As many chat-happy stars as you can shake a Dictaphone at. Keira Knightley and Colin Farrell doing crosswords. Real-life punters. And now – great stuttering kings! – an actual prize. It might not have the glitz of Cannes, but there's just something about the London Film Festival, writes DONALD CLARKE
WHAT’S THE BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL FOR?
What’s any film festival for? The British event does not, it’s true, register across the news pages in the way that Venice, Toronto, Berlin or Cannes do. Established in 1956, spread somewhat messily across the West End, the LFF – now associated with the British Film Institute – lacks an obvious hub and has always been conspicuously short of shiny gongs (the best-film award was inaugurated just last year).
Moreover, arriving right before Oscar season and right after Venice and Toronto, the festival has struggled to secure high-profile premieres. Both this year's opening film, Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go, and closing presentation, Danny Boyle's 127 Hours, have already opened elsewhere.
For all that, the festival remains, for media organs within these islands, a more fecund source of tasty copy than any other major festival. Whereas interviews are in short supply at, say, Cannes or Venice, this year's London bash has provided The Irish Timeswith a wealth of tasty features.
In the next few months you will encounter chatter from Let Me In, Never Let Me Go, Conviction, Black Swan, Biutiful, Benda Bilili!, Somewhere and another smattering of delicious prospects. Such stars as Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo and Sam Rockwell have sat down to chat with us. The London event is also notable as a people's event. Unlike at some of the snootier European festivals, here you actually see genuine punters milling excitedly about the aisles.
WHAT’S THE GOSSIP ABOUT BRITAIN AND IRELAND?
The Irish presence was small but significant. Tom Hall's Sensation, a black comedy of sex in the midlands, and Risteard Ó Domhnaill's The Pipe, a documentary on Shell's attempt to lay a gas pipe through Rossport, Co Mayo, played with some success at the event.
Understandably, however, much of the chatter in the tearooms concerned the current state of the British film industry. Arriving with a wealth of good advance word, The King's Speech, Tom Hooper's study of George VI's efforts to overcome a speech impediment, garnered more good reviews, but also triggered a degree of huffing and puffing. Jason Solomons, the Observer's LFF specialist, accused the film-makers of "giving the Yanks what they want". Such films will, despite the recent abolishment of the UK Film Council, surely still find their ways into cinemas. There is, perhaps, more concern about more idiosyncratic, less glossy films such as Clio Barnard's The Arborand Peter Mullan's Neds. Barnard's quasi-documentary, based on the writings of deceased playwright Andrea Dunbar, and Mullan's tale of 1970s Glasgow street life did much to keep the domestic critics' spirits buoyant. But will the money be there for such features in the future?
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR THE OSCARS?
Ah, yes. Sad to relate, though autumn has barely arrived, the London Film Festival can be regarded as an opening discharge in the battle for the 2011 Oscars. Some of the contenders were unveiled at the Venice film festival. A few more popped up at Toronto. But London offers the first near-comprehensive glimpse at the current front runners. Natalie Portman still looks like a stonkingly good bet for best actress. The diminutive actor gives an astonishing, gut-churning performance – all delicate ferocity – as a mentally unstable ballet dancer in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan.The film, a happy amalgam of Michael Powell's The Red Shoesand Roman Polanski's Repulsion,is also sure to get nominated in the best-picture race. Everyone still thinks that Colin Firth will get the nod for The King's Speech. The Kids Are All Right, which opens today, very shortly after its London unveiling, is also sure to pick up many, many nominations. Mike Leigh's Another Year, trailing warm notices from Cannes, may also book a place in the final race.
It’s an enormously silly conversation, but it proved impossible to pass through a hotel corridor without hearing such speculations. What actually deserves to win? That’s a conversation for another day?
REMAKES NEED NOT BE CLONES
There was a great deal of confusion in the opening days when the press junket for Let Me In, Matt Reeves's remake of Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In,kicked off on the floor above that for Mark Romanek's adaption of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go. The former tells of a young boy's infatuation with a young female vampire; the latter follows a group of school children who discover horrifying facts about their ghastly futures.
As I sat waiting for Keira Knightley, star of the Romanek piece, to usher me within her sanctum, half a dozen journalists arrived at the wrong floor. Given the personnel involved – Carey Mulligan, Charlotte Rampling and Andrew Garfield join Knightley – it is hardly surprising that Never Let Me Goturns out to be a classy piece of work. More unexpectedly, Reeves has delivered an impressively respectful – but still individual – take on the Alfredson film. Some pundits even claimed that the Reeves picture was an improvement on the original. That's stretching it, but it remains an admirable exercise. Oh, and Knightley told me that, while working with Colin Farrell on London Boulevard, the pals enjoyed doing the Guardian crossword together. More shocking revelations when Never Let Me Goopens in January.
WHAT’S SLIPPING THROUGH THE CRACKS?
As ever, a few smaller films failed to receive the coverage they deserved. Among that number is a moving, unsentimental little documentary from Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye entitled Benda Bilili!.The picture examines a group of homeless street performers from Kinshasa – many of them disabled by polio – who, with the film-makers' eager assistance, have managed to secure a degree of international fame and an unexpected level of security.
Renaud told this writer that he and his chum had spent three years shooting the band. “It is then astonishing when you come here and the film receives this mad, enthusiastic reception,” he says. “This lady came up to me and she was crying. That is not something we ever expected.”
Also looming in the undergrowth is Serhiy Loznytsya's My Joy. The Ukranian film – an unholy terror trip down a horrible side road – has struggled to attract attention, but knocks the stuffing out of most viewers.
Music fans of a certain age and inclination (hem! hem!) were undignified in their enthusiasm for The Ballad of Mott the Hoople(it's about Mott the Hoople) and, despite its occasional sluggishness, improperly tolerant of Lemmy (it's about Lemmy).
THE SAD STORY OF CONVICTION
Tony Goldwyn's Conviction,a draw on the festival's first week, tells the story of an extraordinary – though ordinary – woman named Betty Anne Waters, who trained as a lawyer in order to secure the release of her brother, Kenneth Waters, who had been wrongly convicted of murder. The messages before the final credits explain what happened to the characters after the film's story ended, but fail to point out that, only six months after his release, Kenneth was killed in a freak accident. Not surprisingly, quite a few people asked Waters and the cast – Hilary Swank plays Betty Anne, Sam Rockwell the accused man – how Kenneth was faring these days. The reason for the strange omission in the credits? Betty Anne wanted the film to be about Kenneth's life, not his death. Now you know.
