The BFI London Film Festival made a rip-roaring return this year, extending its programming further and wider into film, television, and virtual reality. LFF has historically been seen as a second-order festival – simply picking up the best from Cannes, Venice, and elsewhere for British audiences. But under Festival Director Tricia Tuttle, who is stepping down at the end of this year, the festival’s international profile has been significantly boosted. This year there were an unprecedented 23 world premieres, including the latest from Guillermo Del Toro and Asif Kapadia.
But LFF is also a deeply public festival, which shuns the elitism and overwrought prestige of Cannes in favour of large public screenings, where people other than journalists, filmmakers and celebrities have access to tickets. It’s a festival where ordinary cineastes can walk on the red carpet – where friendly interactions between filmmakers and audience members are delightfully unremarkable. With a vast range of screenings across London, and some in cinemas across the UK, LFF broke its own box office records days before it had even finished. It was a joy to attend this year alongside such enthusiastic audiences, and LFF 2022 was probably my best festival yet.
This year, free from the shackles of COVID anxiety, I managed to see 20 films. Here are my thoughts on them.
Eco-cinema
Filmmakers have long drawn attention to issues of climate change and environmental harm, and this year I saw four films that tackled these themes full on. The Danish documentary Into the Ice (★★★★★) follows three scientists who work on the Greenland ice sheet, which covers a vast territory of 1.7 million square kilometres. One of their primary goals is to measure how quickly the ice is melting, which will provide insights into the scale of future sea level rises. Some of this work is extremely difficult to carry out, and the most striking sequences are when the director accompanies the British glaciologist Alan Hubbard in abseiling nearly 200 metres into a “moulin” – effectively a cathedral-sized hole in the ice, created by meltwater – in order to take measurements. What emerges from this is some of the most breathtaking footage of the natural world I have ever seen. The film succeeds in being both a powerful appreciation of the natural world and an urgent call for action to mitigate climate change.
Set on the other side of the world, in the Bolivian Chaco desert, the gentle and beautiful Utama (★★★★★) follows an elderly Quechua couple who are nearing the end of their lives. Their simple existence herding llamas in the desert is made increasingly difficult by the persistent lack of rain and their own old age. From a cast of entirely non-professional actors, director Alejandro Loayza Grisi obtains two utterly extraordinary performances from the actors playing the couple. There is a very real and moving sense of a husband and wife who have said so much to each other over the years that little more needs to be said. Glances, furrowed brows, and silence speak loudly enough. And the film perfectly balances the small-scale with the epic. Grisi shows minute attention to the details of clothes and possessions, while also harnessing the vast cinematic scale of the desert landscape; in the same way, a small story of an elderly couple acts as a powerful metaphor for the broader narrative of traditional ways of life coming under threat from globalisation and climate change.
Environmental harm is at the centre of two other films, including the French thriller The Blaze (★★★★☆), which follows a father and son in rural France who are trapped by a sudden and seemingly uncontrollable wildfire. Climate change is never actually mentioned in the film – instead, the increasing prevalence of wildfires is taken as a given, and the film focuses more fully on the father-son relationship. It’s incredibly technically well-done, giving the audience a visceral sense of the scorching heat, the sweat, the smoke, the dehydration. But the performances are also deeply convincing and nuanced, making the story all the more moving. Less successful is EO (★★★☆☆), a reimagining of Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar with the same central conceit: a donkey wanders through the world, seeing and experiencing both the goodness and evil of humanity. Both films explore animal cruelty as a form of environmental harm. But where Au Hasard Balthazar was a masterpiece of spare, black-and-white minimalism, EO goes in the opposite direction: the donkey wanders through a phantasmagorical series of events, awash with surreal colour and dramatic music. It’s visually stunning, but the score is overbearing in places, and its maximalist style is ultimately less effective than the quiet dignity of Bresson’s original.
Do you remember?
A number of films this year dealt with the subject of memory, though in very different ways. Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (★★★★☆), which premiered at the festival, is an outstanding version of the familiar story with a significant change: the woodcutter Geppetto builds Pinocchio as a way of commemorating his recently deceased son. This alteration of the traditional narrative allows Del Toro to use the film as a way of meditating on death, and on how we remember those who have passed. It’s a darker, more complex telling of the story, which is thrillingly evoked through rich, textured stop-motion animation. Pinocchio has a courser, less polished appearance – he seems almost unfinished, with nails sticking out of his head – but his boyish enthusiasm shines through. And the settings are powerfully evoked by the animators, from the cold concrete of Italian fascism to the the gaudiness of the carnival. It is both immensely emotionally rich and astoundingly weird, but it is also an utter triumph.
Memory is also a significant theme in Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter (★★★★☆), a chilling story of a middle-aged filmmaker who takes her mother to a hotel deep in the Welsh countryside. They are the only ones in the hotel, and she proves unable to shake the thought that there is some strange presence among them. I have been tepid on Hogg’s previous work, which is formally rigorous to the point of being a bit stilted. But here she takes on genre filmmaking to thrilling effect, drawing on the conventions of horror cinema while not giving in to cop-out or cliché. Through wispy, ethereal cinematography, she finds the gothic in the everyday – the slow creep of mist across the hotel grounds, the greenish glow of a fire exit sign, the distracted yet eerie humming of a bored receptionist. And she creates a ghostly, ambient soundscape, mixing an unnerving soundtrack with the discordant sounds of high-heeled footsteps and the clink of cutlery. It’s Hogg’s strongest and most distinctive work to date, with an extraordinary, multilayered performance by Tilda Swinton.
Also drawing on the conventions of horror was Enys Men (★★★☆☆), the latest from director Mark Jenkin. Jenkin is well known for rejecting the advances of the digital revolution by shooting on 16mm film and hand-processing the film in his sink. Enys Men follows a woman working on a remote island and experiencing strange visions – some of which seem to be memories of her past. The film has some astounding, hypnotic images, and audacious and frightening sound design, which give the 1970s folk horror atmosphere a modern twist. But I felt a lack of structure meant that it packed less of a punch than Bait, his previous film. A lack of structure was also an issue for Nayola (★★★☆☆), which through vivid animation explores the lives of contemporary Angolans and their memories of the civil war. There are some very striking sequences, including a late turn into magical realism, but it felt too much like a series of good shorts turned into a feature rather than its own thing.
Cinematic politics
Different types of politics were a feature of many of the films I saw this year, but were particularly prominent in four. No Bears (★★★★★) is not simply a film but the latest act of defiance from Jafar Panahi, an Iranian director who in 2011 was banned from making films for twenty years (he has since made at least five). Panahi plays a version of himself, renting a room in a small Iranian village in order to remotely direct a film being shot over the border in Turkey. He increasingly has to deal with social conflicts in the village, while struggling with his own internet connection and with the (unspoken) restrictions placed on him by the Iranian authorities. That the film was made at all is an achievement in itself, but how much more satisfying that it is a work of such humour, complexity, and emotional richness. The village, which metaphorically represents certain aspects of Iran, is portrayed in ways both gently amusing and quietly excoriating. But Panahi also betrays elements of self-doubt – by pursuing his artistic vision, the cinematic Panahi puts others at risk in addition to himself. Shortly prior to the film’s release, Panahi was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison. The film which remains is an extraordinary statement of Panahi’s commitment to staying in Iran and keeping his artistic voice.
The politics of language and religion are explored in Godland (★★★★☆), which follows a Danish priest in the late nineteenth century as he journeys to a village in Iceland to build a church. Rather than simply sailing there, he decides to travel across the island on foot to capture some of it with his camera. As the journey progresses, tensions emerge with his Icelandic guide, who doesn’t speak Danish, while the priest simply refuses to learn Icelandic. The cinematography is completely stunning: the 1.33:1 aspect ratio and the rounded corners of the image mimic the priest’s photographic plates, while the film has a Kurosawa-esque command of the weather – the audience feels windswept, drenched, lost in the fog. The pace is fairly slow, but for those with the patience, its surreal visual landscapes and complex character dynamics are absolutely captivating.
Elsewhere, Super Eagles ’96 (★★★★☆) is a spirited documentary about the Nigerian national football team and their campaign to win the gold medal at the 1996 Olympic Games. Yet it is also a story of the political and military dictatorship of the 1990s, and of how the football team was one of very few things that gave hope to a struggling population. The film deftly weaves together interviews with the team, archive footage, and reconstructions of Nigerian living rooms and cafes as their supporters root for the super eagles. It’s a hugely stirring and satisfying watch. The Angolan film Our Lady of the Chinese Shop (★☆☆☆☆), however, is neither stirring nor satisfying in the slightest. The film attempts to reflect on the politics of the Angolan state, and on the increasing economic involvement of China in the African continent. Unfortunately, its glacial pace, lacklustre acting, and pretentious narration make it an inept and intensely boring experience. Several people actually walked out of the cinema, while up to half of the remaining audience were asleep at some point (including me). When the most exciting thing happening onscreen is the grammatical and spelling errors in the subtitles, you know that the film isn’t very good.
Dying with Laughter
It’s always a joy to see comedies at the London Film Festival, and this year I wasn’t short of options. The Banshees of Inisherin (★★★★★) is the latest film from Martin McDonagh, whose work features astoundingly dark comedy alongside deeper philosophical reflections on life and death. His newest film, set in 1923, reunites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two friends living on the fictional island of Inisherin off the Irish coast. Gleeson’s character suddenly decides he doesn’t want to be friends with Farrell’s character anymore, leading to a series of unintended and violent consequences. I thought the film was an immensely powerful exploration of loneliness and the effect that it has on people; the characters are physically separated from the mainland, but also somewhat emotionally separated from each other. The cast give uniformly brilliant performances, but particularly Farrell, who ranges expertly from cocksure arrogance to vulnerability and fear. The period setting and remoteness of the landscape lends a certain poetry to the cinematography, but it’s punctuated as ever with scabrous dialogue and gasp-inducing humour. I thought it was an outstanding character study that ranks among McDonagh’s greatest works.
Also set on an island, though completely different in tone, was Chee$e (★★★☆☆), which focuses on Skimma, a cheesemaker turned weed-dealer living in Trinidad. Skimma hopes to evade the authorities and buy himself a ticket off the island by hiding clumps of marijuana in the cheese he manufactures; however, in doing so he unwittingly creates a new strain of drug that causes hallucinations. The film changes hue fairly frequently, sometimes mid-scene, like a sort of weed-induced multicoloured fantasy – so it was no surprise to hear in the post-film Q+A that director Damian Marcano was high while doing the colour correction. It’s a scrappy and dynamic film, but also structurally a bit of a mess, leaving the audience stumbling around in the smoke.
More structured was Klokkenluider (★★★★☆), the debut feature from Neil Maskell, who I know mostly as an actor who plays terrifying characters, especially assassins. He brings some of that intimidating energy to the story of a government employee and his wife who hide in the Belgian countryside after discovering a state secret and alerting a newspaper (the title is Dutch for “whistleblower”). Soon two men show up to guard them, causing tensions with the couple. It’s dark, very funny, and maintains a sense of mystery right to the end. A much brighter affair was Fast and Feel Love (★★★★☆), an utterly wonderful and hilarious Thai comedy. The film follows a professional cup-stacker and his attempts to sort out his life after his girlfriend leaves him. But it features a frenetic visual style and soundtrack which parodies modern blockbusters. I particularly enjoyed the references to Parasite and Star Wars memes, and the way in which the cinematography is itself the cause of many of the jokes (something surprisingly few comedies pull off successfully). It’s smart, inventive, and uproariously funny, and I can’t wait to see it again.
Whodunnit?
Mystery was at the heart of a number of films I saw, but four in particular. Medusa Deluxe (★★★★☆), a murder mystery set in a hairdressing competition, was an absolute riot, with Robbie Ryan’s dazzling cinematography presenting the story as if it takes place in one shot. The camera is restless, prowling around after various members of the ensemble cast, catching snatches of dialogue or glimpses of characters. It’s less of a straightforward whodunnit and more of a Robert Altman-style character study; indeed, the film succeeds in mocking the vanity and shallowness of the hairdressers while also celebrating their artistry. I did feel that certain characters were underdeveloped, and that the storytelling was actually slightly constrained by the one-shot conceit. Nonetheless, it’s a daring and technically virtuoso debut from a very talented young filmmaker, and I’m excited to see what comes next. Elsewhere, The Woman in the White Car (★★★☆☆) is a rare South Korean film with a mostly female crew and cast, weaving a compelling story of healing and empowerment into a dark, violent thriller. It’s quite a tough watch, and doesn’t have the levity of a Bong Joon-ho film, but it kept me guessing throughout.
It’s always hard to pick favourites at the festival, but in addition to Into the Ice and The Banshees of Inisherin, the two final films reviewed here were exceptional examples of the power of cinema to challenge, entertain, and overwhelm. As the closing film, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (★★★★★) provided a fitting and glamorous end to a glorious festival. Director Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig (as detective Benoit Blanc) return, but the wider cast have completely changed, as has the setting, from a New England mansion to a preposterously high-tech Greek island. This time Blanc’s investigation includes a tech entrepreneur and his acolytes, and is far more explosive (as one would expect from a sequel). It may not be quite as sharp or intelligent as the first film, but this is still streets ahead of the competition, with knowing, self-aware humour, a tightly-written plot, and a dazzling visual style. It’s probably the most purely entertaining film I saw at the festival this year.
Finally, Decision to Leave (★★★★★) is the most recent film from the Korean director Park Chan-wook, who is not normally known for his restraint: a teenage viewing of his dark and violent Oldboy left me completely staggered at the exquisite cruelty of the narrative – delivered nonetheless with cinematic panache. How intriguing, then, to see director Park toning down some of his impulses in this immensely accomplished, haunting, and unexpectedly hilarious mystery. The film follows a mild-mannered insomniac detective who gradually becomes closer and closer to the woman at the centre of a police case. To say any more would spoil the feverish, jigsaw-like plot. Suffice it to say that this is a film of outstanding performances, where glances, subtle expressions, and small details contain clues as to how the narrative will unfold. The score is lush and romantic, and the cinematography is immensely impressive, with a range of unusual angles (including, at one point, from the perspective of a corpse). It will surely reward repeated viewings, but I’m glad that my first viewing was at the festival – in the middle of a full cinema, gasping and laughing at every twist and turn of the plot.
jacobthehobnob 