Quantity has long since displaced quality as the arbiter of film festivals.The few films with wide appeal and strong reputations are booked out early and the “long tail” is getting more extended each year as the industry produces far more than
Quantity has long since displaced quality as the arbiter of film festivals.
The few films with wide appeal and strong reputations are booked out early and the “long tail” is getting more extended each year as the industry produces far more than it can economically support.
I haven’t seen any of them yet and I have tried to steer clear of the swathes of “what was that all about?" movies.
The selection aims to demonstrate some of the best genre examples in modern cinema with a tip toward those doing justice to real world content as opposed to the hand-wringers.
You can bet on these:
1. I am Love: The festival opener is also likely to be the biggest crowd-pleaser, which means its only other session (a matinée) will be heavily booked. A must for anyone interested in Italy, food and romance.
2. Copie conforme (Certified Copy): More sophistication in Italy, with plenty of talk and not much else. The female lead is French favourite Juliette Binoche, who won the top prize at Cannes this year.
3. Le pere de mes enfants (The Father of My Children): French film buffs will love this fast-moving feast about financially challenged producer trying to keep his career and family afloat.
4. Four Lions: An slapstick comedy about British jihadists that exposes their political pretensions and makes fun of Islamic fundamentalism. A tonic for these times.
5. Women Without Men: The other side of Islam is presented in this drama about ferment in Iran at the time of the Shah’s coup in 1953 and four women caught up in it.
6. I Love You Phillip Morris: Jim Carrey isn’t usually considered festival fare – but when he turns homosexual it’s all on. See the trailer in French and you will see what I mean.
7. The Killer Inside Me: Only for those who want their noir short black and their violence, well, violent. Director Michael Winterbottom is uncompromising as ever.
8. Agora: A toga epic from fourth century Egypt and the fall of the Roman Empire. Rachel Weisz is the thinking person’s Xena beset on all side by a cast of thousands.
9. The Time That Remains: The Middle East conflict gets a highly personalised workout in Elia Suleiman’s autobiographical account of Palestine’s failure to reach an accommodation with the creation with Israel.
10. White Material: Africa at its worst as coffee plantation manager Isabelle Huppert tries to carry on regardless as civil war destroys everything around her.
Five off-course substitutes
Wild Grass: Veteran arthouse French director Alain Resnais still shows his ability to confuse and confound in his 80s. You’ll either hate it or love it.
The Ghost Writer: Another of cinema’s one-time enfants terriblee. Roman Polanski has returned to form with an adaptation of Robert Harris’ political thriller about the writing of a former British prime minister’s memoirs.
Splice: A horror film with a genetic twist that has already achieved cult classic status
Senso (1954) and The Red Shoes (1948): These restored masterpieces in colour still have audiences agog after more than 50 years. The ballet movie has one of the cinema’s greatest ever sequences while Visconti’s historical drama is one of the best ever.
