London Calling: The Festival Lands
It’s that time of year again, film festival season is coming to an end. But thankfully, they save our great city till near the end so we’ve had a chance to sift through the successes of Venice, Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, etc. and this is the result. London may not have the glamour of Cannes and even the biggest Brit flick of the year, Atonement, decamped to Venice last month, but London differentiates itself in its ability to bring its festival to the public. If you love film, this is the time to get in there and mingle.
The events in London this year look fantastic and so now is the best time to really explore the biggest range of cinema you’re likely to find in one city. The festival runs from October 17th until November 1st, so by the time this goes to print you’ll be able to rush round to Leicester Square and check out the first releases. And you won’t be alone, as the creme de la creme of world cinema descend onto the square.
The Gala Screenings this year show a venerable line up of Hollywood eye candy: Halle Berry, Sam Mendes, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Sienna Miller, Michael Moore, Brian De Palma, Colin Firth and Sean Penn are all on the bill to launch new films whilst the likes of David Lynch, Naomi Watts and Steve Buscemi all have screen talks of one form or the other lined up to entertain the baying crowds.
But if you’re reading this then it won’t be the Vanity Fair alumni who you care about, but the films themselves, and the collection seems to showcase a “Best Of” from the festivals of the year so far. David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises kicked off the opening night on Wednesday fresh from winning the top prize at Toronto, the festival most noted for being the first place to exhibit a film you want to win a shedload of Oscars. Ang Lee brings Lust, Caution to our showers, fresh from Venice victory and will be looking to follow up the international (unfounded in my opinion) acclaim he received for previous feature, Brokeback Mountain. Apparently Lust has more plot to it though so the signs are good. The Cannes champion, Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days will also be shown alongside a discussion on Romanian cinema and its recent emergence into the international scene.
But this is far from just a cut and paste of more prestigious festivals. London will have seven world premieres over the 16 days of festival, as well as 128 UK premieres. It has an extraodinary wealth of international films from 43 countries that would normally have great trouble finding distribution in the developed world where budget trumps merit. We’ve even already seen the first good thing come out of Madeleine McCann furore as Ben Affleck’s new directorial effort, Gone, Baby, Gone, has been pulled from the schedule due to similarities to reality that I imagine the title of the film will explain if you haven’t heard. Better luck next time, Ben.
If you’re interested in seeing something that won’t be in your local Odeon in a couple of weeks or months, your best bet is to pick up a programme and really dig deep to find the most interesting offerings. Or you could try and find the most sought after tickets for screen talks but by now, you’ll have to be personal friends with a good PR contact or be Julia Roberts to get a place.
The big names do come out in force for London though, and you can catch the “respectable” side of Hollywood as well. Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck ride into town in The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford whilst Robert Redford directs himself, Tom Cruise and ever reliable Meryl Streep in political drama, Lions For Lambs. Halle Berry is doing her best to put her dreadful post-Oscar years behind her with what appears from the previews to be a very respectable turn opposite Benicio del Toro in Things We Lost In The Fire and Michael Moore will be trying to twist the knife in George Dubya’s side even further with his exposé of the American health service in Sicko, in a cinema just across the road from where an eager audience will be waiting to see Cate Blanchette, Christian Bale, Richard Gere et al transform into Bob Dylan for Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There.
Not until the closing night gala screening of Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited with Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson will cinephiles be able to relax and go about their lives again. Whether sat in one of the Leicester Square multiplexes, enjoying an event at one of the many other cinemas across the city participating in the festival or taking in the free screenings slated to happen in Trafalgar Square (the last one is Friday 19th, 18:30), London offers a film festival that strips away the elitism of most. It revels in respectability and reputation rather than style over substance, but don’t think that there’s any lack of style about.
And so perhaps that is why Joe Wright chose to take Atonement to Venice. It’s glorious cinematography can distract from the slightly muddled chronology issues that resulted from its literary roots, but Venice will accept that. London is smarter than that. Last year they opened with the best British film of the decade, the other James McAvoy outing The Last King of Scotland. Fingers crossed that this year they’ve done it again.
