Best of the London Film Festival
Films to watch out for in the coming months
Feature by Colin Dibben
You are almost guaranteed to have a good time at a London Film Festival screening or event. But a film festival is a particular kind of beast. It is good at showcasing certain types of film, both those that will attract liberal and literate audiences on cinema and streaming release; and those that may not actually register against the background noise on general release, if they even get one.
Everything I saw was high quality and pretty original, but the following films stood out as having something unique, intriguing or truly immersive about them.
I’d like to think that all of these films will get the recognition they deserve, even if they only find a loving home on a streaming service.
On Falling
Director-screenwriter Laura Carreira’s quietly intense drama of working life follows Aurora (Joana Santos), who works in a massive Scottish warehouse. Aurora spends her working days picking barcoded items off shelves, fulfilling orders against the clock. When she isn’t working, she lives alone and lonely in a flatshare with other casual workers.
Aurora’s predicament is outlined with precision and human warmth, the latter being the one thing she wants and cannot get. The success of this film lies as much with Santos’ appealing performance (such eyes! – how can anyone not reach out?!) as with the direction and script. But both of these are tight and wisely eschew both sentimentality and depressive identification with Aurora. The job interview scene – Aurora draws a blank when asked what she does in her spare time – completely floored me and I think it is one of the strongest moments in recent British cinema.
Soundtrack to a Coup D’etat
Johan Grimonprez’s uses a new perspective to breathe life, depth and detail into the story of one of the founding moments of the post-colonial era: the birth, short life and violent death of the First Congolese Republic, culminating in the 1961 killing of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the newly independent Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Using archive footage and on-screen textual quotes (including footnotes on sources!), the film builds into a total picture of the power games played out by the UN, the USSR and the US, the latter eventually using local lackeys and mercenaries to wreak bloody havoc.
But it is the pan-African and African diaspora aspirational side of the story that takes centre stage, largely through the use of passionate, live jazz recordings from the period in question, from Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong to Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane.
Jazz is the appropriate soundtrack to this story of compromised freedom because the CIA funded jazz ambassadors who supposedly helped keep Europe safe from Communist influence failed spectacularly in Africa, where it was obvious to most people that the US was trying its utmost not to give full citizen’s rights (=freedom) to its own Black population.
At the same time, jazz was also the sound of pan-African and Black nationalist aspiration – a howl of pride and pain that still packs a mighty punch, as you will discover if you see this film.
There are loads of revealing details here that give new impetus to finding out more about the period: how an ultra-articulate Malcolm X got involved in politicking around both the Congo and Cuba; the role of powerhouse activist Andrée Blouin, that the CIA plot to kill Fidel Castro with exploding cigars was supposed to unfold in a Harlem hotel.
Misericordia
If you like a film that keeps you on your toes with surprising tone twists, check out the latest film from French provocateur Alain Guiraudie, who made his name with the explicit gay, existential thriller Stranger by the Lake a decade ago.
Walking enigma Jérémie (Jérémie Pastor, looking like a rather dissolute Peter Pan) returns to his rural French hometown after the death of a schoolmate’s father. He has soon moved into the schoolmate’s old bedroom and is offering filial TLC to the elderly widow, much to the disgust of just about everyone else in the town. But then you see Jérémie caressing a photo album picture of the dead man at the beach, in his budgie-smuggler Speedos.
Meanwhile, the local priest has also taken a liking to Jérémie. Then there’s a disappearance and a murder, the police get involved and it looks like no one will get any sleep in this sleepy French town.
Mystery, farce, Autumn colours, fungi, crime, transgression and the unruliness of desire all get a look in during this constantly intriguing film. It’s great that you can do so much with such a simple premise, although for me the final drift into comedy was a twist too far. The film also looks great, thanks to Claire Mathon’s cinematography.
Sugar Island
Johanné Gómez Terrero’s debut fictional feature tells a simple familial story, set in a rural community in the Dominican Republic, then juxtaposes it with political, historical and mythical resonances.
When 14-year-old Makenya (Yelidá Díaz) declares she is pregnant, her impoverished mother and grandfather are distraught. He is busy fighting for his pension, she hates the idea of another mouth to feed. But Makenya’s dreams tell her a different, extramundane story: of sugar and serpents and a hidden knowledge of her people’s history.
The story plays out against the backdrop of a contemporary struggle for sugar workers’ pensions, but is transfigured to epic and mythical levels by intense colouration and historical resonances. The film punctuates the telling of its story with vivid, carnivalesque representations of Afro-Dominican cultural traditions.
This film contains some powerful, colourful imagery and makes a heartfelt argument for the power of cultural memory and reinvigorated folk traditions in creating social justice. It felt completely fresh and exciting to watch and gives a hallucinatory kind of insight into a culture many of us know little about.
Hard Truths
Mike Leigh’s latest movie is going to get a lot of love in the coming months. It reminded me of his 1993 film Naked, with the pissed-off young bloke switched out for a pissed-off middle-aged Black woman.
Pansy (a great turn by Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a very mouthy woman, taking her anger out with extreme verbal fireworks on almost everyone she meets. Her husband and son have gone beyond ‘long-suffering’ and into the arena of PTSD; Pansy’s sister Chantal tries to work out exactly what it is that is annoying Pansy so pathologically.
What really works here is the organic and necessary move from tone to tone: I found Pansy’s potty mouth initially very funny; then I flagged that actually the poor woman has profound mental health issues; and the film’s exploration of her existential malaise comes at just the right point.
I’ve often thought it odd that Leigh’s collaborative approach to script and characters should throw up so often these extreme characters – but here the almost psychotherapeutic approach makes for an emotionally satisfying film.
Hanami
Writer-director Denise Fernandes’ debut is an immaculate tone poem to the austere beauty of the Cabo Verde islands, as well as a touching coming-of-age story.
A young girl, Nana, is raised by her grandmother in a small family unit living on the volcanic island of Fogo. Her mother has gone to Europe to work and then fallen ill. As she grows, Nana wonders at the traditional ways of life she sees around her, along with the melancholic traces of those that have left the island. When her mother returns and asks here to go to Europe too, Nana doesn’t hesitate to stand up for what has become important in her young life.
This is a beautifully shot, dreamlike film that is full of the woozy sounds and misty light landscapes of Fogo. Early interior ‘still life’ shots bring to mind Tarkovsky and Paradjanov but the film soon opens up and embraces a vision – based in real locations – that is gritty and dreamy at the same time and pretty unique.
Sujo
Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero’s film is deeply humanist – in the way you associate with a 19th century novel (Hardy’s Jude the Obscure gets referenced) – to winning effect. It is an epic tale of a Mexican boy – the son of a cartel killer – and his moral and psychological growth.
When his father is killed, Sujo is raised by his aunts in rural Michoacan. He has to be hidden from the cartel in his early years, which makes him dependent on the love and care of the women around him. When he is eventually tempted into cartel employment, things go south fast. But Sujo escapes to Mexico City where, once again, a woman helps him to work out his own personal morality.
Avoiding many of the violent tropes of films set in contemporary Mexico, this is a refreshingly optimistic reminder of the power of both female nurture and free education. There are some nice shots and glimpses of disturbing violence, but on the whole this is a positive exploration of possibilities for those living in the shadow of the war on drugs.
