Festival Fever
As Autumn finally approaches, Storyboard Editor Ella Kemp looks ahead to what would make for a perfect London Film Festival lineup.
It’s been something of an endless summer, hasn’t it? Hot weather that won’t cease and cinema trips that take a bit more effort than usual, we’re feeling a pretty welcome goodbye over here as back-to-school season rears its head – crucially, because it’s time to go back to the movies.
London Film Festival is just around the corner, and it’s following the first fully as-close-to-back-to-normal-as-you-can-get editions of Venice Film Festival and Toronto too. What that means for you and me, beyond the film industry, is a lot more good films are coming our way soon, without having to hop on a plane anywhere.
The programme for the big smoke’s best fortnight of the year is almost here – so with just seven days to go, here’s the same number of films we’ll be starting prayer circles for over the next week.
Aftersun
There was no guarantee after Normal People that Paul Mescal would be in anything good again. Why would he need to? The greatest thing to come out of London did a good enough job on its own – but what a relief that the Irish actor has found the role of his career in Charlotte Wells’ unassuming yet devastating debut feature Aftersun.
Mescal plays a young dad opposite the staggering rising star Frankie Corio as his daughter, as the pair try to enjoy a difficult summer holiday in an all-inclusive Turkish resort. So many painful moments ring true about parent-child relationships, and such tender detail has been given to this formative, tacky, sometimes magic, sometimes utterly miserable setting so many of us grew up with. A gem.
Bones And All
We have reached the point in civilisation where a year doesn’t really hold much worth until Timothée Chalamet releases a film. So, rejoice, friends and foes, the time has finally come – Luca Guadagnino’s YA romance-cum-road movie Bones And All might just be the spiritual sequel to Call Me By Your Name for those hungry for more.
There is seemingly no direct relation, yet few people understand the intensity of young love like Guadagnino and Chalamet. Plus, wrestling with the fact that Chalamet’s character, alongside his co-lead Taylor Russell (who lit up the A24 romance Waves) have a penchant for cannibalism, Guadagnino proved with his Suspiria remake that he understands love and pain equally. It won’t be one for the faint of heart – but then neither is any good love story worth living.
The Eternal Daughter
Joanna Hogg re-announced herself as one of our nation’s greatest treasures with her elegant and loosely autobiographical portrait The Souvenir and its unexpected sequel The Souvenir Part II so soon afterwards. Of course, the director had already been working for years, but has picked up the pace in a fascinating way – and here’s yet another one to look forward to.
Tilda Swinton has long been Hogg’s family friend and muse, and the enigmatic first image of The Eternal Daughter suggests the similar beauty we know the pair for, with a total sense of mystery only they can provide. British cinema is in good hands.
The Fabelmans
When Steven Spielberg tells you to jump, you jump. When he invites you to get to know his family, you break the news to your parents and you give everything to the Fabelmans. A lot of filmmakers take the leap into more personal filmmaking at some point in their career, but nobody’s ever quite mastered the magic of fiction filmmaking quite like Spielberg, so you know this one could promise something special. If you’ve ever felt a deep, deep sense of love because of a movie (otherwise, sorry, why are you here?), if you felt anything while watching Cinema Paradiso, or Roma, or, hey, even Belfast, walk right this way.
Triangle of Sadness
Have you ever tried just repeating the incantation “eat the rich” for two and a half hours? Ruben Ostend is offering up another path towards that purpose with his Palme D’Or winner, a meaty, salty, messy satire about the richest and worst people in society and what might happen to them after everything sinks. The director really managed to ask what would happen if Titanic was funny, and finally gave homegrown star Harris Dickinson a beautiful and horrible role to sink his teeth into. Pack your seasickness pills and jump onboard.
The Whale
It would be distasteful of us to claim we know who will win the Oscar for Best Actor before anybody has seen any of the films that could possibly be considered – but we would still gently like to point you to Brendan Fraser in The Whale. The actor’s performance is being touted as the one to watch this season, as the beloved actor (returning after a long time a way) plays an overweight man suffering with xyz, who painfully tries to reconnect with his daughter. Beyond Fraser, The Whale also brings this season’s Stranger Things standout performer Sadie Sink to our screens, hopefully opening up the young actor’s future far beyond Netflix franchises. Plus, beyond the two main stars, The Whale comes from everybody’s favourite most divisive indie horror/thriller Darren Aronofsky – so however this one goes, you know it’ll shake things up.
Women Talking
It’s been 11 years since Sarah Polley last made a film – the gorgeous Take This Waltz from 2011, and London Film Festival would do well to bring her new one to the UK. The ensemble cast for the harrowing drama, in which eight Mennonite women meet to discuss the countless rapes and murders of women by men in their colony, includes Jessie Buckley who, as we know, can do no wrong. She’s joined by Frances McDormand and Claire Foy among others – but at this point Jessie Buckley could be the one woman who does no talking and we would still say thank you for her attendance.
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