THE DAUGHTER - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Four

The strange thing about my reaction to THE DAUGHTER is that while I can see that it's superbly acted and well directed I just couldn't stand it.  I spent the whole film thinking it was derivative and predictable and obvious and I absolutely despised the final scene.

But let's wind back to the beginning.  The film is the directorial debut of theatre director Simon Stone and is essentially a modern day adaptation of Ibsen's The Wild Duck, set in contemporary Australia.  Geoffrey Rush plays a rich industrialist who's just laid off all his workers in a small lumber town, putting its very existence at risk. At the same time he's celebrating his marriage to a woman half his age.  His son Christian (Paul Schneider) turns up for the wedding and is evidently resentful not just at his father's happiness but also his childhood best friend Oliver (Ewen Leslie). Oliver may be poor and unemployed but he seemingly has a loving wife (Miranda Otto) and charming clever daughter Hedvig (Odessa Young).  By contrast, Christian is an alcoholic who's wife is in the process of leaving him.

London Film Fest Day 6 - BRIGHT STAR

I had the misfortune of studying Keats in the same term I was taught Byron. As a result, despite admiring his poetry, we teenage girls couldn't help but think Keats a bit of a sap in comparison to dashing, dangerous Byron. He was, after all, just a bourgeois doctor, who talked drippily of sensory experience and the unfortunately named "negative capability" - being open to everything and comfortable with uncertainty. Worse still, his only love affair was with the unfortunately named girl-next-door, Fanny Brawne. As with Byron, Keats' life was cut short, but rather than being killed in a dashing Greek adventure, Keats died of TB - far more pedestrian a death to teenage girls. We teenage girls came to the brutal conclusion that when it came to Keats, it was best to stick to the poetry, and leave off exploring his life because, frankly, he didn't have much of one.

Unfortunately, Jane Campion's new film about the love affair between Keats and Fanny Brawne has not changed my opinion one jot. Ben Whishaw is, of course, a marvellous actor, and is deeply affecting as the limpid Keats, reaching out to touch Fanny's hand at a dinner party. But what can we make of Australian actress Abbie Cornish's Fanny - with her uncertain English accent - and her characterisation as a girl who liked to flirt and sew? Apparently Keats and Fanny bonded over the shared experiences of grief, but frankly, there is not much in this film to suggest why they had such a powerful attraction to each other. By far the most interesting character in the piece is Keats' friend, fellow poet and benefactor, Mr Brown, played by Paul Schneider. He is a fascinating because he was arguably interested in Fanny himself, was evidently a bit of a rogue, but also deeply protective of his friend. Paul Schneider gives a compelling performance but it's a shame that he too cannot pull off the accent required of the role - in this case, Scottish.

When introducing the film, writer-director Jane Campion said that she used to be frightened of poetry and that the audience shouldn't worry if they were, because this film catered to them. That is, to my mind, it's flaw. Because I didn't understand the relationship between Fanny and Keats - because the script and performances hadn't convinced me of it or made it compelling - I was looking to the film for insight into how love had affected Keats' work. But, a few recitations apart, there is very little about the process of writing, or what Keats thought about writing in this film. Indeed, the only clumsy reference to inspiration is in a scene where Fanny's little brother is trying to find a nightingale's nest and then we switch to a scene in which Keats pens his favourite ode. Oh dear.

The upshot is that this film contains a not particularly interesting nor convincing central romance and not much else. Can we say anything positive about it? Well, Jane Campion is, as ever, brilliant at creating a sensory impression - close-ups of flowers, women sewing, etc. The film looks great. But this is by no means a film that should be bracketed with the superb PORTRAIT OF A LADY, THE PIANO or IN THE CUT.

BRIGHT STAR played Cannes, Toronto and London. It is currently on release in the USA, Israel and the Netherlands. It opens in the UK on November 6th and in December in Germany, Greece and Australia. It opens on January 7th in Portugal and on January 13th in France.

LARS AND THE REAL GIRL - Don Quixote in Minnesota

LARS AND THE REAL GIRL is an improbably wonderful drama from the director of the piss-poor Billy Bob Thornton vehicle MR WOODCOCK. It's about a young man (Ryan Gosling) who deals with stress by inventing an imaginary girlfriend in the guise of a blow-up doll. The movie challenges us not to laugh but to empathise, and even to enjoy role-playing ourselves. The small-town community in which Lars lives is a proxy for the audience. We might start off like his elder brother (Paul Schneider) - thinking it ridiculous and hoping for a quick fix. Or maybe we start off like his sweet sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer), playing along, hoping he'll work it out. But pretty soon, we're like the old women at church, the work colleagues and the friends at the mall. It's fun to play dress up with a real life doll - to cut her hair - invent social outings: the whole town falls in love with "Bianca".

With LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, Craig Gillespie has done that rare thing: he's made a romantic comedy with substance; furthermore a film that feels as credible as it does incredible. He hints at how common delusion is with his reference to Dulcinea, but more widely he shows how far the whole community enjoys Lars' delusion. Ultimately this is a profoundly uplifting film - and not in the easy, saccharine manner of films like THE BUCKET LIST. It's a film about a bunch of people doing something a little bit silly because they love someone, and believe he'll work it out. And in a cynical, busy, impersonal world, that's a wonderful thought.

LARS AND THE REAL GIRL played Toronto 2007 and was released in the USA and Singapore last year. It opened in Hungary, Italy, Israel, Greece, Belgium, Norway and Germany earlier this year. It is currently on release in South Korea, Iceland, the UK and the Netherlands. It opens in Australia and Spain in April and in Japan in June.

London Film Fest 5 - In unqualified praise of THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD is, alongside 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS, the best film I have seen at London 2007 so far, and one of the best films I have seen all year. And this comes from the reviewer who had read so many bad reviews that she was expecting to walk out after an hour and grab lunch with some friends. But to my surprise, I found myself riveted by this sprawling three hour contemplation of the final days of the infamous outlaw and the nature of his infamy. Every scene is a visual delight; every performance of the hightest quality. Casey Affleck establishes himself as one of the finest young actors in Hollywood; Brad Pitt's every glance spreads fear. And in its final scenes, writer-director Andrew Dominik of CHOPPER fame shows that he has a profound understanding of the nature of celebrity and the kind of mob culture that can turn Princess Diana into an icon.

To start at the beginning, how do you make a new and interesting film about one of the most notorious figures of the Wild West, when his life story has already been analysed and re-analysed, his corpse photographed, lithographed, and his name checked in rock songs, rap songs and more besides? Dominik confronts this head on with the style and structure of the film. For a start, we never see Jesse in his hey-day, robbing trains with his original gang. It is assumed that we are already impressed with his reputation, and Brad Pitt has so much charisma that he pulls this off. Dominik also subtly contrasts the scenes that flesh out the received wisdom with the "real" psychology of the story. We have a narrator and a series of scenes which could have come from a penny-comic or a stub on Wikipedia. These are shot with a convex lens that keeps the centre of the frame in focus but blurs the edges, analagous to a sepia tinted portrait.

But Dominik's biggest innovation is to place Bob Ford centre stage. Bob has that dangerous combination of arrogance and insecurity. He believes he is destined for great things but he's desperate that no-one will give him a chance to show his greatness. Much like Thomas Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf, Bob Ford is in love with his hero Jesse James to the point of wanting to BE Jesse James. But Jesse is in no position to return that affection. For a start, Bob Ford's hero-worship is creepy, putting Jesse's wife on edge. Ford is also the butt of everyone's jokes and hardly a serious contender for the role of "side-kick". For another, Jesse James is now at the end of his career and paranoid about being double-crossed. He wouldn't trust anyone, let alone a young pup whose love could easily turn to contempt, hatred and finally murder. Casey Affleck's performance as Bob Ford deserves an Academy Award. It's subtle. Every stifled grimace at humiliation shifts him one step closer to killing the man he loves. Brad Pitt is also good as Jesse James, but has less to do. The performance is one-note but is no less impressive for that. He has to show how a folk-hero can become so dogged by being on the run and mis-trusting his colleagues, that he can choose to lay down his weapons and offer his back to a man he knows will kill him. The supporting cast is more of a revelation. In particular, Paul Schneider and Jeremy Renner are very good as members of the gang.

Other than the performances, the other key reason to watch this movie is the superb cinematography by the Coen Brothers' regular DP, Roger Deakins coupled with the production design by Lynch regular, Patricia Norris. They combine to simulatenously un-do all the things we expect from Westerns. Rather than a classic Western fought in dusty scrubland and grimy saloon-bars, the modern exemplar of which is 3:10 TO YUMA, the majority of this film is shot in snowy fields and clean, stark, well-kept houses. The costumes are clean and spare, as is the crisp early morning light. Combined with the leisurely pace, the movie almost feels like a Terrence Mallick flick.

All in all, THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD is a triumph of cinema. It's a movie in which I would change not one single thing: a pantheon movie in the making.

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD played Venice, Toronto and London 2007. It is already on release in the US, France, Israel and Belgium. It opens in Germany and Spain later in October and in Australia, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and the UK in November. It opens in Singapore on December 27th and in Japan on March 15th 2008.