London Film Festival Diaries - Day 8 and Closing Thoughts
Almodovar disappoints on screen, Leigh englightens in person. Plus an epilogue.
The London Film Festival (LFF) was running from October 9 - 20, and I was attending the screenings. Immediate impressions were posted on X if you’d like to give me a follow there.
The Room Next Door - dir. Pedro Almodóvar
Plot in a Nutshell
Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) were very close friends when they were younger, working side by side in the 80s at the same magazine before Ingrid moved on to become a novelist and Martha pursued a career as a war reporter. After years of losing contact, they reunite under sombre circumstances - Martha has terminal cancer. Her final request is for Ingrid to be in the room next door when she dies.
Not sure if it’s because we are robbed of the allure, charm and romance of the soulful Spanish language, but The Room Next Door is a flaccid replicant of what a genuine Almodovar picture should be. The most famous Spanish filmmaker’s first film in English has a few spurts and spats of fantastic exchanges and injections of mordant wit but no amount of dark humor and Almodovarian color palettes can compensate for the airy gulf between me and all of the characters in this film.
Ingrid, Martha and Damian (John Turturro) - an old flame they both shared whom Ingrid still keeps in touch with unbeknownst to Martha - don’t feel like real people. They are mouthpieces. Pretty-looking receptacles for Pedro to pour his ideas and politics into, and have them played back through capable performers. Swinton, Moore and Turturro are obviously excellent but because the dialogue and conversations are as stylized as the interior set designs and the polychromatic costumes, not much lands or resonates.
Alberto Inglesias’ omnipresent score is more a constant reminder that you’re in someone’s made up melodrama than an enhancer of any emotions that feel real. If there was a way to mute it, I would’ve done it more than once.
The film desperately tries to invoke an intense feeling but ends up being more of a caricature of a drama than a genuine exploration of death, one of life’s biggest subjects. It’s the most colorful sterile film I’ve seen in a long time and has me thinking that Almodovar’s Golden Lion at Venice had to be a consolation prize for all the times he was passed over when he had far, far greater work.
BFI Screen Talks: Mike Leigh - “Box Ticking Is A Disease”
Event in a Nutshell
For the final BFI Screen Talks series with filmmakers, the magnificent Mike Leigh was interviewed by his biographer on stage at the BFI Southbank. They talked about his filmmaking process, is feelings about his previous films, and his message to filmmakers working today.
Mike Leigh cuts a frail figure at 81. He shuffles gingerly towards the stairs, needs a walking stick to use them, and requires assistance to get up and out of the chair. During the event, he touched upon his unnamed condition only once, to say that he’ll be having surgery soon and hopes that it won’t stop him from making at least one more movie.
Luckily, none of the geriatric demeanour or talk of surgeries took away from Leigh’s sharpness and candor. He talked about his new film Hard Truths and how, when it was rejected by Cannes, Venice and Telluride Film Festivals he started thinking that he must’ve “made a shit film”. Then Toronto, New York, San Sebastian and London all screened it to rapturous applause and now he thinks it just didn’t have enough “glitz and glamour” for those other festivals.
He talked of how disappointing it is when his films get mixed reviews and aren’t as embraced, and how especially devastating that is for all the people who worked on the film. This explained why there’s been a six year gap since his last film, Peterloo, which was an $18 million production that barely broke $2 million at the box office.
He talked about the cruel business of getting rejected by backers and financiers, cutting through all the studios that want to creatively meddle in stories, and when someone from the audience asked if he thinks it’s tougher for young filmmakers today compared to when he was starting out, the answer was the highlight of the evening:
MIKE LEIGH: It is tougher. And the ridiculous thing is it shouldn’t be tougher, it should be easier. Now with new technology, the facilities are much more accessible, and cheaper, so it shouldn’t be more difficult. As far as I’m concerned, the biggest problem quite simply is this: young filmmakers are beset horribly by preconceptions and certain requirements by backers and clients of potential backers, of a prescriptive nature. Box ticking. What’s acceptable and what isn’t. A young filmmaker I know who worked a long time with a cinematographer who was a guy, went to a meeting and was asked ‘Why isn’t your cinematographer a woman?’ To which the filmmaker replied, ‘Because he’s a man.’ And the implication was that he’d be better off if it was a woman. And, of course, it’s great that there are more and more women directors and cinematographers, of course it is. But the box ticking is a disease. There are also box-tickings about the nature of characters, stories, ethnicity and all the rest of it.
So my main message is that, of course, people should have freedom to make the films they want to make without interference and with encouragement, and that really is as big of a problem as any for young filmmakers. Does that resonate with your own experience?
QUESTIONER: I’m not a filmmaker, so..
MIKE LEIGH: Well, you’re lucky.
Pretty sharp for an old geezer.
The audience was also treated to a little retrospective look at a few of his most celebrated films, including Naked (1993), Secrets & Lies (1996), Vera Drake (2004) and Another Year (2010) - where Leigh discussed his feelings about the characters in the films, reasons why he chose to do those films, and how some of them are still so relevant today (with abortion being such an important topic before the US election, Leigh suggested that Vera Drake should get re-released in US theaters right now).
As I wrote in my mini review of the film, Hard Truths sees Leigh back at his very best, and with deserved Oscar buzz for Marianne Jean-Baptiste already brewing, I am keeping my fingers crossed that he gets the right backers quickly for his next project. This world is in dire need of more Mike Leigh films.
Closing Thoughts
In terms of films, my experience was sandwiched between two mediocre disappointments from directors who should really know better (Blitz and The Room Next Door) but overall I really can’t complain. I saw 15 films in total, and I was either heavily entertained, swept away, blown away, fully immersed in or completely in awe of at least 10 of them. And in case it wasn’t clear already, I could not have asked for a better closing than watching and listening to an hour of Mike Leigh talk about filmmaking.
When two thirds of the films you watch are at the very least good, and you managed to not walk out of a single screening - that’s a successful festival. Even if you missed the film that eventually won the top prize (I saw three animated films, but somehow missed Memoir of a Snail, dammit!) Anyway, them’s the breaks.
If I have the time this week, I’d like to do a Top 10 ranking with some info on when the films are coming out in the US and UK (if available). If not, then it’s sayonara until the next fest! Thank you for reading, engaging and sharing my thoughts.
Thank you for writing and looking forward to your Top 10!