17.10.2007

From must-see to snore-fest

The 51st annual London Film Festival opens this week with a plethora of films from around the world. Jim Moody reviews a selection from the 270 feature films and shorts that will be screened up to the end of this month

Does anyone not know who Mumia Abu Jamal is? Yes or no, the documentary In prison my whole life (UK 2007), directed by Marc Evans, is unmissable. A quarter century has passed since Mumia was jailed for the murder of a Philadelphia cop. William Francome was born the day Mumia was arrested, his mother continually reminding him of the fact as he grew up. Now, through Francome's young adult eyes, Mumia's story is retold for a new generation. Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Snoop Dog and Mos Def add their on-screen support. A righteous film for a righteous cause.

In Four months, three weeks and two days (Romania 2007) another social issue - abortion - gets an airing, in feature film format. In Cristian Mungiu's exemplar of new Romanian cinema, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) is there for her college roommate Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) when she has to have a pregnancy terminated. Unfortunately, this is 1987 and abortion has been illegal under the rotten Ceausescu regime since 1966. Abortionist Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) is truly villainous and fully exploits his position. Soul-destroying, pre-1990 Romania is brilliantly portrayed. And the film's visceral grip provides an effective answer to those who oppose a woman's right to choose.

Director Penny Woolcock's Exodus (UK 2007) is a reinterpretation of the biblical story. It heralds a bleak future in which a fascist British government headed by charismatic Pharaoh Mann (Bernard Hill) herds undesirables (asylum-seekers, the unemployed, muslims) into concentration camps. In the Dreamland amusement park in Margate, Moses (Daniel Percival), adopted by Pharaoh and his wife Batya (Ger Ryan), prepares inmates to be led to the promised land. They have arms, but fail to plan to use them: pacifism reigns, thanks to Quisling Moses.

After burning a 25-metre-high Waste Man sculpture (designed by artist Antony Gormley), they go into suburbia. It looks like nothing so much as what the Whigs used to fear: the mob, not a revolutionary army. The political set-up is not credible, and the finale on the sands looks like little more than a revamped mods v rockers punch up.

Contrasting life experiences in the Ukraine and in Austria, Import export (Austria 2007) delves into what life is like for low-paid and migrant workers inside and outside the EU. After dabbling in sex work to make up unpaid salary, nurse Olga (Ekateryna Rak) leaves her dingy hospital in small-town Ukraine for the bright lights of Vienna, where she ends up as a hospital cleaner. Despite all, her humanity shines through for her elderly patients. Viennese worker Pauli (Paul Hofmann) fails to keep a job, so his stepfather (Michael Thomas) makes him work delivering clapped out gambling machines to eastern Europe, including Ukraine. Ekateryna Rak and Paul Hofmann deliver very sympathetically as young people yearning to be part of a more human society.

Far north (France-UK 2007) sees Hackney's very own, director Asif Kapadia (The warrior; The return), deliver resoundingly once again in this, a tale of two women - Saiva (Michelle Yeoh) and Anja (Michelle Krusiec), struggling to survive on the frozen wastes of the Arctic tundra. Only by isolating themselves from a depraved society around them have they been able to survive at all. Their fragile equanimity is disturbed by the arrival, half dead, of Loki (Sean Bean). Going against her own harsh teaching, Saiva nurses Loki back to health, but the younger Anja falls for him, and he her. Horror follows hard on the heels of Saiva's jealousy. Utterly believable, the film depicts dehumanisation as more than the lack of familial ties; without societal bonds and nurture, humanity decays.

Srdan Golubovic directs The trap (Serbia-Germany-Hungary 2006) with tense finesse. Set in depressed post-Milosevic Belgrade, Mladen (Nebojsa ) is a building firm manager who cannot afford an essential heart operation for his sick son. A man answers Mladen's newspaper ad begging for help, offers more than enough, but demands the killing of a business rival in return. A real moral dilemma, especially when the 'condemned' man appears to be the worst kind of new Serbian parasite. Squirming under the sharp end of reality changes people. And the viewer's involvement is rewarded with a wealth of questions that become harder and harder to answer unequivocally.

Josie (Pat Shortt), a fat and dim 40-something, looks after a rundown garage in a small town. In Leonard Abrahamson's Garage (Ireland 2007), our hearts go out to him. The butt of bucolic humour, Josie has few friends. Young David (Conor J Ryan) becomes Josie's assistant for the summer, they share a can or two of beer at day's end and Josie gets to hang out with David's mates. But all goes awry when Josie shows the 14-year-old a porn tape given him by a local long-distance lorry driver. No apotheosis for Josie. Despite its weak The hours-like ending, this moving evocation of an isolated human life hits poignant highs and gives us a view of the depths of despair into which some fall.

As a first feature film, Jaime Marques's Thieves (Spain 2007), is a lyrical gem. Expressing the politics of belonging, we get the chance here to feel for young thief àlex (Juan José Ballesta), who has few options in life. When he takes a shine to tyro thief Sara (Maria Valverde), from the other side of the tracks, they embark on a life together. As it happens, it is a life of crime. But is her heart in it, even though it belongs to àlex?

Saturno contro (Italy 2007) is a delightful confection from some of Italy's best actors (Pierfrancesco Favino, Margherita Buy, Stefano Accorsi, Serra Yilmaz). Ferzan Ozpetek's direction brings out contrasts and tensions experienced in a long-term group of friends who face crisis: one of their number is becoming seriously ill. Ensemble performance ensures that Saturno contro is not maudlin, but touching and warm. Each friend has her or his own foibles and weaknesses, but the group's strength buoys them up, even when tried and tested by the possibility of losing one of them.

Empathy fails in Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely (UK-France-Ireland-USA 2006). Maybe it is because none of the characters rises above a derisive saddo status. Marilyn Monroe look-alike (Samantha Morton) invites faux Michael Jackson (Diego Luna) to join her commune in Scotland, where she lives with husband, Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant), and daughter, Shirley Temple. The Pope (James Fox), Queen Elizabeth II (Anita Pallenberg), and the Three Stooges are part of this extended, dysfunctional family. Can anyone imagine anything less engaging? Especially with inexplicable (or, at least, insufficiently connected) Amazonian interludes involving a Father Umbrillo (Werner Herzog).

According to Does your soul have a cold? (USA-Japan 2007), until 2000, most Japanese were unaware of the concept of depression. That changed with advertising campaigns by drugs companies, using the title phrase to propagandise. Subsequently, Japanese society embraced prescription drugs for depression. Several long-term dependents, for whom counselling is virtually never available, tell their tales.

A documentary directed by Helena Trestiková, Marcela (Czech Republic 2006), follows Marcela Haverlandova, her husband Jiri Haverland, and daughter Ivana from the time of the couple's marriage, through divorce, to the daughter's death. Marcela is the fifth documentary by Trestiková in a six-part Marriage stories series. Glimpses of these people's not so easy lives since the end of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic are presented in stark, yet sensitive and moving fashion. We journey with them through the vicissitudes they face with sympathy - no mean feat for the documentary format.

Less than engaging is We want roses too (Italy-Switzerland 2007), a skimpy documentary survey of the women's liberation movement in Italy, using four women's diaries. Although combining interviews, advertisements, animation and television in quite interesting ways, for anyone at all au fait with the politics of the last 30 or so years, including women's movement politics, this is definitely small beer and does not offer anything particularly novel.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Four women (India 2007) fails to live up to the high standards Gopalakrishnan has set himself through his preceding body of work (Mathilukal; Vidheyan; Kathapurushan; Shadow kill). Here, cameo tales of four Keralan women's lives from the 1940s to date tell us that women continue to lose out, as they have since Indian independence. But there is no examination of the role of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), even in an incidental manner, in Kerala society (for example, literacy levels among men and women in Kerala are among the highest in the world at 97%). Why then has the position of women stayed so constant?

Morgan Neville's documentary The cool school (USA 2007) explores how the previously non-existent Los Angeles art scene boomed and bust during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Competition with what was going on in New York subsequently proved too much, though such talking heads as actors Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell and architect Frank Gehry recall fondly what was achieved. The cool school represents an important addition to our understanding of Irving Blum's Ferus Gallery and the artists it gathered and developed. Not to mention Barney's Beanery and Artforum.

Not at all funny is the bleak Funny games (USA-France-Germany-Italy 2007), which its director, Michael Haneke, claims as some kind of critique of the violence of US society. Home invasion meets Bowling for Columbine. Naomi Watts and Tim Roth battle gamely with this threnody of adolescent vileness, but fail to redeem it. Must surely win a gong for most over-hyped, pseuds' exploitation flick of the festival.

Likely to cause untold agony among purists of American literature, Captain Ahab (France 2007) lays out the story of the anti-hero in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. A distinct lack of engagement pervades the whole work. Seeming more made-for-television than prime Gallic product for one of the world's top film festivals, this is a snore-fest.