44) Mark Kermode, I’m not.
As you may know - those of you, that is, who were once glued to my radio show before I was summarily silenced by the station I had so faithfully served - bitter? moi? - I claim to be the film critic who won’t give the game away. No plot spoilers from me. I am a firm believer that the best way to see a film is to see it cold, knowing as little about the story as possible, so that it is revealed to you exactly as the director and the writer intended.
I also make a point of not reading other reviews before I see a film, and of sticking my fingers in my ears and ululating should I stumble across one on the radio or television. My own reviews, on the other hand, can be safely read, without any risk of having the film ruined. What a pity they are not available for me to read before I have written them.
My reviewing method, in so far as I have one, is to try to give a feel and a flavour of what a film might be like, sometimes by comparing it others to which it bears a similarity. If all the fundamental plot points are given away in the first scene, then I might mention them, but otherwise I try to paint with the broadest brush I can find. And although I offer an opinion of the movie’s merits, sometimes a very strong opinion, I stress it is only an opinion. My views are, as are those of all reviewers, entirely subjective. In the end, the only opinion that matters, dear cinema goer, or Netflix subscriber, is yours.
Which brings me to the first few days of the London Film Festival. Or rather the press previews, since the Festival does not officially open until October 8th.
So far, I have attended nine screenings out of a possible twelve. I had to pay £40 for my press pass and I always aim to end up paying less than a quid a film, so that means I will have to see at least 41 this year. So far I’ve managed nine in four days, meaning the current average price is £4.44p. (Recurring.)
The first half- dozen films – in the order I saw them were these.
‘Bang Gang’ (A Modern Love Story) is a directorial debut by Eva Husson, about the extra mural activities of middle class French high school teens (from Biarritz according to the Film Festival notes.) ‘Bang Gang’ is strongly reminiscent of a vaguely notorious American film by Larry Clarke, called ‘Kids’. If you’ve seen that movie, you will know that these activities do not generally involve the wearing of clothes but do frequently feature the imbibing of various kinds of stimulants, not all of them legal.
Quite what the point of this film is I am not entirely sure in that it told us, forcefully and repeatedly, that, given the opportunity, young people are not averse to a cheap thrill of one kind or another. I don’t know about you, but I think I knew that already. What I didn’t know was that today’s young things are all so sexually self assured. Not for them, ’Bang Gang’ seems to suggest, any of the adolescent fumblings and insecurities of my generation. I have to say I found this just a little hard to believe.
At the end, there was a bit of heavy handed moralising which didn’t improve things one bit. If you like a bit of eye candy ’Bang Gang’ certainly does have that saving grace but that’s about the only one. Two stars out of five at most. ’Bang Gang’ is the First Feature Competition. Don’t fancy its chances.
But I would take ‘Bang Gang’ over ‘The Club’ any day. ‘The Club’ is a Chilean film about the lives of a group of elderly men and one woman and one greyhound who live together in a bleak seaside town. Actually, I think I would take going to the dentist and having my teeth extracted without an anaesthetic over seeing ‘The Club’. Not being a Catholic I didn’t identify with its religious or anti-religious themes – I wasn’t sure which axe it was grinding - and I wasn’t overly enamoured with the blow by blow descriptions of sexual depravity which feature heavily. It was as depressing an experience as I think I have ever had in a cinema.
No stars at all, and unless you are feeling vaguely suicidal and looking for something to push you into taking the final plunge, I can think of no possible reason for going to see it.
‘Cronies’ is an American supposed comedy about three young men, two black and one white - a buddy movie of sorts I suppose - who cruise the streets of an American city (if we are told which one, I’ve forgotten) in search of much the same things as the middle class kids in ’Bang Gang’ enjoy. There is prolific use of the N word and that is about all that has stuck in my mind. It wasn’t unwatchable, but at £4.44 recurring I am not at all sure it was worth the entrance money. And even if I succeed in getting that down to below a quid, I may not feel any different.
A grudging two stars.
Just when I was beginning to think that my forty quid had been money not at all well spent, along came ‘Virgin Mountain’, an Icelandic film built around the empty life of a morbidly obese middle aged airport baggage handler whose greatest joy is to play wargames with toy tanks. Doesn’t sound that promising when put like that, but it turns out that there is hope even for one whose six pack is so well concealed.
I thought ‘Virgin Mountain’ was terrific, with a wonderfully moving performance by Gunnar Jonsson as the central character, Fusi, and beautifully paced story telling by the director Dagur Kuri whose own script assiduously avoids the predictable and the sentimental. Definitely worth going to see when it is on at the Festival which is at 8.45 on October 8th at the Richmix and at the same time on the 10th at the ICA. Don’t panic if you miss it, because it might yet get picked up by a distributor and end up at your local art house cinema. Four stars.
‘Madam Courage’ is an Algerian offering about a young drug-fuelled petty criminal who gets the hots for a young girl he has mugged and then starts to stalk her. Possibly had the ingredients to be interesting but wasn’t. I wouldn’t break your neck to see this. Two stars. (Seems to be my default score.)
‘The Here After’, which I think is Swedish – it’s not entirely clear from the programme notes - begins with John, a boy in his late teens, packing a suitcase and then hugging a woman who turns out not to be his Mum but some sort of housemother in a secure institution from which he is about to be released.
Nothing else can be revealed about the story without ruining your appreciation of ‘The Here After’ because the genius of this film – and I thought it exceptional – is in the way it subtly explains what the reason for the boy’s incarceration was, how the continuing impact of that affects him after his release, and how it will continue to mark him for the rest of his life. It reminds us that some things, once done, can never be undone.
Lots of very convincing performances particularly by the brilliant Ulrik Munther - who I am amazed to have just discovered on Google is a Swedish pop-star - as John.
‘The Here After’, written and directed by Magnus Von Horn, is also in the First Feature competition and if I were a judge – fat chance – it would, I am sure, be in the frame for the prize. Four stars from me. On at 9pm , Friday 9th,at the Soho and at 1pm at the Ritzy. Go.
