The Man in the Orange Jacket

London Film Festival 2014. BFI South Bank, 14/10/2014
Billed as the first ever Latvian horror film, Aik Karapetian's feature is like a rollercoaster in that it keeps the adrenaline flowing, but at the end of the ride we haven't really gone anywhere. The main protagonist spends several days living the good life in the house of a couple he has murdered. The house owner is a large employer of dock workers who has just retrenched hundreds of his employees, a detail which seems to be there to provide a justification for his murder. What follows reflects the confused state of mind of the murderer as another orange-jacketed killer seems to be after him. While we wait for a final showdown that doesn't seem to come (or does it?) he eats out at an expensive restaurant, goes shopping, imagines intruders, meets an associate of the house owner, and orders prostitutes to entertain him.

The large mansion in which the film is mostly set almost begs for the cold and detached Haneke-like cinematography that we get, but unlike Haneke, Karapetian doesn't resist shocking the audience by ratcheting up the tension and getting in closer when the violence finally occurs. The film crosses a line at a couple of points, with suggestions of necrophilia that are really superfluous to the story and seem to be there for shock value (and if so, why the repetition?). There is a vagueness at the heart of the film, beginning with an ambiguity about the identity of the main protagonist, and much of the action that subsequently turns out to be imagined. It is almost as if Karapetian isn't sure of which way to take the story and therefore filmed and included every option under the guise of dream sequences or the murderer's disturbed state of mind. In the end, as with the rollercoaster, much adrenaline is released but ultimately we are no further along - in our understanding of what we have just seen. This lack of conviction almost seems to make the point that all the awful things we see are a product of the imagination anyway, so none of it matters and we shouldn't get worked up about it, surely defeating the whole point of making this type of film.

There is plenty of style and no shortage of technical skill demonstrated in this film, but it may have worked better as an atmospheric short. Stretched out to a feature (albeit a short one), its shortcomings are all too apparent.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night + Director Q+A

London Film Festival 2014. Odeon West End, 13/10/2014
Based on a 2011 short of the same title, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a stylishly told vampire story, written and directed by the Iranian-American Ana Lily Amirpour. The unnamed girl of the title (Sheila Vand) is a vampire who walks the streets at night, and encounters a prostitute, a transvestite, a heroin addict, a drug dealer, a street urchin and a young man called Arash (Arash Marandi). Each character is featured in turn in the parallel tales of Arash and the sinister black-shrouded girl, whose very funny chance encounter one night sparks the romance at the centre of the story.

Although it is a fairly standard human-vampire romance, the different geographical and cultural setting adds interest, and I am curious about Amirpour's comic book series that is said to expand on the characters. The dim black and white cinematography captures the right mood, and industrial noise is used to create tension to great effect. There is a very clear stylistic debt to David Lynch, even down to the superb use of music, with slow rockabilly and 80s disco, as well as Iranian pop music (I hope the soundtrack gets a release). Like Lynch, there is a detached sense of time and a sense that the film takes place outside the real world - a sort of dreamy Iran/California desert hybrid.

This has to be one of the more interesting of the continuing flurry of vampire films, and it has made it onto the shortlist for best overall film at the festival. Judged by these high standards, I think it is too slight - the director admits that there is no political intent and there is little evidence of subtext - and borrows too heavily from Lynch to be a serious contender. As a standalone film however it works well as dark entertainment, the novel setting expanding the genre.

Viktoria + Director Q+A

London Film Festival 2014. BFI South Bank, 12/10/2014

Viktoria is an imaginative semi autobiographical tale of a girl growing up through the fall of communism and its continuing aftermath in Bulgaria. The eponymous heroine is born in 1979 without a bellybutton, and is immediately proclaimed as the Communist Party's child of the decade, in spite of her mother's ongoing desperation to escape the country. Her family is rewarded with a car and apartment, and the girl has a direct phone line to the party leader. The young Viktoria's every whim is indulged, her every action is applauded and she is treated as a princess who can do no wrong. As the iron curtain falls across Europe her privileges recede and the strains upon her family are laid bare.

This is a story about family and the alienation between generations that is exacerbated by external events. Boryana, Viktoria's mother (superbly played by Irmena Chichikova), has little to do with her own mother (she is more Party member than mother), even though Boryana and her husband share a tiny flat with her until Viktoria's arrival. Viktoria's own independence from her mother is materialised by Viktoria's unusual anatomy and Boryana's inability to express milk for her. Writer and director Maya Vitkova brings a lot of personal baggage to the screen, and manages to make it feel relevant and worthwhile telling next to the simultaneously unfolding geopolitical events. The cinematography is stylish and carefully composed, with clever use of colours to encode the different stages of Viktoria's life and the implied political and familial backdrop. The middle section that focuses on the 10 year old Viktoria's overindulged childhood is itself perhaps a little overindulged, and could have benefited from editing to maintain the pacing.

On the whole Viktoria deftly manages the tricky walk between entertaining and telling an interesting story while being informative about everyday life behind the disintegrating iron curtain.

Butter On The Latch + Q+A

London Film Festival 2014. ICA Cinema, 12/10/2014
Butter On The Latch is Josephine Decker's debut feature and one of two films she brings to this year's LFF, the other being Thou Wast Mild and Lovely. Completely different in style to TWMAL, Butter documents the ups and downs of the friendship between Sarah (Sarah Small) and Isolde (Isolde Chae-Lawrence) as they participate in a Balkan folk music festival in the Californian forest. Their dynamic is disrupted by the appearance of Steph (Charlie Hewson) and tensions with Isolde rise as Sarah and Steph become closer.

As in TWMAL we have often abstract cinematography, but in this case it is more abstract and less story driven, given the minimal plot and only three main speaking parts. The effect is suitably disorientating given the whirlwind of emotions between Sarah and Isolde. The improvised dialogue is believable, and the real life music festival backdrop punctuates the swirling torment with diverting musical and dance interludes. Like in TWMAL Decker leaves many gaps for the audience's imagination to fill.

It will be interesting to see whether the differences between Decker's two films here are an indication of her future direction. Personally I prefer the more narrative-driven style of TWMAL, which manages to entertain without losing the impressionistic edginess. Kudos to both director and Sarah Small for an informative and inspiring Q+A after the screening.

Free Fall (Szabadesés)

London Film Festival 2014. Hackney Picturehouse, 11/10/2014
A housebound geriatric and his wife. A hygiene obsessed couple who have sex wrapped in cling film. A man introduces his naked fiancée at a dinner party. A slapstick threesome, complete with laughter track. A gynecologist performs a reverse childbirth procedure, simply because it didn't work out for the parents. A child is inhibited by an enormous bull that only he can see, and is mistreated as a result. A meditation guru resents a student who transcends matter.
These seemingly unconnected vignettes make up Gyorgy Palfi's Free Fall. Although bizarre and often amusing, the stories are too slight and tangential to make for a completely satisfactory 80 minutes unless perhaps you look at them as a series of abstract shorts, which the director denies is his intention.
Up against Palfi's atmospheric and innovative Hukkle and the gorgeous and bizarre Taxidermia, this latest foray into his unique headspace is a bit of a let down, which is perhaps understandable given that Palfi was considering giving up the film business because of difficulties in getting funding. The soundtrack's use of Amon Tobin's music is a highlight.

Thou Wast Mild and Lovely + Director Q+A

London Film Festival 2014. ICA Cinema, 10/10/2014
Thou Wast Mild and Lovely is one of two films brought to the LFF by director Josephine Decker. It tells the story of Akin, who is hired for the summer to help Jeremiah and daughter Sarah at their farm. Though the married Akin is mocked mercilessly by her father for his perceived unmasculine ways, a bond develops between him and Sarah, which is consummated one day out in the fields. The trio's increasingly odd behaviour comes to a violent climax at a gathering in the third act.
The (Kentucky?) countryside is idealised, all primary colours and soft-edged - the human protagonists by contrast introduce coarse tools, violence, manipulation and animal lust, and commune ecstatically with the pure earth. The film is shot with a very narrow focal plane throughout, guiding the viewer's eye around each scene while emphasising the insular and oppressive feeling around the apparently isolated farm. We get fleeting glimpses of things that may or may not be central to the plot. Ambient sounds are amplified, at times drowning out the dialogue, so we often only hear fragments of dialogue. The cumulative effect is to engage the audience to seek their own truth about the background of the story, be it Jeremiah's true relationship to Sarah, what happened to previous workers at the farm, and the characters' motivations. For me the voiceover by Sarah which begins and ends the film doesn't really tally with the rest of the film which seems to follow Akin's perspective (with the exception of the hilarious bovine POV scene). 
Nevertheless, in only her second feature Decker dips her toes into the impressionist lexicon used by directors like Terence Malick and Shane Carruth and applies it in a more linear (some would say more coherent) fashion to very impressive genre bending effect with humour, drama and unflinching violence. I look forward to seeing where she goes next.

Hard to Be a God, Metamorphoses and Oxi: An Act of Resistance

Day 2 at LFF2014
Day 2 of the LFF provided plenty of food for thought, with common threads running through the three films I saw, even though they are not linked in the programme, and there was certainly no effort on my behalf to link them when planning the day's punishing cross-London film tour.


Hard To Be a God + intro by Svetlana Karmalita
London Film Festival 2014. BFI South Bank, 9/10/2014

The LFF audience take steps to ensure they stay to the final credits

Hard To Be a God is Russian filmmaker Alexei German's final work, the finishing touches of which (mostly sound edits) were completed by his screenwriter widow Svetlana Karmalita and son. In a lengthy introduction, Karmalita warned the audience that this was a film that polarised people. Moreover, she said that there was no plot at all in the first half of the three hour film, and that leaving at this point would be a rational and intelligent response and that she wouldn't blame anyone that did so. Having our expectations raised thus, we eagerly awaited the action.

The first half sets the scene in Arkanar, a planet that is 800 years or so behind earth in development, where there was no renaissance and all the intellectuals and skilled people have been hunted down and brutally slaughtered. Those that remain are a bunch of uncultured and very unhygienic barbarians. A party of scientists arrived from Earth some time ago and have settled to live on Arkanar. The outsiders' intellectual and physical advantages lead to their being referred to as Gods by the natives. The long introduction doesn't seem all that indulgent in the end, as the planet, it's society and customs are so bizarre. Everyone communicates through half grunted greetings, spitting, broken noses and rubbing snot on each others faces. This film is a hygiene freak's worst nightmare. The world German creates is remarkable in its coherence and detail, conveyed through meticulous tableaux captured through his wandering black and white camera.

The plot, such as it is, is minimal. Don Rumata, one of the visiting Earth scientists has resignedly assimilated and made his home on the brutal planet. His morning routine begins with a jazz sax solo, during which his slaves and minions stuff rags into their ears. His presence threatens the ruling Don Reba, who attempts to get rid of him. In the ensuing showdown Rumata singlehandedly massacres Reba's army. There are clear references to anti-intellectualism in totalitarian society, the responsibility of the powerful and the place of the intelligentsia in the cultural orthodoxy.

Hard To Be a God is without doubt a test of endurance, and one of tolerance for bodily emissions. German's wet and muddy Arkanar is almost Python-esque when revelling in its squalor - "It's squelchy", says one grotesque imbecile, "It's always been squelchy", replies another, (sniffs), "Smells like shit" - but is an amazing construction and utterly believable, all done on an enormous scale, and without cgi. It works well as an allegory, and though long in duration and thin on plot, it is a far more immersive, thoughtful and meaningful experience than something like the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series of films, but is perhaps not what anyone would choose for a Sunday afternoon at the multiplex.



Metamorphoses
London Film Festival 2014. Lumière, 9/10/2014

In Metmorphoses, Christophe Honoré transposes Ovid's tales of gods and mortals from ancient Greece to modern day France. From my rusty memories of early secondary school adaptations it appears that Honoré has gone for relatively straight retellings of the fables, with a few external details like cars, police and women in hijab lending a modern day edge to the stories.

Europa, a high school student is led through a series of adventures by Jupiter, Bacchus and Orpheus. There is an erotic emphasis that I don't remember from the child-friendly versions (understandably I suppose), along with the violence and vindictive vengefulness of the seemingly emotionally immature deities.

Like Hard To Be a God, Metamorphoses addresses power and responsibility, but there is less of the easy moralising seen in the junior versions of these stories. Honoré's recontextualising goes some way towards making these stories relevant for a modern audience, but the theatrical deadpan acting style employed here proves unnecessarily distancing for this viewer.



Oxi: An Act of Resistance + Director Q+A
London Film Festival 2014. ICA Cinema, 9/10/2014

In Oxi, director Ken McMullen addresses the modern day Greek financial crisis by referring to ancient Greek texts on ethics and politics. The film is assembled from dramatic sections depicting a french detective and a mysterious sphinx, poems, Greek theatre and interviews with politicians and members of the public who have been affected by the crisis.

McMullen's passionate riposte to mainstream coverage of the crisis outside Greece points out that the Greek people are victims of a disconnect between democracy and power and the prioritisation of the markets above ethics and social justice. Debt has enslaved the Greeks, but McCullen makes the point that western civilisation owes a huge cultural debt to Greece for the very foundations of modern democracy.

The film makes its points, but for this viewer (a fairly intelligent and open minded non-classical scholar) this particular use of the classic texts is alienating, not in the sense that I am not open to the insights from these texts, but in that they add a needless layer of obfuscation where I think making more tangible connections between long established ethical principles and the current crisis could be more effective without sacrificing the film's intelligence or its wider resonances. I would not think that anyone who has benefited from a classical education and is thus familiar with the ancient texts needs to be told that the invisible hand of the so called free market and current economic system are morally indifferent and have consequences. I am not familiar with McMullen's other works, but considering this film in isolation I maintain that though accessibility isn't everything, I question its effectiveness towards the director's stated aim of taking on mainstream coverage in this seemingly obtuse way.