Critical Week: Take a load off

Returning home to London from Venice, I arrived in a nation in mourning, with a new monarch and prime minister. Meanwhile, I'm grappling with a backlog of festival reviews. Most are written in rough form, so I'm working to get them online bit by bit. And there are also new releases to keep up with.Confess, Fletch is the first film featuring the quick-thinking reporter since those two Chevy Chase movies in the '80s. This one is closer in tone to Gregory McDonald's Fletch novels (I've read a few of them), with Jon Hamm creating a more enjoyably deadpan and less silly take on the character. But the film is perhaps a bit underpowered to launch a new franchise.

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I also caught up with Oliver Hermanus' superb Living, an inventive remake of Kurosawa's Ikiru with a terrific lead role for Bill Nighy as a 1950s London businessman who begins to see things from a new perspective.  There was another offbeat offering from Peter Strickland with the pointedly amusing Flux Gourmet, about musicians who mix sound with food. Asa Butterfield and Gwendoline Christie lead a terrific ensemble cast. Finally, there was the gonzo horror of The Retaliators, an increasingly violent revenge thriller that gleefully preaches a seriously unhelpful message.

Lined up to watch this next week are Viola Davis in The Woman King, George Clooney and Julia Roberts in Ticket to Paradise, Lesley Manville in Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, the British drama It Is In Us All, New Zealand drama The Justice of Bunny King, Korean drama In Front of Your Face, Japanese animation Inu-Oh and the movie club doc A Bunch of Amateurs.

LFF 3: That voice! That dress!

Among the premieres at the 58th London Film Festival was Bjork's concert movie Biophilia Live, presented by directors Nick Fenton and Peter Strickland (whose The Duke of Burgundy is also in the festival). Shot in North London a year ago, it's about as close to being at a concert as you can get on film. Meanwhile, the red carpet was packed today with such actor-filmmaker duos as Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams and Carol Morley (with the world premiere of The Falling), Mia Wasikowska and Sophie Barthes (for Madame Bovary), Noomi Rapace and Michael Roskam (with The Drop), and George MacKay and Duane Hopkins (for Bypass).

Meanwhile, I have hit the festival wall today - three weeks of press screenings and three days of the festival itself have left me feeling like a zombie. But we persevere! I had three films today plus my only party of the festival thanks to distributor Peccadillo and their film Appropriate Behavior. Meanwhile, here are some more highlights (full reviews are on the way)...

Bjork: Biophilia Live
dir Nick Fenton, Peter Stricklandwith Bjork, Manu Delago 14/UK ***
Recorded on the last night of Bjork's Biophilia world tour in London, this film makes very few concessions for non-fans, mainly due to her atonal music. But the Icelandic singer's followers will love every moment, rendered with swirling care by filmmakers Fenton and Strickland to capture the imagery and sounds of her performance in remarkable detail. There's no denying that her voice is magnificent, but it might be nice to have a song you could hum along with.

Bypass
dir Duane Hopkins; with George MacKay, Benjamin Dilloway 14/UK ****
With a dark, moody tone and an extremely internalised perspective, this film gets under the skin simply because it's so tightly focussed on one character, beautifully played by young British actor MacKay. Even so, the narrative sometimes lets him down, leaving key details unexplained while earnest writer-director Hopkins never quite catches the offhanded humour that would ground the film in real life.

Charlie's Country
dir Rolf de Heer; with David Gulpilil, Peter Djigirr 13/Aus ****
Slow and observant, this drama might test the patience of viewers who need a driving narrative to hold their interest, but this film is bursting with pungent issues that have resonance far beyond the aboriginal history of Australia. And it's anchored by yet another fine performance by David Gulpilil.

El Niño
dir Daniel Monzon; with Luis Tosar, Jesus Castro 14/Sp ***.
While the film is shot and edited like a cheesy TV cop show, the twisty plot is far more involving than expected, focussing on the human element to make the story of drug trafficking between Spain and Morocco startlingly involving. By getting under the skin of the characters, the film is not only more entertaining, but it finds some important things to say.

Free Fall 
dir Gyorgy Palfi; with Piroska Molnar, Miklos Benedek 14/Hun ***.
Essentially seven short films linked together by proximity, the humour in this wildly surreal romp is as pitch-black as it can be. But filmmaker Palfi is touching on some key elements of human interaction that manage to strike a chord despite the wacky variations in style and subject matter. And even though most of these themes are deeply grim, there's also a strong glimmer of hope.

LFF 2: It's a woman's world

Another day of movies at the 58th BFI London Film Festival. I had a superb interview with Brazilian filmmaker Daniel Ribeiro in the morning about his film The Way He Looks (see below), and then ended the day with a Q&A after a screening of The Cut with filmmaker Fatih Akin and actor Tahar Rahim. Meanwhile, festival highlights on Day 2 included Peter Strickland's astonishing The Duke of Burgundy (above). Here are some short comments on that and other films - full reviews will be on the website soon...

The Duke of Burgundy
dir Peter Strickland; with Sidse Babett Knudsen, Chiara D'Anna 14/UK ****
After Katalin Varga and Berberian Sound Studio, no one expects British filmmaker to make a straightforward movie, and this is far from the mainstream. Yet despite its superficially shocking premise the film is actually about the core elements in any relationship, and the vivid filmmaking and raw performances bring this out as the story develops.

Queen & Country
dir John Boorman; with Callum Turner, Caleb Landry Jones 14/UK ***
Essentially a meandering collection of nostalgic anecdotes, this gentle military comedy-drama is somewhat undermined by its uneven performances and unfocused plot. But it's full of likeable characters and enjoyable moments. And it nicely continues the tradition of irreverent war movies.

Pasolini

dir Abel Ferrara; with Willem Dafoe, Riccardo Scamarcio 14/It **

Swirling with ambition, this odd collage of a movie never quite connects its disparate parts together to communicate anything very meaningful to the audience. Shot in a murky, uneven style, director Ferrara has made it difficult to make out what writer Braucci intended with this Fellini-esque dip into the mind of an iconic filmmaker. 

The Way He Looks

dir Daniel Ribeiro; with Ghilherme Lobo, Fabio Audi 14/Br ****

Brazilian filmmaker Ribeiro expands his award-winning short I Don't Want to Go Back Alone in to a feature, the title of which translates, cheekily, Today I Want to Go Back Alone. Yes, he's taking a different approach this time, not just by expanding the cast and the themes, but also in his relaxed approach to what is a startlingly warm and effective coming-of-age drama.

Wild Life

dir Cedric Kahn; with Mathieu Kassovitz, Celine Sallette 14/Fr ****

Based in an astonishing true story, this free-spirited French drama can't help but get under the skin with its pungent premise and sharp characters. It's also directed with earthy honesty by Kahn to bring out the rougher edges of the people and places. And it quietly builds to a powerful emotional kick.

EIFF 8: Staring at the sea

Straight from Cannes, the anthology film 7 Days in Havana beings the EIFF back to Cuba again, with segments from a series of top directors. And the Latino seaside theme continues in Chile's The Lifeguard - both films are covered below, along with the world premiere of Peter Strickland's new movie. Last night was the festial's elite party in Edinburgh Castle, to which mere mortal journalists aren't invited. I haven't heard anything about how it went, but it was nice to have a free evening since there are two parties tonight: a tango-themed concert for Future My Love and a later event for the anthology film The Fourth Dimention.

7 Days in Havana
dir Pablo Trapero, Benicio Del Toro, et al; with John Hutcherson, Emir Kusturica 12/Sp ***
There's plenty of colour and culture in this anthology, which could have been titled La Habana Te Amo, to match the similarly uneven Paris Je T'Aime and New York I Love You. It has moments of artistic inventiveness, but barely breaks the surface... FULL REVIEW

Berberian Sound Studio
dir Peter Strickland; with Toby Jones, Cosimo Fusco 12/UK ****
Clever filmmaker Strickland (Katalin Varga) aims this film right at movie geeks, mixing comedy, drama and horror to tell the story of a tweedy British sound designer (Jones) who travels to a notorious Italian studio to mix the audio for a grisly 1970s schlock movie. The director insists that this is a serious historical drama, but the voice actors and sound artists all recognise it as a trashy romp about demonic witches. Intriguingly, Strickland only shows us the film within a film's title sequence, evoking the rest of it through a wonderfully detailed sound mix as we see how the audio track is assembled. This is often wickedly hilarious, not to mention an engaging look at analog sound assembly. Then things start to twist and turn, as the gruesome movie starts to merge with real life. Stunningly visual, the film is utterly mesmerising. Well, right up to the slightly unsatisfying coda.

The Lifeguard
dir Maite Alberdi; with Mauricio Rodriguez, Jean Pierre Palacios 11/Chl ****
From Chile, this sundrenched, sand-blown film chronicles a few days in the life of Mauricio, a lifeguard on a busy beach that has a fierce undercurrent. His philosophy is that preventing someone from getting into trouble is better than swimming to their rescue, so he uses his whistle liberally while never going into the water. This puts him at odds with Jean Pierre, the guard the next tower, who seems to do nothing all day long, waiting for someone to get into trouble. That's pretty much the plot of this film, which just follows Mauricio's interactions, including people asking stupid questions, trying to flout the rules, gossiping about each other and tormenting him about his dreadlocks. What makes it compelling viewing is the astounding cinematography, editing and sound mixing, which skilfully and artfully capture the tiniest details. And this includes getting far beneath Mauricio's skin.