4.15pm: The Heat's On
What's the dodgiest film title in this year's LFF? There's certainly a case to be made for Anal Masturbation & Object Loss, a short in the Video Visions section. But the original French title of The Heat's On is worth a mention, because it's a derogatory and racist slang term for a botched-up job: Travail d'Arabe, literally "the work of an Arab". The Arab in question is Momo (Mohamed Metina), who's just moved to a new town to mooch off his sister and make a fresh start. His sister puts him in touch with Gilou (Cyril Leconte), a high-pressure salesman for the Gutti Brothers heating company. Momo starts to work for them, and quickly discovers that he's the hardest working one of a lazy and incompetent bunch - but is inevitably still treated like crap because of his race. And when the Guttis' corner-cutting and dodgy dealing starts putting lives in danger, he's forced to take action.
Director Christian Philibert was last seen here in 1999 with The Four Seasons Of Espigoule, in which he collaborated with the people of his home village to produce an exaggerated version of their day-to-day lives. There are no such pretensions to fake documentary in The Heat's On, but the performances all have a semi-improvised feel to them, and it gives the story a genuine energy and realism. There's some splendidly dark humour, notably in the way that Momo encounters casual racism from everyone, even the people who are trying to help him: but it never feels forced or exaggerated. And although French racism is one of the key subjects of the film, it also spends a gratifying amount of time emphasising what bastards heating engineers can be.
Metina's performance makes Momo an engaging and likeable protagonist, even during the stretches of the film when he's just reacting to other people. So it's a little disappointing that the compulsively gripping story of The Heat's On ends in a slightly inconclusive fashion, with most of the plot strands on the way to being resolved, but not quite there yet. Having said that, I liked the symbolism of Momo's final shot, where we see him silhouetted against the sunset passing a horse rider with a feather in their hair. Presumably the indication is that his battle against the cowboys will go on? I guess that some derogatory slang is just universal.
6.30pm: Jan Werich's Fimfarum
Oh, yeah, we know everything about Czech animation here. Well, there's Jan Svankmajer, and then... er... those other guys too. After this film we can add to the list the names of Aurel Klimt and Vlasta Pospisilova, two animators who've spent the last 17 years (on and off) making the five shorts collated in this feature. They're based on short stories by the late Jan Werich of the title, and animated to readings that he recorded before his death in 1980.
The five stories are typical Eastern European folk tales with a twist. When The Oak Leaves Fall tells of a drunken farmer who makes a deal with the Devil to improve his crops, and the inevitable attempts made by both parties to cheat on the deal. Fearless Franta is the story of a boy who knew no fear, and the night he spent in a haunted inn. Miserly Barka is a woman so stingy she saves her old sausage skins for use as curtains, and her film tells the tale of the people in her village who coveted her spare pig. A Dream Fulfilled is probably the weakest of the five, about a man trying to use his dreams to win a fortune on the lottery. And the title short Fimfarum introduces us to a blacksmith whose wife is cheating on him, and the deal he makes with the Devil to get revenge.
If you weren't paying attention, just listening to Jan Werich's sing-song narration and looking at the pretty pictures, you'd imagine these stories filling up one of those Folk Tales Of Foreign Lands slots that BBC2 children's telly used to be full of. But then you'd have to start thinking about the depression, gambling, alcoholism, wifebeating, attempted murder, devil worship and incontinence on display: all the true elements of proper folk tales, of course, but a useful reminder that these stories were never really intended for children. Klimt and Pospisilova's model animation has a delightfully organic style throughout, with some clever switches to 2-D work during some fantasy sequences. It's all rather good fun, and I'm just disappointed that our tight schedule meant that we couldn't stay for the Q&A afterwards (given how few of them there've been this year).
9.00pm: Kiss Of Life
John (Peter Mullan) is an aid worker stranded in Croatia, desperate to get back home to his wife Helen (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) and kids in London. His frequent absences are causing the family to collapse in on itself, and he knows it. As he sets off on a dangerous return journey, relations between the remaining family members are reaching breaking point. Helen is so distracted by the mounting problems of her life that she doesn't notice a speeding car approaching her in the street. From that point on, Emily Young's film becomes a complex mixture of flashback, fantasy and real life. The trick is being able to recognise which is which.
Young's first feature as a writer and director has a level of ambition that you simply don't expect from low-budget British films. The script is a teasing matrix of possibilities which aren't finally resolved until the closing minute or two of the film: and even then, there are sufficient loose ends and ambiguities to ensure that it'll stand up to multiple viewings. From the London end of the film, it's a study of loss, extraordinarily good at conveying the stunned numbness that settles on a household following the sudden absence of a family member. From the Croatian end, it's quite the opposite, as John battles against the odds to find his family again. And Young manages to reconcile these two strands beautifully.
She's helped by very good performances all round, notably by the reliable Peter Mullan, doing some intense yet subtle work with little dialogue. Ingeborga Dapkunaite does well in what's technically the more complex part, though the revelation in the Q&A that this was originally going to be a role for Katrin Cartlidge - she died two weeks before shooting started, and the film's dedicated to her - took my breath away. In a film that's so concerned with possibilities and what-ifs, the idea of what she could have done with this role is too good to let go of: she could have given Helen the emotional weight that Dapkunaite sometimes lacks. That said, the film we actually have here is a staggering piece of work in its own right.
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