London Film Festival
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LFF 2013: ‘The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas’ review
★★★★☆ Hellenic cinema has, for the past few years, been dominated by the Greek Weird Wave. It’s a movement that has sought to encapsulate a confused and disorientated country, and which arguably peaked early with Yorgos Lanthimos’ familial oddity Dogtooth (2009). Elina Psykou’s The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas (2013) manages to just about adhere…
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LFF 2013: ‘Abuse of Weakness’ review
★★☆☆☆ Isabelle Huppert surmounts the emotional and physical restraints of her character to breathe life into Catherine Breillat’s Abuse of Weakness (2013), an autobiographical drama about deception and dependency from a director whose oeuvre often focuses on women in peril. Huppert plays Maud, a middle-aged filmmaker of some notoriety. We first meet her as she…
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LFF 2013: ‘We Are the Best!’
★★★★☆ Moving away from the stark, often serious approach he’s become notorious for, Lukas Moodysson’s We Are the Best! (2013) is a winning Swedish coming-of-age tale about three spirited girls who form a punk band. A breezy and tender reading of Coco Moodysson’s (Lukas’ wife) semi-autobiographical graphic novel Never Goodnight, We Are the Best! may…
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LFF 2013: ‘Tracks’ review
★★★☆☆ In 1975, Robyn Davidson arrived in a remote Australian town with a crazy ambition to cross the desert to the ocean using wild camels – which she planned to capture and tame – to carry her supplies, accompanied by her faithful dog Diggity. Inspired as much by a dislike of people as a love…
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LFF 2013: ‘Under the Skin’ review
★★★★★ Almost a decade since the release of the divisive yet magnificent Birth (2004), Jonathan Glazer makes his long overdue return to screens with Under the Skin (2013); an oppressive, arresting work of pure genius. The film is a beguiling visual and aural experience, following the tenuous thread of British science fiction while simultaneously blazing…
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LFF 2013: ‘Of Good Report’ review
★★★★☆ Rasping breath accompanies a pristine, monochrome shot from the point-of-view of a man stumbling across an area of scrubland. Two workmen stop to stare as he is revealed like some sub-Saharan gunslinger, pistol protruding from the top of his trousers, face and shirt awash with blood. A stark close-up follows his hand as he…
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LFF 2013: ‘Closed Curtain’ review
★★☆☆☆ In 2010, filmmaker Jafar Panahi was prosecuted by the Iranian government. Accused of colluding to undermine national security and producing propaganda against the Islamic Republic, he was sentenced to imprisonment and a twenty-year filmmaking ban. Since then, whilst awaiting the result of an appeal, the director has produced two feature films. The first was…
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LFF 2013: ‘An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker’ review
★★★☆☆ An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (2013) is the fifth feature from Academy Award-winning director Danis Tanovic. A darkly naturalistic piece of social realism, Tanovic’s latest examines the discrimination of the Roma community and the oppression of the socially underprivileged in his native Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nazif (Nazif Mujic) struggles to…
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LFF 2013: ‘A Long and Happy Life’ review
★★★★☆ From Boris Khlebnikov, one half of the directing duo responsible for 2003’s Koktebel, comes A Long and Happy Life (2013), a pensive and meekly existential drama about one man’s solitary fight against corruption and turmoil in Russia. Sasha (Aleksandr Yatsenko) has recently moved from the city and bought a farm in order to start…
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LFF 2013: ‘B for Boy’ review
★★★☆☆ Umut Dağ’s Kuma (2013) brought the unconventional marital arrangement of second wives into UK cinemas earlier this year to impressive effect, and the practice appears again in Chika Anadu’s B for Boy (2013). A markedly differing scenario to Kuma, this potential successor is in place to take over spousal duties should the current wife…