56th BFI London Film Festival

Another year, another London Film Festival I miss due to having to work and being too slow to get round to booking tickets and finding anything I want to see already sold out. But not this year. With greater daytime freedom and more forward planning, I managed to make it to five of the 200+ films on display this year, confounding expectations by going to films from three, count them, continents.

But, as ever, let’s start in Japan. At the grand, old NFT I went to see ‘The Samurai That Night’, a tale of a widower seeking revenge for the hit-and-run killing of his wife five years previous. Nakamura has become a depressive, living in a dream world since his wife’s death, lacking any emotions or drives beyond one thing: vengeance. The killer of his wife, now free, starts to receive daily death threats in lead up to the five year anniversary of the event. Obvious where the threats came from, friends and family try and stop the final showdown before it’s too late.

The Samurai That Night

The film builds nicely, creating a sense of suspense, with a good performance from the lead, Masato Sakai. But, with any film that builds so much towards a finale, it is always tricky to execute an ending suitable for what has come before it. Here, the ending feels a little confused in parts and leaves you guessing as to what the final outcome will be, but in the end, probably does just enough to satisfy, concluding that death is that old metaphor for change.

1960s, high school musical set in Kabukicho, Tokyo…it has to be…it must be…it is Miike Takashi, once again making you wonder what the Hell he is going to do next. With the recent ’13 Assassins’, he proved his ability to work with a larger budget and now returns with the pop music video ‘For Love’s Sake’ (currently winner of the largest number of film titles award). Absolutely perfect Ai loves the downright arsehole Makoto, who saved her when she was younger. Returning the favour, she persuades her endlessly bourgeois parents to pay for his education and thus save him from being sent to a young offenders institute. But, of course, the plan fails; Makoto wanting to prove he is the world’s biggest arsehole at every opportunity.

Cue massive dance routines, horrendously catchy J-Pop songs and a teenage boy beating the shit out of a girl while she sings of her love for him. A script in Miike’s hands can truly become anything, and here again he proves his uniqueness even among Japanese directors. As with many of his films, it’s probably a little too long, a bit bumpy in parts and is at times purely stupid for the sheer joy of it, but proves that despite the high number of films he produces each year they are still of a reasonably high quality.

I’ve never been to Cine Lumiere before – part of the part of the Institut Francais, where clearly everyone is very tall and likes leaving the pubic hair in the urinal – but here the chance was given to actually speak to a real-life Japanese director and receive a long, comprehensive response via an interpreter. 

Miwa Nishikawa introduced her fourth film ‘Dreams for Sale’, where a couple, down on their luck after their restaurant burnt down, try to rebuild their lives as the husband seduces vulnerable women into parting with their money in return for some face-stroking, massage and good old coitous. The more the money flows, the more ambitious they become, seeking more and more money. As you can predict, their greed stretches a step too far, with dire consequences.

Dreams for Sale

The film raises interesting ideas about the concept of truth and deception, with the director wanting to – in her interpreter’s words – ‘explore how people reveal their true selves in times of crisis.’ An all-star cast play out the story, and having been the student of Kore-eda Hirokazu, Nishikawa is clearly a director for the future: a female director that ‘doesn’t necessarily want to make films about women.’

Next we head west to Africa, Senegal to be exact and a film featuring American rapper/poet Saul Williams. Meaning today, ‘Tey’ is Senegalese director Alain Gomis piece about a man that has one day left on this Earth. Having returned from America, Satche wakes surrounded by friends and family before wondering almost aimlessly round the city before returning to his wife and children to end the day.

Being That Williams is an American, and so having no knowledge of any foreign languages, the dialogue is kept to quite a minimum in this one. There is no particular narrative other than that of a man wondering on his last day on Earth, unsure as to what to do and where to go. He bounces from family to groups of friends to women to senior dignitaries to his family home.

Tey

There are some interesting crowd scenes within the cityscape as he moves around, though there is little that is really said nor concluded for me throughout to have any real impact. It is an interesting enough film, but is a little unsatisfying come the end. You can state that this is a film of an introspective look back at a life and places of the past, and it is to an extent, but with little explanation as to context this could be any day in a life on Earth.

North we now go and to that place called London. Tom Shkolnik’s debut ‘The Comedian’ is a film about London and relevant to anyone that has met someone living in the Hackney area. Ed is a call centre worker, not a comedian, that is his evening passion, but something that is not dwelt on too much. With his comedy career still not taking off and his depression at call centre work, he becomes involved in a bisexual love dodecahedron involving a young bartender/artist, his ‘musician’ flatmate and a colleague from the call centre. But all soon crumbles and he is left to look at what is next for himself.

Using close up camerawork and fast editing, ‘The Comedian’ throws you right into the middle of situations, creating a realistic atmosphere lacking in music but high on emotional outbursts and confrontation. Shkolnik’s London is one of unrealised dreams, heavy drinking, mundane work life and confrontation, which works to good effect, featuring various characters and scenarios common in the modern day capital.

The Comedian

‘The Comedian’ is an ironic title, featuring little in the way of actual stand-up routines, focusing more on the day-to-day realities of the many ‘artists’ throughout London, where people are more likely to say what they want to be than what they actually are.

Finally having got round to seeing some of the offerings from the festival – that I can remember anyway – it’s good to see films fresh, rather than having to wait years for them to reach British shores. The five films I went to see were all different but interesting and leave me making sure I will bother to get round to booking tickets next year.