46) Freaking Out – Almost Literally – And Without The Use of Any Drugs – Other Than the Prescription Kind – at the Film Festival.

A funny thing happened on my way to see ‘Suffragette’ on the last day of the London Film Festival Press Previews. Or, if you’re anywhere near my age of thirty three and three-quarters  – I only celebrate birthdays biannually – a very scary one.

Walking from Piccadilly Tube station to the Odeon Leicester Square at  the absurdly uncivilised time to see a film of 9am, I stopped in at Starbucks, Coventry Street to buy my usual poison, a Decaff Skinny Mocha (size: Grandé, which, inexplicably, means medium in Starbuckese) to take with me into the cinema.  I duly ordered and paid for it (about two hundred quid I think)  and moved to the end of the counter to wait for the barista to work his magic.

As I settled down to wait, he called out, “Fanny!”(or some such), and a  girl stepped forward to pick up her Vanilla Gingerbread Flat White Frappé. Then a few seconds later, the barista shouted, “Fred” (possibly) and a chap collected his Triple Shot Soya Macchiato (Wet). As this was going on I was pondering the thorny problem of how my order would be recognised since the girl who served me hadn’t bothered to ask for my name.

And then came the funny, freaky, scary part.

“Richard” called the barista and put the cup into my instantly shaking hand. How on earth…? I looked at the side of the cup and sure enough there was my name. I wandered from the store dazed, confused and feeling more than a soupçon uneasy. There had to be an explanation, but what could it possibly be?

And as I walked into Leicester Square and from there into the cinema to take my seat for ‘Suffragette’, all the possibilities ran through my head. Although it wasn’t a branch of Starbucks I go to a lot  I have been before, so could the girl who served me have recognised me?  I thought back to what she looked like and I couldn’t really remember anything about her, apart from the fact that she was black - and  I wasn’t even sure about that. It had been such a perfunctory transaction. “Skinny Decaff Mocha Grande please.”‘That’ll be two thousand pounds.” And that was it. None of  the  cheery customer-to-counter-tottie badinage in which I am wont to indulge  when I have more time.

Or was that it? Could she have asked my name, and I had somehow forgotten? This was the most logical explanation but how could that be when  I had instantly registered the fact that other people were being called for by name when I hadn’t been asked for mine. Unless I had been asked. In which case……EEEEEEKKK!!!! I frequently forget things – keys, glasses, names, the usual – but this seemed right off the scale.

I tried to put it out of my mind as the film began. I put the cup into the space in the armrest they considerately provide at the Odeon Leicester Square (average ticket price for paying customers: life savings and change) and I turned my phone to silent, not just relying on the feel of the switch, but double checking to see  the  diagonal line  had crossed through the volume graphic on the screen. Then I put the phone in my jacket pocket, zipped it up, and settled down to watch the film.

Then came freaky moment number two. About half way through the film a phone went off. For fucks sake, I thought, how careless, how selfish. Can’t people remember to turn their sodding phones off ? It was playing an odd sing songy tune that I had never heard come from any phone and it just went on and on. People started to mutter. Heads began to turn. Didn’t blame them. It was bloody annoying.

And then the heads began to turn in my direction. “Nothing to do with  me” I mouthed and began to smugly cast around to see which of my neighbours was the guilty party. But on went the strange ringtone. On and on. And on. And then I noticed people from all sides were looking  at me and pointing.

“Not mine, definitely…not…mine…” I whispered again, but slightly less confidently. The horrible hot prickly sensation of shame and acute embarrassment began to creep up my neck and cheeks began to burn. But no…,. surely not….after all, hadn’t I?…… And then someone was pointing at my jacket folded up on the floor, a Uniqlo jacket, one of those fiendishly clever super-lite quilted ones that folds up into the size of a boiled sweet but are incredibly warm and made of some ingenious space-age material, and through the ingenious space-age material I could see a bright pulsing light.  Oh  shit! Shit, shit, shit!!!

I picked up the jacket, tore at the zip on my pocket which needless to say snagged on the ingenious space age material and seemed to take about a month to wrench free. At last I pulled  the phone out, the vile sing-songy ringtone now seeming louder to me than  if I’d been stuck in a phone box with Metallica doing an encore.

Desperately fumbling in the dark I finally managed to turn the infernal thing off completely, hanging my head in shame for about five minutes afterwards - completely pointlessly since no-one could see -  thereby very possibly missing a crucial plot point in the film. When the lights went up at the end I feebly held up my i-phone  to show those around me that the volume had been switched off all along, but the look in their eyes told me that I had been judged and found wanting. ‘A likely story’ was their silent, damning verdict.

I left the cinema reeling. First, the name thing, then the phone thing. After a lifetime of saying pah and phooey to any notion of the paranormal, I was now beginning to wonder if I had been wrong all along.  Perhaps there really were poltergeists and dybbuks and things that go bump in the night. My hitherto unshakeable, Dawkinsian belief in cold, earthly logic was being severely tested.

I had to resolve this. So I turned back  into the now empty cinema to search for my seat and retrieve my empty cup. Eventually I found it – actually not empty and the remains, after two hours, still surprisingly warm, so I got a bit of added value by taking another glug  - before  marching back into Starbucks. I found the girl who I thought might have served me, and asked her if she remembered me to which she answered firmly in the negative.  Then I showed her  my name on the side of the cup, and asked if that was her writing.

“Yes, definitely” she said.

“But you didn’t ask me my name.” I said.

Puzzled look  with overtones of pity for the confused elderly gentleman.

“How else would I have known it?”

How indeed?  I wandered out again,  and this time made for the Apple store. Angrily I told them the story of my humiliation in the cinema. I didn’t actually threaten to sue but that was probably only because I was too desperate for some kind of  explanation.  But they didn’t have one.

“Have you ever known such a thing to happen before?” I asked the Brazilian/Finnish/East Timorian super cool young Apple person who was attending to me. Sad shake of the head.

“What am I to do?”I wailed.

Sadder shake of the head.

“See if happens again” was the totally inadequate best he could offer.

Later that night, I told the whole sorry story to my daughter, Hannah,  who was unsuitably amused. She clearly had grave doubts as to whether I had really switched the phone off but she did have a possible explanation for the Starbucks conundrum.

“Perhaps she read it”, she said, pointing at the Film Festival Press Accreditation name tag still hanging around my neck.

I looked down at it. I was doubtful. Hadn’t it been covered up by my  super-lite Uniqlo quilted jacket? And wouldn’t the girl have mentioned that when I went back to ask?  On the other hand the first question I had asked was whether she recognised me, and she said she didn’t so maybe…..

I now had thee choices. 1.Believe in the possibility of this hole-filled explanation. 2. Go back into Starbucks the next day, when I would be in the vicinity again  to see more movies, and find the girl to ask her specifically if she remembered seeing my name on the tag. 3. Accept that either invisible gremlins in the ether, or frightening memory drop-out  could be the cause.

Being the obsessive worrier that I am, I actually chose no.2, but a part of me – most of me to be truthful – was relieved to find she wasn’t on duty. Because, in the absence of sworn testimony to the contrary, I could  cling on to the possibility, however small, that no.1, Hannah’s name tag explanation, was indeed the answer.

And that’s where I am right now. I’m just not ready to entertain the idea that it might be no.3 in any form whatsoever. Because if I were, I would have to accept that either all my past certainties were built on sand or that my future looks like it might be distinctly unpromising.

So, finally, back to ‘Suffragette’. Rather like  ’12 Years A Slave’, the festival favourite of a couple of years ago,  ‘Suffragette’ is an historical film. but one which deals with the hot topic of the day. In the case of ’12 years..’ it was white on black racism, for ‘Suffragette’ it is feminism. (Funny how the ‘isms’ in these words mean totally opposite things – negative in racism, positive in feminism. I wish somebody could explain that.)

Because of its subject matter and the position it took, I always thought that ’12 Years A Slave’ was allowed a lot more  ‘critical slack’ than most films and, though good, I thought it had flaws. (A year later ‘Selma’, another historical film about racism  which, for me,  was superior in every way, received far fewer plaudits and baubles. But that train had left the station. There was no  way a film about racism was going to win the Oscar for a second year running.)

Feminism is all the rage right now so this is the perfect time for ‘Suffragette’, and  all the ‘name’ critics seem to be falling over backwards to like it. However  I, as you will have guessed, semi-demur.

My gripes aren’t with the script which I think is pretty well done, but a) with the rather stagey, ‘Downton‘-like direction – although perhaps that’s slightly unfair in that British films set in that period are inevitably going to feel rather too familiar – and b) with my real bugbear, the casting.

Firstly, I just don’t buy Carey Mulligan, such an obviously middle class English girl, in the part of a working class laundry hand. The Cockney accent seemed completely forced to me. Then again, I never quite believe Carey Mulligan in anything. As my friend Jammie perspicaciously pointed out, it’s the Kiera Knightley thing. Just as you always know it’s Kiera playing the part so you always know it’s Carey. At least I do.   (Do you remember Lacey Turner, the Eastenders actress, playing the army paramedic in Afghanistan in the BBC series ‘Our Girl’ last year? Wouldn’t she have been perfect for this? Except of course that nobody in America has ever heard of her. I wonder if she, or somebody like her, was ever even vaguely, considered?)

My  second problem is the miscasting of Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst. Not only is her accent bizarre – I doubt even Professor Higgins would have the faintest idea where  she’s supposed to come from – but she is only on-screen for about five minutes. I’d love to know how much she cost.

I wouldn’t suggest that Carey Mulligan was chosen for the sole reason that she’s known in the States but it’s blindingly obvious  that Meryl Streep was. As brilliant as she usually is, she brings nothing particular to this film other than her box office appeal, and considerably more directorial sleight of hand is required to disguise the fact. It’s really  much too crude.

So three stars for ‘Suffragette’ from me. Good story, enjoyable and occasionally revealing, but the wrong casting. And I suspect that , though it is bound to pick up a mantelpiece of Baftas, ‘Suffragette’ will be quite quickly forgotten.

It certainly will be me, but, I frevently hope, not for the wrong reasons.