MATILDA - BFI London FIlm Festival 2022 - Opening Night

Tim Minchin's musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's beloved MATILDA is a phenomenal musical with a big heart and an incredibly talented cast, but this new film version would've benefited from a proper film director and about 20 minutes taking out of its middle section. The result is a film that is deeply affecting, and contains some stunning set pieces, but that seriously lags in the middle, and feels a bit too garish and visually disjointed to really work for an adult audience.

The story is likely familiar to you.  Matilda (Alisha Weir) is an unwanted little girl, whose prodigious talent is unappreciated by her neglectful, criminal parents (Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough). When the school inspectors compel him, Matilda's father sends her to an horrific school called Crunch 'Em Hall run by the tyrannical Mrs Trunchbull.  Matilda may be little but she's courageous and has a strong moral compass. At first Matilda channels her anger and frustration into a tragic love story that she recites to the travelling librarian Miss Phelps (Sindhu Vee).  But finally, Matilda leads the children and oppressed teacher Miss Honey (Lashana Lynch) in a revolution, helped by her long experience of practical jokes against her dad. 

As I said before, the musical numbers crafted by Tim Minchin are just fantastic and the choreography is kinetic. All of the kids in this massive ensemble cast do a wonderful job. The adults are great - I could see Emma Thompson being nominated for supporting actress gongs if only award shows valued comedy as much as they do dramatic roles. But the real surprise in the cast was Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey in a role that shows her range beyond the athletic action  of a James Bond film.

The problem is just how BIG this film is visually.  I remember reading an interview with Sam Mendes when he moved from theatre to film with AMERICAN BEAUTY and described having to reshoot the opening scenes because he hadn't realised he needed to modulate for the screen. I feel theatre director Matthew Warchus needed that same lesson. The opening number in a hospital was dayglo bright and so big and loud and cartoonish I was seriously worried. The movie did settle down a bit, but I couldn't help but wonder what would've happened if this was directed by someone who had the confidence to come up with a palette that leaned more into Dahl's gothic side, and also the confidence to cut some of the more repetitive numbers. 

There's also a flaw in the book/musical/movie that there isn't actually any character development until the final 30 minutes. Matilda comes to us fully formed as bright and brave; Miss Honey is passive pretty much throughout; Miss Trunchbull and the parents are mean. No-one grows, no-one learns.  We just move in circles.

MATILDA opened the BFI London Film Festival 2022 and opens in UK cinemas on November 25th before being streamed on Netflix on December 9th.

CLOSE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2022

Lukas Dhont (GIRL) returns to our screens with a devastatingly sad and beautifully observed story about the impact of homophobia on the friendship of two 13-year old boys in contemporary Belgium.  

As we meet them, Leo and Remi are as close and intimate as brothers, running and cycling free through fields of flowers. They feel innocent and pre-pubescent although I feel that Dhont's lensing points us to the idea that the way Leo looks at Remi is one of love and unacknowledged desire. 

This idyllic existence comes to an end of the first day of high school, when a girl observes their physical closeness and asks if they're a couple in a barrage of questions dripping in homophobia.  The fact that their relationship is not seen as normal or acceptable is emphasised by the schoolyard boys calling Leo a faggot and pansy. 

Although Remi is present at the conversation with the girls, their snide accusations seem to roll off of him. Maybe it's because he doesn't fully understand their meaning? Maybe he's just secure in what makes him happy - and that's just hanging out with Leo and playing the oboe. But Leo does react, angrily and vocally and physically, pushing Remi away from physical intimacy and learning to play ice hockey to become one of the cool, avowedly heteronormative boys. And yet, and yet, when he goes to see Remi at a concert, we still see his adoring glance. Remi, in his greater innocence, cannot fathom why his friend is pushing him away and his heart breaks.

The final hour of the film unfolds the consequences of heartbreak, with Leo, perhaps a self-hating, slowly realising that he is gay teen, coming to terms with his loss. In Lukas Dhont's delicate hands, this is all taken in delicate steps foregrounding Leo's further turn inwards, and his relationship with Remi's mother Sophie. It's fascinating to me that the adult men - Remi and Leo's fathers - are less present, but when they are, are vulnerable and anti-hetero-normative. 

This film is stunningly shot and beautifully acted. Credit to Dhont for uncovering and nurturing the talent of his two leads, Gustav de Waele (Remi) And Eden Dambrine (Leo). But special credit to Emilie Dequenne as Sophie. She deserves all the Best Supporting Actress awards that there are to give. 

CLOSE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 105 minutes. Lukas Dhont won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2022. It also played Telluride and will play the BFI London Film Festival 2022.

This is not a review of DON'T WORRY DARLING

....because my husband and I left the screening after an hour of tedium. He suggested I title this non-review, Worry Darling, but I responded that this would imply a level of engagement and giving a shit that simply wasn't earned.

To be clear, I came into the screening without prejudice, and with some hope of a good time given how much I liked director Olivia Wilde's debut feature, BOOKSMART.  But as the soon as the movie began there was an eery feeling of being trapped in a mash-up of all the fake-world dystopian greatest hits, with all of the style and little to actually say that was new and of note.  A cursory googling of the remainder of the plot reveals that my husband and I had predicted the plot twist and inevitable ending.

I do rather wonder how this movie was greenlit. In a world where STEPFORD WIVES is so commonplace a concept in popular culture - where we've all watched Westworld and Good Life - where we've all seen THE VILLAGE - did anyone stop to ask if Wilde had anything new to say on the subject of men trying to control women in a fake 1950s world?  

Even the look of the film is derivative. There's nothing in the way the characters are dressed that costume designer Janie Bryant didn't do better in Mad Men. And as for Wilde's choice of framing and camera shots, this all felt overly stylised but not to a constant theme - as if she were throwing together every outlandish idea without a real directorial vision of what she was trying to achieve. Worst of all there was no slow build of tension and unease, as in Jordan Peele's superb GET OUT. For a film that wants us to hate a misogynistic husband for telling his horrified wife to stop being hysterical, this movie is hysterical from about 7 minutes in.

In front of the lens, Florence Pugh is a rare talent and carries this film such as we saw it. Harry Styles is basically Harry Styles as her husband. One wonders if they wrote in that he was British because he couldn't be arsed - or simply - literally - just didn't have the acting talent - to do an American accent. The only performance that felt raw and moving was that of Kiki Lane as the profoundly and rightly disturbed Margaret, but we saw precious little of her, as reported on her social media. 

DON'T WORRY DARLING is rated R and has a running time of 123 minutes. The film played Venice 2022 and is on release in cinemas.

CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY****

Lena Dunham's adaptation of Karen Cushman's apparently famous Young Adult novel is an absolute delight - but more than that - it's a film that is also profound and moving. It stars Bella Ramsay (Lyanna Mormont in GAME OF THRONES) as an early medieval tomboyish teenage girl whose impecunious aristocratic father has to marry her off to save his manor. We discover the constraints upon medieval girls through her naive but steadfast eyes. She is as fierce and captivating on screen as she was in GOT and shows real range - from physical comedy to high drama. 

But the real brilliance of this film is in the quartet of adults Dunham/Cushman surround Birdy with. Her father, Lord Rollo (a deliciously debauched Andrew Scott) could easily be the villain of the piece, given that he's effectively pissed away the family fortune, keeps knocking up his wife despite the risks to her health, and beats Birdy whenever she frightens away another suitor. But in writer-director Lena Dunham's hands, and thanks to an incredibly nuanced performance from Scott, Lord Rollo is actually a literally pathetic character - who knows full well the sacrifice he is asking his daughter to make, but sees no other way out. 

We get a similarly fascinating performance from Billie Piper as Birdy's "mumma" - a serially pregnant lady of the manor, with little actual power beyond endurance. She envies Birdy's spirit, which has not yet been broken, but sees no real out for her. We also see the possibilities within an arranged marriage - something that as an Asian I appreciated. Because while there is no doubt that Rollo married his wife for her title and money, there's also no doubt that he's desperately in love with her, and their children. Even if Birdy drives him nuts.

Similarly, the absurdly over-cast Sophie Okonedo (last time I saw her she was playing Cleopatra opposite Ralph Fiennes at the National for pity's sake) is joyously enjoyable as the glamorous, rich widow Ethelfrisa, but even she has to play the game within its rules, and yearns to run away. At first, we are seduced into the idea that at least SHE is picking her own spouse, and frankly, is objectifying him. But the reality is more complex. 

And then we have her spouse, Uncle George, played by Joe Alwyn aka Mr Taylor Swift - a man as his character used to being overshadowed by a brilliant, richer woman? His character is a meta investigation of the hero-knight teenage dream, clearly suffering from his experience in the Crusades, burdened with the unhealthy hero-worshipping of his niece, and in a marriage of convenience of his own.

Beyond the superb writing and acting, this film is extremely well put together, from its use of period locations, its character-propelling costumes, to a quite wonderful score from Carter Burwell that mixes haunting, otherworldly madrigals and recast modern pop tunes. If I were to have one criticism its that I found it perhaps around 20 minutes too long - a touch saggy in its middle sections before we continue on our plot-driven quest for Birdy's husband.

CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 108 minutes. The film played Toronto 2022 and is on release on streaming services.

FRAGMENTS OF PARADISE - BFI London Film Festival 2022

K D Davison's documentary of film-critic and avant-garde director Jonas Mekas is deferential to the point of banality.  This is frustrating given the level of access she had, and the sheer volume of self-diarised film footage.

The man is, however, fascinating. Mekas was an immigrant from a World War Two Nazi labour camp in Lithuania, and came to New York with his brother. He set himself up as a film critic for Village Voice, archivist and distributor, influencing and encouraging generations of American auteurs and artist from Ginsberg to Jarmusch to Scorsese. But behind the gregarious one-man social movement was the trauma of loss, migration and never quite knowing oneself, captured most movingly in the film where he returned home to Lithuania 25 years after leaving it, and in footage of Mekas in old age disturbed as to who he is.

I wasn't familiar with Mekas' work before I watched the film and I can't say I'm tempted to go back and revisit it. I was far more fascinating by Mekas as a complex man with a conflicted past as emblematic of the late twentieth century European experience. It's true that Davison doesn't shy away from the controversies but I wish she'd interrogated them more: the teenage pro Nazi sympathies under the guise of being anti-Soviet - retreating to German territory at the end of the war - the homophobic tone of his early criticism.  

The result is a documentary that washed over me rather than truly engaging me - something workmanlike rather than compelling.

FRAGMENTS OF PARADISE has a running time of 98 minutes. It played Venice and Telluride 2022 and will play next month's BFI London Film Festival and tickets are available here. 

GETTING IT BACK - THE STORY OF CYMANDE - BFI London Film Festival 2022

If you've listened to track by The Sugarhill Gang, The Fugees or Soul 2 Soul you've probably heard Cymande sampled.  Their sound is cool jazz, soul, funk, unique.  What you might not know is that they came together in early 1970s South London, first generation immigrants from the West Indies, and despite being ignore at home, discriminated against by society, they rose to be the first British band to play the Apollo, before splitting up in 1975.  After that they might have slipped into obscurity were it not for generations of hip-hop artists that discovered and sampled their work, resulting in a mid-2010s return to touring.  

This documentary is a labour of love from documentarian Tim Mackenzie-Smith and benefits from interviews with five band members, including leaders Steve Scipio and Patrick Patterson. (The latter too became lawyers which helped in actually getting paid for all that sampling!) It also benefits from a lot of interviews with famous musicians talking about how they went on their own journeys to find the band behind the sound, and were inspired by Cymande in their own work. 

Even more consequentially, we see how Cymande's refusal to conform, and refusal to be held back by societal discrimination, spoke to kids experiencing just that - not least a young Craig Charles.  

The result is a film that will speak to fans of Cymande who didnt even know they were - people like me who instantly recognise their sound from endless reinterprations. But it deserves to be seen by anyone with an interest in the post-war British immigrant experience and remains shockingly relevant to our time. What I really loved was its message of getting on with it anyway, refusing to be pigeonholed and ignored, and carving your own path.

GETTING IT BACK - THE STORY OF CYMANDE has a running time of 89 minutes. It played SXSW 2022 and will play the BFI London Film Festival in October.