London Film Festival 2019, Week One: Foreign Oscar Contenders, Creepy Shorts & Arthouse Johnny Depp

Britain’s biggest film festival returns for another year from Wednesday, October 2 – and as always, Film Inquiry writers have had an opportunity to check out some of the films on this year’s lineup before it officially kicks off. Stay tuned to the site for more coverage from the London Film Festival in the coming weeks, here’s our rundown of what we’ve managed to see so far.

And Then We Danced (Levin Akin)

Maria Lattila: And Then We Danced is a sensual and exciting film from Swedish-born director Levin Akin. It’s a motion picture brimming with life, desire and the conflict of identity. And Then We Danced showcases the male body in all its vitality and beauty, without ever objectifying it or regressing to old-fashioned gender stereotypes.  

The film follows young, poor dancer Merib (Levin Gelbakhiani, revelatory) as he practices  passionately as part of a Georgian dance troupe. His strict instructor Aleko yells at him that he is too soft, not masculine enough. There is no sexuality or sex in Georgian dance, you see. When a new dancer, Irikli (Bachi Valishvili) joins the troupe, Merib grows even more insecure but also curious about Irikli and his differing physique and dark eyes. The two men dance, wrap themselves around each other and grow increasingly fond of each other’s company.  

It would be easy to compare And Then We Damced to Call Me By Your Name, but the two films deal with completely different themes and rules. It’s not a fair comparison; Call Me By Your Name is a sun-kissed story  about the pain and beauty of first love while And Then We Danced is a realistic look into one’s search for identity while also exploring what it means to be a new kind of a man in a country which so strictly sticks to the norm. It’s a story of self-expression, gender and family with queerness sewn into its DNA.

It’s a film that will make your heart soar and it will make you want to dance. Dance is shown as  something restrictive and traditional, serving a nation rather than the individual, but with an  ending which veers close to Whiplash, it is proven to be a wildly effective form of self-expression.   

And Then We Danced is full of youth, passion and movement. The film springs to life every time Merib and Irikli dance together, the screen lighting up just a little more. The scenes are electrifying  and there are moments of aching intimacy and comfort sprinkled throughout its runtime. It’s an  unmissable, touching film about dance, identity and everything in between.  

Nimic (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Alistair Ryder: The new short film by Yorgos Lanthimos marks a return to his usual, uncomfortable high concept subject matter after an unexpected detour to period comedy with The Favourite. If you were to devise a Yorgos drinking game, downing shots every time one of the director’s trademarks appears oncreen, you’d be blacked out by the end of this nine minute short. From the awkward family dynamics, to the use of classical music and robotic speaking patterns, Nimic sees the Greek director firmly return to his comfort zone of making audiences uncomfortable after flirting with prestige respectability.

Matt Dillon stars as a cellist with a content family life, and a successful orchestra career. Then, one day on the subway, his life gets turned upside down when he asks a woman sitting opposite (Daphne Patakia) if she has the time. She proceeds to follow him home, and attempts to replace him as both the head of the family, and as a member of the orchestra, despite no discernible music talent.

On the one hand, it’s a surprise that Lanthimos and regular collaborator Efthymis Filippou didn’t flesh out this idea into a feature; the tale of a suspicious stranger luring their way into a family is very much of a piece with The Killing of a Sacred Deer, even if Nimic is more of a dark comedy than just plain dark. But then, with a fleeting runtime, they take full advantage of this Twilight Zone reminiscent premise (based on an idea by David Kolbusz), building up towards an inevitable punchline that would likely have less impact if drawn out to feature length. The Favourite may have been more unconventional than your average awards season period film, but it suggested Yorgos was happy to move towards the mainstream. Thankfully, Nimic proves otherwise – it’s not essential Lanthimos, but it is a surreal and devilishly dark comedy only he can manage to pull off.

Rewind (Sasha Joseph Neulinger)

Musanna Ahmed: The most powerful documentary I’ve seen this year is For Sama, a traumatising, deeply personal story of survival in the open backdrop of distressing geopolitics. Similarly, Rewind sent chills down my spine as a traumatising, deeply personal story of surviving in a stifling environment of disturbing family politics.

In this deeply courageous, self-directed film Sasha Joseph Neulinger literally rewinds his life to deconstruct his father’s colossal footage of home movies – as dad says, he was capturing “the most documented family in the world.” If Henry Nevison wasn’t such a compulsive shooter, the pieces of the puzzle may not have been as transparent to Sasha, who has large gaps in his memory when recalling the aftermath of the sexual abuse he suffered from three older family members as a child.

What’s more striking is the virtual photography created in young Sasha’s drawings, reflecting the assaults in vivid detail as well as the predatory, threatening nature and abuse of power exploited by the perpetrators. Sasha was a prodigal youth, gifted with an intelligence and awareness that became a major factor in how a lengthy judicial response became possible.

Formally, Rewind is a well-organised full circuit of documentary filmmaking – sit-down interviews with those who can fill in the gaps, including both family members and legal figures, strong actuality footage of Sasha learning the complete details, and archive footage composed of home video and photographs of the family enjoying themselves – only the subtext of these images becomes more unsettling as the bigger picture crystallises.

The emotional jigsaw puzzle is harrowingly constructed as individuals recall their memories to the subject, such as his mother describing a doctor attempting to close the door to the possibility of abusive adults and how Sasha increasingly demonstrated suicidal tendencies as a kid. It’s an astonishingly brave decision to air such details for a film but the unspooling of the full truth will facilitate a confidence in any viewer who’s suffered under the suppression of horrific family secrets to reclaim their own stories.

System Crasher (Nora Fingscheidt)

Becky Kukla: Recently nominated as Germany’s entry to the 92nd Academy Awards, System Crasher explores the life of nine year old Benni (Helena Zengell), a troubled child who is almost out of options within the care system due to her extreme behavioural issues. Troubled is an optimistic way to describe Benni – as a result of childhood trauma, she has been bounced from child shelters to foster homes with no adult able or willing to take her on.

Benni is insistent on living with her largely absent mother – something which is not possible – her search for a new home becomes more fraught when she strikes up a promising friendship with her new school escort Micha. As much as the two are kindred spirits, director Nora Fingscheidt’s film avoids packaging Benni’s hugely complicated trauma into a nice, neat box. Rather, System Crasher takes its audience on the emotional rollercoaster that both Micha and Benni are on – a ride which is sometimes heartwarming, other times devastating. 

Whilst sticking predominantly to watching Micha and Benni’s journeys, System Crasher touches on the difficulties of care systems which doesn’t have the support or funding to adequately provide for a child like Benni. Without focusing too heavily on the politics, Fingscheidt (who directed and wrote the film) allows for a discussion of the cracks in the system and highlights how more needs to be done to help young, traumatised children.

Though System Crasher deals with difficult issues, there is a surprising amount of humour in the script – particularly in early scenes as Benni reacts to other children around her. Of course, System Crasher is not a laugh out loud film, but the subtle touches of comedy help to align the audience with Benni and understand her better. By inviting her audience to identify and empathise with Benni, the film avoids the pitfall of merely exploiting Benni’s mental health and trauma for the shock factor. Instead, System Crasher is a careful and complex look at a young girl in desperate need of something that the adults in her life are unable to give her. 

Whilst the majority of the film focuses on the relationship between Benni and Micha, and whilst the two central performances are undeniably excellent, the supporting cast are what ensures that Fingscheidt’s film feels like a wholly authentic experience. From case-worker Ms Bafane (played by Gabriela Maria Schmeide) to Benni’s own conflicted mother (Lisa Hagmeister), the film has a real sense of depth because of these characters – even if some are only on screen fora few minutes. Of course, Zengel is the most riveting to watch – her performance as the emotionally volatile Benni is filled with nuances that child actors can rarely achieve. It’s a hard but rewarding watch.

A Thief’s Daughter (Belén Funes)

Becky Kukla: Belén Funes’ feature film debut, A Thief’s Daughter, takes a well-worn narrative of a young, single mother attempting to keep her head above water, but approaches it with a fresh and unique perspective. Sara (Greta Fernández) is balancing part time work with responsibilities as a new mother when her father (played by Fernández’s real life father, Eduard Fernández) makes a reappearance in her life.

From the outset, we are parachuted into the epicentre of Sara’s often difficult world. Funes leaves her audience to work out the relationships between Sara and the other characters, understanding that exposition for expositions sake would only slow down the narrative. A Thief’s Daughter isn’t fast paced by any stretch of the imagination, but it does have a rhythmic beat throughout which lengthy dialogue explaining who’s-who would have put a large dent in. Instead, we explore Sara’s world as she does, moving swiftly from one part time job to a trial shift, to finding her runaway younger brother in a cafe, to picking up her young baby from a neighbour. In the midst of the chaos, Sara’s estranged father is released from prison and makes an unexpected appearance in her life again. 

The story of A Thief’s Daughter is Sara’s and hers alone. The other characters, despite being fully realised, stay on the periphery at all times, only entering the frame because of their proximity to Sara. It’s an arduous task for an actor – the range of emotions Sara goes through alone are overwhelming – but Fernández does an incredible job. She is understated (Sara is a quiet person, reserving her anger for only when it is truly needed), but fills the screen completely with her presence. Coming in at just over 90 minutes, A Thief’s Daughter pulls its audience into Sara’s life quickly and effectively. 

With the majority of the shots handheld, Funes takes advantage of what seems to be guerilla style filmmaking. The rough edges lend themselves to Sara’s frayed life – the camerawork, production design and grey/blue colours scheme all work in harmony to present the chaotic, andat times sad, day to day existence which Sara is trying desperately to keep together. 

The real highlight of A Thief’s Daughter, without giving anything away, is the final scene. Tense, then utterly heartbreaking, it solidifies Greta Fernández as an actor at the top of her game and director Funes as one of the finest directors working today.

Waiting for the Barbarians (Ciro Guerra)

Gus Edgar-Chan: Continuing director Ciro Guerra’s fascination with picking apart the wrath of colonialism and the fading of indigenous cultures is Waiting for the Barbarians, an adaptation of J.M.Coetzee’s novel of the same name. The material here seems ripe for Guerra’s tendencies, but in cramming Coetzee’s hefty text into the space of just under two hours, the screenplay (penned by the author himself) plays out like an unspooling of half-baked, mish-mashed ideas.

We follow Mark Rylance’s unnamed magistrate, who oversees a frontier town overlooking a great unspecified expanse. Its modest existence is ruptured by Johnny Depp’s tyrannical Colonel Joll, sent by a vague and merciless empire to effectively hunt down and quash the country’s indigenous population. These nomads – the titular and ironically-named ‘barbarians’ – live on the outskirts of civilisation, a key dividing line Guerra draws between Rylance’s martyrish figure and Depp’s corrupt officer.

By stripping the situation of its specificity – the country is unclear, the era undefined, and the mechanics behind the circumstances hazy – Coetzee’s script deprives Guerra of his finest asset. Gone are the rich, detailed cultural underpinnings displayed in Birds of Passage, or the tangible adoration for a fading civilization felt in Embrace of the Serpent. Instead, the aesthetics of Waiting for the Barbarians’ unspecified tribe veers dangerously close towards careless appropriation.

Segmented by title cards denoting the changing seasons, the film feels and moves like a hulking literature epic. But without the interiority afforded by text, there’s no reason for much of the narrative; Rylance’s worldview remains seemingly unchanged in spite of certain plot points suggesting a shifting of worldview. Strangely, Guerra doesn’t employ the visual storytelling that made Embrace of the Serpent so fascinating, relying on rigid, overworked story beats to deliver a message only as functional as ‘colonialism is bad’.

There’s far too much material to handle in such a short runtime, so Waiting for the Barbarians eventually devolves into a series of borderline incomprehensible plot points that you feel you’d only be able to understand were it delivered and contextualised on the pages themselves. Sadly, the great expanse proves too limitless a concept for the director to compress and contain; he’s taken his dusty retelling of Coetzee’s novel a steppe too far. 

Stay tuned to Film Inquiry for more London Film Festival Coverage in the coming weeks.