London Film Fest Day 7 - STORM

From Hans-Christian Schmidt and Bernd Lange, the director and writer of REQUIEM, comes a court-room drama with good intentions, but that plays like a TV drama. Kerry Fox stars as Hannah Maynard, an international criminal lawyer in The Hague, charged with bringing a Serbian nationalist to trial for war-crimes. When her original witness proves flaky, she digs deeper into the case and uncovers heinous crimes, as witnessed by Anamaria Marinca's Hannah Arendt. The rest of the film sees the lawyer try to persuade the Bosnian woman to put her new life in Berlin at risk and to rake over painful memories in order to see justice done. However, this is set in the context of deep political machinations involving the UN, The Hague and the EU. The Serbian general is now running for parliament and wants to cut a deal - moreover, the EU is keen to see his country have smooth accession talks. The resulting film is a well-acted solid piece of work. It has evidently been well-researched and is earnest. However, I felt that it's shooting style and production values were not really cinematic. Moreover, given its commitment to telling the unvarnished truth about realpolitik I was somewhat upset by a rather fairytale ending.

STORM played Berlin 2009 and opened in September in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY - En Ra Ha-ha-ha!

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is a marvellous film from British writer-director Mike Leigh. Unlike some of his best known films - VERA DRAKE, SECRETS AND LIES - HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is remarkably up-beat and life-affirming. I've heard some people describe it as less consequential than Leigh's previous films because of that. I think this is to profoundly misunderstand the movie, but I can see why they do it.

The movie is about a thirty year-old primary school-teacher called Poppy who lives in contemporary North London. She doesn't own a house or a car and she hasn't got a boyfriend. But she is happy: she has great friends, a job she is passionate about and a full life. Poppy expresses herself with a big grin, almost constant laughter and a quick wit. She wears loud, bright, clashing clothes. Indeed, she looks like a refugee from the 1980s.

I thought I might find Poppy's twittering optimism annoying, being a dreary old cynic myself. But the whole point about this film is that Poppy isn't delusional or superficial or blithe. She is, in fact, fully engaged with the world. When confronted with racism, or homelessness, or violence or physical pain, she doesn't walk on by but deals with the situation head-on. And all the time, she does so with patience, empathy and a cheerful disposition. Moreover, she isn't a martyr: she knows when to withdraw from a situation. So, instead of choosing not to see the grim realities of life, Poppy makes a positive, intelligent choice to see all that hardship but to deal with it.

To that extent, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is, as one of the characters says in the final scene, a film about people who "choose to make their own luck". In other words, it's a film about the power of individual choice: that on a small scale, every day, we can make choices that make life better. And what could be more consequential than that?

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is then, a film that has a positive and important message. But that description makes it sound terribly earnest and dull. And that's precisely what it isn't. The movie is full of closely observed scenes of how good friends behave in each other's company - indeed, it's rare to see such credible depictions of mature female friendship on screen. It's also a tremendously funny movie, but like all of the best comedy, has its roots in every-day situations that we can all relate to.

The movie is universally well-acted. Sally Hawkins won the Silver Bear at Berlin for her performance in the lead role, but Alexis Zegerman (perhaps better known as a playwright) is fantastic as Poppy's stalwart, best friend Zoe. Eddie Marsan, once again, is transfixing in his role as a tightly wound, paranoid driving instructer, and Kate O'Flynn is hysterically funny in a small role as Poppy's younger sister.

What more can I say but that Mike Leigh has once again produced cinema that is intelligent, thought-provoking, original and uniquely his. This is without doubt one of the best films I have seen all year.

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY played Berlin 2007 where Sally Hawkins won the Silver Berlin Bear for Best Actress. It is ucrrently on release in the UK. It opens in the Netherlands in May 15th; in Germany on July 3rd; and in the USA on September 25th.