Festivals
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Epilogue’ review
★★★★☆ With Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012), winner of this year’s Palme d’Or, also playing at the London Film Festival, it’s possible that Amir Manor’s quiet drama Epilogue (2012) may be somewhat overlooked. That would be a real shame, however, as this touching tale of an octogenarian couple struggling through their disconnect with modern life in Israel…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Our Children’ review
★★★★☆ Belgian writer and director Joachim Lafosse impresses with ‘difficult’ relationship drama Our Children (À perdre la raison, 2012), starring Émilie Dequenne and reuniting A Prophet (2010) lead duo Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup. Unequivocally tough and emotionally draining, Lafosse’s latest makes no apologies for its bleak portrayal of a slowly disintegrating, non-traditional family unit, but remains…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Sightseers’ review
★★★★☆ Director Ben Wheatley completes a critically acclaimed trilogy of quietly sinister, darkly comic, deeply British features with Sightseers (2012), an hilarious, caravan-based road movie which brings this recently unearthed talent back closer to his comedy roots. Built almost entirely around a museum-loving, homicidal Midlands couple developed on the stand-up circuit by leads Alice Lowe…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘A Liar’s Autobiography 3D’ review
★☆☆☆☆ Monty Python fans may rejoice at news of Bill Jones (son of Python’s Terry Jones) joining forces with fellow directors Jeff Simpson and Ben Timlett for their take on the late Graham Chapman’s 1980s liberal spin on his own life, A Liar’s Autobiography (2012). This new mockumentary of the same name follows in a…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Hold Back’ review
★★☆☆☆ Just a few minutes into Rachid Djaidani’s fictional feature debut, two characters amble down a street and one complains to the other that in cinematic terms “We do not innovate in France – we follow.” The story that then proceeds to unfold is a well worn tale, essentially a re-imagining of Romeo and Juliet,…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘In the Fog’ review
★★★☆☆ Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa returns to the London Film Festival with Cannes Palme d’Or nominee In the Fog (V tumane, 2012), a sombre wartime drama set in Belarus at the time of the Nazi occupation. The film begins with the execution of three local men, hung by the Germans for sabotage. We then move…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Dormant Beauty’ review
★★☆☆☆ Marco Bellocchio has often used real-life dramatic Italian events as the backdrop to his films. Good Morning, Night (2003) dealt with the Aldo Moro kidnapping in the 1970s, whilst Vincere (2009) focused on Mussolini’s lover Ida Dalsa. Dormant Beauty (Bella Addormentata, 2012) revolves around the story of Eluana Englaro, a young woman who lived…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Horses of God’ review
★★★★☆ Set in a slum on the outskirts of Casablanca, Horses of God (Les Chevaux de Dieu, 2012) is a powerful drama based on the events leading up to the Moroccan suicide bomb attacks of 16 May, 2003. The film’s director, Nabil Ayouch, has crafted an original and moving adaptation of Mahi Binebine’s novel The…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Paradise: Love’ review
★★★☆☆ Michael Haneke has made a career out of misanthropic, if brilliant grumpiness, yet it seems fellow Austrian director Ulrich Seidl is making a good fist of competing for him in the line of stern, unflinching gazes at the darker side of humanity. Import/Export screened at the London Film Festival back in 2007 and featured…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘It Was the Son’ review
★★☆☆☆ Based on a novel by Roberto Alaimo, It Was the Son (È stato il figlio, 2012) director Daniele Ciprì – who has previously made his name as a cinematographer work for such acclaimed filmmakers as Marco Bellocchio – gives a visually imaginative look to his new feature, utilising a stylish sheen similar in the…