London Film Festival Diaries - Day 7

Cuteness overload in three films about communities under threat.

The London Film Festival (LFF) is running from October 9 - 20, and I am attending. Immediate impressions will be on X if you’d like to give me a follow there.

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Flow - dir. Gints Zilbalodis

Flow (© Janus Films)

Plot in a Nutshell
A cat gets stranded after her home is destroyed by a great flood. With the water levels rising, the cat manages to find refuge on a boat but she quickly discovers that she’s not alone. To survive, she must team up with a variety of other animal species, whether she’d like to or not.

Remember All is Lost (2013), that movie starring Robert Redford and no one else about a man trying to survive a storm on a boat? The similarities with Zilbalodis’ feline feature are striking. Both films are about survival and the Biblical power of Mother Nature, both films feature zero dialogue (or near zero in All is Lost’s case) and both glue you to the screen even when the narrative mechanics are seemingly so barebones and simple.

As someone who has a Russian Blue at home and loves her like family, Flow hit me right in the feels. This is an impossibly charming and endearing tale of survival, unlikely bonds, and nature in all of its cruelty and splendor. The score, the animation, the mystical elements, the wordlessness, even some philosophical flourishes; it all just works in such beautiful harmony.

Anyone who gets swept up by the sanctity of teamwork and community will be incredibly moved, animal lovers in general will adore this movie, and cat lovers will have a new favorite to revisit time and time again. I could’ve easily watched three more hours of sensational and imaginative film.

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The Wild Robot - dir. Chris Sanders

The Wild Robot (© Universal Pictures)

Plot in a Nutshell
Following a shipwreck, an intelligent robot named Roz is stranded on a deserted island, populated only by forest animals. Since she’s programmed for customer service, Roz attempts to assist the local animals by finding a task to do. She gets one when she inadvertently adopts an orphaned baby goose.

Another gorgeously animated film that’s so similar to Flow - the beauty of wild nature, impossibly cute animals, working together for the good of all and in order to survive - and yet so drastically different in its approach. Among other things, the film is meticulously designed and crafted to reduce you to a whimpering puddle of mush, and in that department it succeeds swimmingly. As in you’ll be swimming in your own tears by the time it’s done with you.

Much like its wonderfully fleshed-out characters, the film goes beyond its own programming of being an emotionally manipulative tearjerker to tell a story about enduring kindness - something so glaringly missing in our world today. The voice work - the obvious differentiator from something like Flow - is excellent across the board, with Lupita Nyong’o as Roz very much the stand out. Pedro Pascal as the voice of a wily fox and Catherine O’Hara as a tired mama possum with a passel of death-obsessed younglings also do excellent work.

Watching it right after Flow has also convinced me that the days of Disney/Pixar dominating the animation world is long gone. It will probably lose some of its luster on repeat viewings, but Chris Sanders’ best film since How To Train Your Dragon, is exactly the kind of film I’d want my kids to watch and learn from.

Beside the usual thrills, laughs and flashy action that keeps target audiences for U-rated films glued to the screen, The Wild Robot has a perfect message wrapped around an emotional story that keeps the excitement in fifth gear throughout. The easiest film to recommend to anyone, regardless their age.

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Vermiglio - dir. Maura Delpero

Vermiglio (© Lucky Red)

Plot in a Nutshell
In 1944, a deserter from the war arrives to the remote mountain village of Vermiglio, where a strict schoolmaster runs a tight ship. The lives of everyone is altered, not least the schoolmaster’s ten children. Things get really serious when love blossoms between the soldier and the teacher’s eldest daughter.

This might be my favorite looking film of the festival, and that’s saying a lot. There’s something about the bucolic, when it’s shot like this and given time to breathe, that’s eternally appealing. You can almost breathe the fresh air, smell the barn, and get misty-eyed from the steamy hot cow’s milk, making it an all-senses-engaged transportive experience.

Vermiglio is a war film where the war is never seen, only felt. It captures its own kind of haunted battleground, which, in many ways, is harder to pull off than the big battle scenes we’ve seen countless of times before. Director Maura Delpero nails the psychological scars the war left on the soldiers who return or escape, their families and even, inadvertently, the adorable little kiddos who don’t know any better but to romanticise it.

That’s also thanks in large part to the incredible casting — a mix of professional and non-actors alike, everyone looks, feels and acts as one with the environment. They’re like Renoir’s pastoral figures come to life. It’s interesting that the great Mikhail Krichman (Andrey Zvyagintsev’s go-to DP) also shot The End, the insular musical. It’s safe to say his mastery of light and shadow works best when there’s oxygen and sunlight involved.

For a bit of fascinating insight, producer Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli revealed in the Q&A after the screening that the idea of the film came to Delpero in a dream. She had recently lost her father, and she dreamt of him as a little boy in his country house. This made her change course on the film she was initially planning, and lead her to write Vermiglio. Knowing that puts the film in a whole different perspective. All of a sudden, its ethereal and nostalgic qualities make so much more sense.

Vermiglio’s slow pace and lack of foreground conflict may put some off, but the more I think about this movie, the more it grows on me. There is plenty of treasure to be found here for the patient and meditative ones among you.

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