them. From the outset Hannes is portrayed as a curmudgeonly fellow but slowly thanks to the performance by Juliusson he slowly starts to thaw and the chemistry with Johnnsclottir you can sense the genuine affection and love between the characters.

The film is helped by some lush orchesteral movements to support the raw emotional moments, some beautiful landscape photography of Icelandic shorelines (one shot of Hannes on the clifftop shows how small he is in this world) and Runarsson who also wrote the screenplay for this his feature debut has a good use of cinema language, such as when the children arrive at the hospital to support their mother and father. Hannes is sitting on a hospital bench, the children enter through the door, walk past him and sit at the opposite end of the bench - the symbolism is powerful and deliberate.

A well acted piece with a true sense of realism based upon raw subject matter that treats the elderly characters with a quiet dignity, something that is sometimes devoid in other European language cinema.

Wild Bill (Dexter Fletcher, UK, 2011)
Fletcher's debut feature is an entertaining look at council estate life in East London, under the spotlight of a growing Olympic Park (Come on, lets go build a velodrome.) featuring a star studded cast from his black book of contacts.

It clevely subverts conventions of the western genre and supplant them into the gritty milieu of the East End of London; a story of an absent father who returns home to see his children after a spell in prison, tells how he must rebuild bridges with family and avoid pitfalls.

Featuring a star turn from Charlie Creed-Miles as Bill, and Will Poulter (School of Comedy) coming of age as eldest son Dean who resents then loves his father.  Fletcher borrows from Guy Ritchie's school of filmmaking but this is a good laugh with some fine acting, it could be called Wild Bill its alternative title should be; 'Man's Fear of Cleaning the Toilet'  Seek out this film when it gets its release.

Natural Selection  (Robbie Pickering, US, 2010)
Again I have covered this film in a more in-depth review, which you can find here.  The film is a great addition to the canon of screwball and road trip comedies.

Return (Liza Johnson, US, 2010)
Johnson's feature debut has at its heart a great lead performance by Linda Cardellini (from ER) who plays a returning soldier from the Iraq conflict and yet finds the adjustment to normal life a bit harder than expected, leading to tensions with her husband, played by Michael Shannon (unfortunately under-used).  The film uses a lot of close-ups to convey emotion and tension, and the performance is pitch perfect from Cardellini who embues Kelly with a real sense of bewilderment at her return to civilian life.

The Descendants (Alexander Payne, US, 2011)
Payne's return to the silver screen for the first time since Sideways, is a film based on the novel by Kurt Kaui Hemmings starring George Clooney as Matt King, who attempts to keep his family together following the hospitalisation of his wife in a boating accident that has left her in a coma, and then realising she was having an affair.

Payne's deftness of touch and lack of hitting you over the head is helped by Clooney's brilliant performance, who never seems to let the material down when he acts.  This is up there with O Brother, Where Art Thou? as one of his best comedy roles.  Like Cary Grant, he is able to switch and balance between dramatic and comedic roles effortlessly.

A fine supporting cast and excellent adaptation of the source novel shows Payne is still a master of these sort of literate intelligent movies and Clooney is a class above other actors.

Hunky Dory (Marc Evans, UK, 2011)
Evans' most mainstream film is a nostalgic piece set in the summer of 1976 as Ms. May (Minnie Driver) attempts to put on a production of The Tempest with a rock soundtrack which allows some exhiliarating musical sequences of David Bowie and ELO songs.

For me though, whilst those scenes are brilliant I found the script to be a bit of a letdown as the narrative of want away youths, gay teenagers and back-stabbing teachers gave a sense of all been there and seen it before; a shame as Driver is game in her role as are some of the youngsters though I feel the script cannot elevate it above middling fare.

All in all I was pleased with the films I saw and my choices, with only the French film being a disappointment.  This was Sandra Hebron's last year as Festival director and she has left some big shoes (even though they are small) to fill for the next person to come in.

www.bfi.org.uk/lff

The 55th London Film Festival Preview

It is that time of year again and the official run up to the Academy Awards starts in earnest.  Think of the Awards season, as a long marathon, someone shoots the gun at Leicester Square on October 12th, with a water station situated on October 27th, with the chequered flag in Los Angeles in late February.

My memories of the various LFF's I have attended are always being able to see George Clooney's newest film, be it Up in the Air, Good Night and Good Luck, Fantastic Mr.Fox; he returns again this year with two more films one serious, one comedy.  The serious one is when he is in political mode and is the American Express Gala, The Ides of March, which he directs and co-scripts (with Grant Heslov). Clooney also stars as democratic Presidental hopeful Morris, with a new spokesman Myers (Ryan Gosling), the film is wordy and focuses on backroom shenanigans.  The comic role is Clooney in Alexander Payne's new film The Descendants, based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, based in Hawaii - Clooney plays a father who has re-examine his past to embrace his new future.  The combination of Payne with Clooney playing one of his misanthropic male leads is tantalising.

Clooney's role as festival star is being fought over by our own Rachel Weisz who stars in both the opening and closing gala films. The former is 360 by Fernando Meirelles (they have worked together on The Constant Gardener) and this film focuses on how different levels of society and their sexual relationships can transgress sexual boundaries.  The star-studded cast puts it in the same boat as Babel but a cast that includes Jude Law, Weisz, Anthony Hopkins and Ben Foster means that this may escape the fatal banality of that bloated vessel.
    The closing film is the return of Terence Davies to fictional cinema (following his epic documentary on his hometown Liverpool's visual history) nice time adapting Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, set in 1950s London still suffering from the aftermath of World War II.  Weisz is joined by two of our better thespians, Tom Hiddleston (Thor) and the great Simon Russell Beale.

Other Galas screenings allow first time views in Britain for new films from Nanni Moretti (We Have A Pope), Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut (Coriolanus), David Cronenberg (A Dangerous Method), Steve McQueen (Shame - which just won Michael Fassbender a Best Actor award at Venice), Michael Winterbottom (Trishna) and Madonna (W.E.)

Also to be screened are the exciting We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lynne Ramsey, starring Tilda Swinton in an Oscar worthy performance.  There are also screenings of films by such erstwhile talents like Richard Linklater, Roman Polanski, Todd Solodnz, Bruno Dumont, Takashi Miike.  New documentary features are prominent from Frederick Wiseman, Jonathon Demme, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield, who goes in search of an interview with Sarah Palin in 'You Betcha!'

As ever it is not just about new Hollywood and auteurs from across the globe being given exposure, new British cinema is celebrated.  And this is a vital platform for these young filmmakers as often these films will fail to be released in this country, an unfortunate statement but alas one of fact - Richard Jobson returns with The Somnambulists (focusing on soldiers returning from Iraq) and Dexter Fletcher's debut feature Wild Bill look like highlights.

A favourite strand of the LFF programme is the Treasure of the Archives series; this year we have Cry Danger, a crackerjack film noir from Robert Parrish; a restored The Caine Mutiny starring Humphrey Bogart; Roberto Rossellini's The Machine that Kills Bad People from 1952 and a colour feature from Kenji Mizoguchi Shin-Heike Monogatari (Tales of the Taira Clan) from 1955.

As ever I suggest you seek out something different, be it a French film in the French Revolutions strand or one of the always good short cuts and animation.  You would be spoilt for choice if you are a cineaste or suffer from cinephilia like myself; but you certainly would be hard pressed not to find something to your liking.

Public booking opens on September 26th, by person or phone or online.
Phone 020 7928 3232 (9.30am-8.30pm daily), Online visit www.bfi.org.uk/lff or go to the counter at the BFI Southbank up to and during the festival.

It promises to be a brilliant experience as always, and it never fails to disappoint.