FINGERNAILS** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Official Competition - Day 6

FINGERNAILS is a social satire that reads like LOBSTER-lite in a retconned 1980s America - sort of like Lanthimos meets Gondry but with a gentler more sporadic sense of humour.  I suspect that inside Christos Nikou's two hour film there's an absolutely cracking one hour episode of Black Mirror waiting to be edited out on Final Cut Pro. 

The high concept of the film is that couples can check if they are really in love by allowing scientists to yank off a fingernail each and run some kind of cockamamie test. The problem is that most couples, who might have been quite happy, discover that the computer says they are not compatible. Similarly, our protagonist Anna (Jessie Buckley) has tested positive, but is actually running through the motions with her boyfriend Ryan (The Bear's Jeremy Allen White).  The person she's actually attracted to is her colleague at the Love Institute, played by ROGUE ONE's Riz Ahmed. 

I guess there's some interesting stuff here about the social pressures of the wellness industry making you second guess your own instincts. But we've seen this done better, darker, nastier and frankly funnier before. The only real saving grace of this version is Riz Ahmed, who is really very funny indeed.

FINGERNAILS is rated R and has a running time of 113 minutes. It played Toronto, San Sebastian and London 2023. It goes on limited release in the USA on October 27th before being released on streaming on Apple TV a week later globally.

MALCOLM & MARIE

MALCOLM & MARIE is the first film I've seen made completely in and because of Covid lockdown. When production on HBO's Euphoria was shut down, its star, Zendaya, and director Sam Levinson, came up with this film as a small contained project that could be completed with a skeleton crew. The result is a two-hander that takes place in a single location over a single night and is shot in black and white. That gives the film a necessarily claustrophobic, artificial feel, and I think that as an audience we have to commit to go with that or just not bother watching at all. The result is a film that sustains a highly dramatic, raw, nasty argument between a couple for over an hour and a half, with only flashes of levity.  That comes mostly in the form of a brilliant mid-film darkly comedic long-form tirade from John David Washington's arthouse film director as he takes aim at film critics. 

The performances are impressive if deliberately rather stagey, but this film really misses having another couple to play off, in the manner of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. We need some air in the room, and a route into the argument, but I guess that wasn't deemed possible given Covid restrictions. Still I loved the look, style and feel of the film - infused with a jazz heavy score - and it really works as a showcase for both Zendaya and John David Washington's acting talent. As a film - I dunno. Given that it was being funded by Netflix I might've shortened the running time to an hour.

MALCOLM & MARIE is rated R and has a running time of 106 minutes.  The film was released on Feburary 5th on Netflix. 

PATERNO

PATERNO is a superb TV movie about the impact of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal on the legendary sports coach Joe Paterno - who was Sandusky's boss and became implicated in - at the very least not acting quickly enough when he became aware of the abuse - and at most - a cover-up. Paterno and his football programme had been responsible for elevating - arguably funding - their host university - and this film goes beyond looking at the personal emotional reaction of "JoPa" to the impact the scandal has on the wider community.  For British people, it's almost surreal seeing the seriousness with which college sport is taken in the USA and the riots that break out in Paterno's defense are quite shocking.  It is no wonder that this unhealthy elevation of a single aspect of college life to almost godlike status has created an environment in which the powers that be will be reluctant to besmirch the sport's character - even at the risk of child safety.

All of this is deftly handled and emotionally powerful thanks to assured direction by Barry Levinson (RAIN MAN) - an even-handed script by Debora Cahn (THE WEST WING) and John C Richards (NURSE BETTY) - and a powerful central performance by Al Pacino.  It's the first time in years that Pacino plays someone other than himself. Instead of the much parodied voice inflections and large character we get a Paterno who is old, unsure of himself, out of touch and both sympathetic and infuriating.  This ability to give a nuanced performance - to create a character that we feel deeply ambivalent about - is rarely seen but I guess Pacino just needs the material to motivate him.

PATERNO has a running time of 105 minutes. It was released by HBO in April 2018.  In the UK it's available on Sky On Demand. 

WHITE GOD - LFF14 - Day Three

What does WHITE GOD want to be? It starts off with an almost surreal shot of many dogs chasing a young girl on a bike.  It then goes into a kind of touching coming of age story in which that girl - Lili - has to stay with her divorced father. Their relationship is forced but after a bad experience becomes closer - just as she goes through a rebellion when he kicks out her beloved dog Hagen - but improves as she comes to the conclusion that he must be lost or roadkill.  Meanwhile we get the POV of the dog.  Half the time it feels like a kind of cutesy Disney film as sweet Hagen plays with his mongrel friends and outwits the pesky dog pound men of Budapest.  But then the movie flips into a kind of social realist critique of the evils of society and underground dog fighting. I found the result well intentioned and well-acted - but a confused mess. Moreover, the in depth depiction of the dog fight is really disturbing (as it should be) but probably something people should be warned of before they go into the screening.  Overall, I'm utterly mystified as to how this won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, other than the jury love their dogs?

WHITE GOD has a running time of 119 minutes.

WHITE GOD played Cannes where it won the Un Certain Regard prize, and London 2014. It opened in Hungary  in June and opens in Belgium, France and the Netherlands on December 3rd.