PILLION****

I thoroughly enjoyed writer-director Harry Lighton's brave, bold and strangely heart-warming coming-of-age drama PILLION. Harry Melling, last seen as Call-Me Risley in Wolf Hall, stars as geeky, shy Colin, who lives in a bleak British town and sings in a barbershop quartet with his dad. As the movie begins, Colin meets the desperately handsome Ray (Alexander Skarsgard) and begins a relationship that is all about being subsmissive and not at all about genuine intimacy or romance. At first, Colin seems genuinely happy, adopted by Ray's biker friends and experiencing his first true physical fulfilment. But as the movie and Colin develop, we and he realise that he needs and deserves more. He asks Ray for a normal day-off where they can on a date, and as much as Ray is willing to give it a go, it's just not him.

What I love about PILLION, aside from its moments of genuine hilarity, is that it deals with a lot of serious stuff in what feels like a real and authentic way. I loved a scene where Ray goes for dinner with Colin's parents (Lesley Sharp and Douglas Hodge) and we see their concern for their son played back to them as bigotry. And I also loved the denouement. Without spoiling it, it's fascinating to see which of the characters is truly brave.  

PILLION has a running time of 107 minutes. It played Cannes, Telluride and London 2025. It was released in the USA last October and in the UK last November.

100 NIGHTS OF HERO* - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Closing Night Gala

100 NIGHTS OF HERO is a wonderful graphic novel by Isabel Greenberg whose themes are feminist and queer and sex positive. In layered and echoing stories she tells us about a world created by a wonderful young woman called Kiddo until her dad, Birdman, turns into a tyrannical patriarchy. We hear about a beautiful young woman who gets pregnant by a man but transcends into a moon. We hear of a young bride abused by her husband - her washed bones made into a lyrical harp. Of beautiful sisters who secretly read and write and are murdered for this crime, their graves marked with stones. Again and again these layered stories recast well-known fairy-tales, biblical tales and myths and speak to a world in which bright women are subjugated and killed. 

And then we focus in on the story of Cherry and Hero. Cherry is an aristocrat and Hero is her maid but they are secret lovers. Cherry’s husband sets her up by making a despicable wager. His mate Manfred will have 100 nights to seduce her and prove that all women are harlots. This dastardly man tells her plainly he is going to rape her. So every night Hero tells Manfred a story so exciting that he forgets to rape Cherry, and leaves him on a cliffhanger. She is our Sheherezade for 100 nights. And not only for Manfred but the guards and the people of the town who also become hooked on the stories. So when at last our lovers are arrested and thrown from a tower in punishment, the town rises up and overthrows the patriarchy.  

The story is funny, profound, refreshingly sex positive and unnervingly relevant in these increasingly bigoted times. I love that Cherry and Hero feel no shame in their love. They both have intelligence and agency. Yes Hero is the more self-assured and infinitely resourceful but Cherry isn’t some passive whiny pathetic woman either. 

So imagine my horror at Julia Jackman’s new feature length adaptation of the novel, in which Cherry becomes a weedy pathetic simpering fool and there’s no sex, and half the stories are omitted or garbled, there’s no threat of rape, far from being hooked on the stories, the seducer is bored to sleep by them, and … and … it just all makes no sense. It’s all so milquetoast. Where’s the audacity and wonder and excitement? 

I also hate to rag on a film that presumably had a micro-budget but it just looks cheap. This should be a film set mostly at night in which the moon and stars are major characters. A film in which a big city full of people rises up in revolt. But no. This is all broad daylight and harshly reflective electric candles and aaargh! I am so frustrated at this milquetoast under-funded attempt at turning this wonderful book into a film. Pretty much the only thing it got right was the deadpan wit thanks to Emma Corrin’s hilarious reaction shots and Nicholas Galitzine’s line-readings as Hero and Manfred respectively.

100 NIGHTS OF HERO is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 90 minutes. It played Venice and London and opens in the US on December 5th.

FOE** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 8

Another day, another festival film that is well-acted and directed but where the story isn’t really worth the candle.  Because make no mistake, whatever the advertised description, FOE isn’t really a sci-fi film about a dystopian climate-ravaged near-future:  it’s actually a relationship drama about a bad marriage.  Which is not to say that you can’t make a compelling film about a bad marriage - just look at Noah Baumbach’s 2019 festival favourite MARRIAGE STORY, or pretty much the entire oeuvre of Ingmar Bergman. But FOE, and PRISCILLA, and MAESTRO, and FINGERNAILS, are all basically bad marriage dramas and none of them are compelling.

So let’s start with the sci-fi conceit. Writer-director Garth Davis (LION) has no track record in writing sci-fi, and maybe no interest in writing sci-fi, and it shows. He is, however, adapting a book by Iain Reid which may get into this in more depth. What we get on screen is the story of a woman, Hen, who has fallen out of love with her husband Junior, then falls in love with his AI Cylon replacement instead.  This is a tale an old as time, or at least as old as Martin Guerre (better known to western audiences as that Richard Gere film SOMMERSBY).  If you want to get into the nuances of how this might play out with AI alternates, then I would once again urge you to watch Ronald D Moore’s Battlestar Galactica remake.  By contrast, FOE isn’t really interested in mining those nuances.

Okay, so grant the movie the grace of parking the sci-fi conceit to one side.  How does it play as straightforward relationship drama?  We are on stronger ground here thanks to strong lead performances from two very talented actors: Saoirse Ronan (LITTLE WOMEN) as Hen and Paul Mescal (ALL OF US STRANGERS) as Junior.  But when two people drift apart simply through over-familiarity and isolation - when there is no actual dramatic event that brings them into free-fall (not even in this sci-if conceit) then what are we left with? Two hours of mild bickering and mild make-up sex.  It just ain’t enough to fill a near two-hour running time.

This is all a tremendous shame as the crew is as impressive as the cast. I loved cinematographer Matyas Erdely’s sepia-toned interiors and drought-scape exteriors.   I really loved the score by Oliver Coates, Park Jiha and Agnes Obel. In fact, it’s the score more than anything in the writing that reminds us we are in a sinister, dystopian sci-fi film.  I also really loved some of Garth Davis’ visual flourishes, when they sporadically occur. There’s a great scene near the end which, without spoiling it, involves a vacuum and plastic, that was absolutely visually arresting. It just wasn’t enough to save me from boredom.

FOE has a running time of 110 minutes and is rated R. It opens in the USA on October 6th and in the UK on October 20th.

OCCUPIED CITY*** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 2

Steve McQueen (12 YEARS A SLAVE) returns to our screens with an epic and scrupulously well-made documentary that pairs contemporary Amsterdam locations with a narrator, Melanie Hyams, describing what happened there during the Nazi occupation and Holocaust.  We see everything from famous tourist sites like the Riksmuseum or Concertgebouw to domestic interiors and seemingly ordinary suburban homes.  And, shot as it was during the pandemic, we see deserted city streets during the curfew and vaccination centres. The documentary thus serves as a double documentary of the Holocaust but also Amsterdam during Covid.  Sometime the pairing of visual and narration is jarring.  Horrific anti-semitism and murder calmly narrated by Hyams over an everyday apartment. And sometimes the pairing is surprisingly resonant, such as an act of fascism narrated over footage of an antifa protest, or an anti-covid lockdown protest monitored by drones and riot police.

The film is based on McQueen's wife Bianca Stigter’s Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945r and I did find myself wondering if a book was the better format for this story. The running time of this superb film is well over four hours, including an interval. I understand that for some reviewers this has led to an overwhelming and moving cumulative impact of image after image and story after story. And I also understand that in some respects the endurance of an epic Holocaust documentary is itself a homage.  But for me, once I got to the second hour, I felt myself tire, and my mind start to wonder. I would far rather have watched this over sequential nights in parts, which is the way I typically watch and rewatch SHOAH.

OCCUPIED CITY has a running time of 246 minutes. It played Cannes, Telluride and London 2023. It opens in the Netherlands on November 24th.

AFTERSUN*****

Now contrast the hackneyed, obvious, hokey TO LESLIE with the delicate, slippery, intentional and unique AFTERSUN.  Both films are the works of debut feature directors, and both are based on childhood memories of the writers. But Charlotte Wells' film is one that contains a real directorial vision, precise and affecting visual style, and two lead performances that cut to the bone.  There is nothing predictable or easy or samey here.  When we leave the film we feel that we know two real human beings deeply and care immensely, even if we are still struggling to piece together what happens when the film ends.

The main narrative is concerned with a package holiday that father and daughter Callum and Sophie take to Turkey in the early 1990s. Callum is a young father, evidently broken up from Sophie's mum. They have a warm and open relationship, speaking about her first kiss and gentle discovery of adolescence. They clearly love each other deeply.  But Sophie cannot know what we see - that Callum is struggling with depression and taking risky decisions.  The framing device of the film sees an adult Sophie in her flat watching old camcorder footage of the holiday. We don't know what happened to the father between the holiday and now, but there's a melancholy nostalgic feeling, and an implication that he is no longer in her life.  

What I love about this film is Wells' resistance to cheap plot or big set pieces.  We just get an accumulation of detail and feeling until the sense of love and loss is overwhelming.  I also love the way the film is shot and styled: the way so much of it is mediated though screens - camcorders, TVs, karaoke machines - placing a  distorting lens between reality and memory.  Wells is a writer-director who reminds me of Joanna Hogg in these respects.  Paul Mescal gives his best performance to date and Frankie Corio is incredibly impressive as the daughter.   

Overall, this has to be one of the most deeply affecting and profound films I have seen in a while. I am so delighted that it has received an Oscar nomination. It deserves all the recognition it is getting.

AFTERSUN is rated R and has a running time of 102 minutes. It played Cannes and London 2022 and was released in the UK and USA last year.