The BFI London Film Festival 2017 kicked off last week. Here are my reviews of the films which we went to see in Week 1; Breathe, Ghost Stories, Beach Rats, My Friend Dahmer & Rift (Rökkur)…
Breathe
Breathe was the film chosen for the Opening Gala of this year’s BFI London Film Festival and it also marked Andy Serkis’ debut as a director. The film tells the story of the disability campaigner, Robert Cavendish, who contracted polio at 28. Paralysed from the neck down and facing a grim life, where patients were expected to stay quiet and grateful, hidden away from other people, Cavendish contemplates ending his suffering. It is his remarkable wife, Diana (who was present at the screening), who decides that she is having none of that and determines to find a way to make Robert’s life more bearable.
After the adversity depicted in the immediate aftermath of the disease’s diagnosis, the film is guilty of indulging in an overly upbeat tone, with the Cavendishes seemingly meeting every setback with a smile and revelling in parties and trips around the country, even abroad. There must have been some moments of darkness, surely? Yet Serkis prefers to concentrate on the stiff upper-lipped stoicism of our protagonists. I’m not disputing the couple’s heroism, or their admirable fight for the rights of the disabled, but I do feel that the film might have benefitted from a little more emotional range.
Having said that, the cast are a delight. Andrew Garfield impresses as Cavendish in a necessarily limited physical performance and tries not to be too hampered by the surprisingly poor ‘old age’ make-up in the final reel. Claire Foy sparkles as Diana and is the heart and soul of the piece, utterly determined to improve her husband’s quality of life. This comes about chiefly via the support of her slightly-cynical twin brothers (Tom Hollander, having fun in the dual role), who engage Cavendish in witty discourse, and Hugh Bonneville’s inventor, Teddy Hall, who designs a wheelchair, which houses Cavendish’s vital respirator.
The most memorable scene, for me, came when Cavendish visited a German ‘state of the art’ facility for paralysed patients, which resembled a morgue, as if designed by Apple, all pristine white and chrome, with patients left to rot in their gleaming tubes. It was a chilling modern Hell. The horror we feel as an audience at this point is a sober reminder of how the disabled might be treated, were it not for sterling advocates such as the Cavendishes, proving that there is so much life possible beyond even the most severe of confines.
Ghost Stories
Writer/directors Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman have known each other since they were fifteen and they bonded over a mutual love of horror, particularly the joys of the Amicus portmanteau horror films, where some sort of linking device (e.g. Peter Cushing’s tarot card reader in Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors) would allow the producers to relate several stories over the course of the film.
I will attempt to be as unbiased as possible in this review but, in the interests of fairness, I think that I ought to declare, upfront, that I’m going to be reviewing a film by some heroes of mine. Dyson is the unseen fourth member of comedy legends ‘The League of Gentlemen’ and Nyman is a frequent collaborator of Derren Brown, which, basically means that these men are gods to me! I also thoroughly enjoyed the stage production upon which the film is based (if you did too, don’t worry, there are enough surprises, departures and omissions from the stage version to keep you entertained and on the edge of your seat), so my expectations were certainly high. I need not have been concerned, however, that I might feel let down in any way because it turns out that these two friends and collaborators have made a cracking film.
Dyson and Nyman’s love of the genre shines through in every frame of the film, with meticulous choices in set, lighting and casting. There are plenty of ‘jump’ scares but these guys are post-Scream aware and use such tactics knowingly, expertly managing the difficult balance of comedy and frights, which so few horror films achieve. In addition, in place of trite CGI, there are some brilliant trompe-l’œil and practical magic effects, which satisfied me so much more. There’s even some fun had with Derren Brown-style foreshadowing and number-play (the great illusionist, himself, has a cameo in the film but I bet you won’t spot him!).
The performances are led by the co-director/writer, Nyman, as Professor Goodman, the paranormal investigator of the stories, which unfold. Although I was sometimes distracted by his voice reminding me of his stellar turn in Psychobitches, Nyman is an affable everyman who’s gradual feeling that perhaps all is not as he perceives it, is creepily disturbing.
There is an illustrious list of comedians who have successfully turned to acting (I think Robin Williams, for instance, was one of the greatest screen actors to have lived) and Paul Whitehouse can now join that list, with his turn, here, invoking our sympathy in spades as the warehouseman in the first story. At first, an abrasive character, we have to believe Whitehouse’s fear is genuine or this story simply would not work and he more than delivers. Alex Lawther, probably best known as the younger incarnation of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Turing in The Imitation Game, continues to impress in the second story. Even before his strange tale begins we are creeped out by his sweaty, intense demeanour and his bland reaction to his distinctly odd household. In the final section, Martin Freeman is evidently having great fun in a role, which keeps wrong-footing us. Even the minor roles in this film are taken by decent actors, such as Oliver Woolford (superb in Channel 4’s Utopia) as one of Goodman’s childhood bullies and Star Stories’ Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, as a disillusioned priest.
Ghost Stories is a tense, thrill-ride. I recommend it.
Beach Rats
There are legitimate questions to be asked about the state of LGBT cinema when it continues to produce films about good-looking, young, masculine, white boys and their struggle to come out – don’t we have more diverse stories to tell? For those who struggle with body issues, the lead’s perfectly toned physique will do nothing for their own self-image. There is also so much ‘older, gay male wish-fulfilment’ (e.g. the young lead is turned on by older guys) and lingering, youthful, sweaty-bodied, voyeurism, that it was quite a surprise to discover the director (Eliza Hittman) was, in fact, a woman.
Further surprises come with the discovery that the lead, Harris Dickinson, is not the swaggering Brooklyn teen, which he so ably depicts, but rather a softly spoken Londoner. I’ve seen reviews calling his character, Frankie, despicable, even evil, which doesn’t sit easily with me – he’s a mixed-up kid whose ‘longing’ for a different life and a different set of friends is at the film’s core. Indeed, when Dickinson’s character makes some horrible choices, it is the quality of his acting and the strength of his burning desire, which, just about, pulls us through what little plot there is.
Other actors were street-cast (i.e. not professional actors), which is commendable for attempting to increase the realism but precious little was actually asked of them in this film. There are no real character arcs in the gang of boys, they are simply clichéd cyphers, seeming to exist, purely to increase Frankie’s sense of claustrophobia.
Kate Hodge is earnest as Frankie’s mother but, like the gang, she also has little with which to play. I cannot have been alone, for instance, in expecting her big moment to come with a dramatic scene between her and her son, when she finally discovers that he has pawned her pearls. I waited in vain.
The film leads up to a pretty distasteful conclusion, which uses an effeminate youth as its tragic foil, rather than one of Frankie’s older, predatory pick-ups. This serves to increase the stigma that so many gay films seem to project, that being effeminate should be punished and that the only gay protagonists worth focussing on are masculine ones. Whether it’s this out-dated stigmatising, or the rampant voyeurism, it’s hard not to feel just a little bit dirty upon emerging into the light.
My Friend Dahmer
The fascination with serial killers is intriguing, so powerful as to turn utterly hateful figures into modern folk heroes. Just recently a museum devoted to the East End was derided for wanting to re-name themselves the Jack the Ripper Museum, in order to capitalise on the most notorious serial killer of all time. In the iconography, Dahmer is not too far behind Jack in infamy. I think that this has something to do with the fact that Dahmer looked so far removed from the monster people were expecting. In court, Jeffrey Dahmer looked scarily normal, good-looking even. That is, of course, the frightening thing about psychopaths, they look just like us. It stands to reason, then, that at some point, they grew up something like us…
This film is based on a graphic novel, which I enjoyed reading several years ago, by Derf Backderf, who was a friend of Dahmer at high school. Following the novel closely, the director, Marc Meyers, presents us with a shy, alcoholic teen who despairs at his parents’ impending divorce and who never seems to quite fit in at school. Thus, Meyers effectively invites our sympathy for a monster that went on to rape, murder and dismember seventeen men and boys. I’m still not sure about how I feel about the apparent rehabilitation of a murderous cannibal who enjoyed necrophilia.
The nature vs. nurture debate is an interesting one but I find it hard to believe that the circumstances in which Dahmer grew up had much effect upon him. It is largely a romantic notion that such circumstances create monsters, psychopaths arguably being born, rather than made. Dahmer lay in wait for a jogger with a baseball bat at 16, admitting to having entertained fantasies of dissecting him, and went on to commit his first murder at 18, just a few weeks after graduating high school – I don’t think a lack of love from his parents had much to do with his grisly obsessions.
In the film, Disney alumnus, Ross Lynch, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the young Dahmer and whose gradual descent into madness makes for a fascinating watch, plays Dahmer. Lynch is excellent – even in the film’s poster, his cold stare is deeply unnerving – but I am not sure that we empathise with him in quite the way the director hoped.
Anne Heche and Dallas Roberts are unrecognisable as Dahmer’s parents, Joyce and Lionel, with touches of disassociation and anger, which their son has inherited and will take to extremes. Alex Wolff is decent as Backderf, egging on Dahmer’s weirdness but becoming increasingly concerned at what his friend may be hiding beneath his mask of indifference and unusual behaviour.
For so dark a subject, the film is often very funny. There is an amusing moment, for instance, when Lionel brings home some ‘friends’ for his son, which turns out to be dumbbells. Dahmer working out with them, blank faced and absurd in a 70’s headband, certainly yielded a few laughs in the audience. But this is jet-black humour when you happen to know that Dahmer committed his first murder by bludgeoning a man with a dumbbell.
The Director seems to think Dahmer might have been saved. I find it difficult to share his compassion.
Rift (Rökkur)
I loved this atmospheric thriller. The Icelandic setting was what first drew me to the film, as I had found it quite extraordinary on a recent visit (you can read my account of my visit in Icelandic Revelations, the link is here). The director, Erlingur Thoroddsen, spoke after the screening about the strange feeling that is generated in the area in which they filmed and I can certainly relate to this. Whether it is the volcanic nature of the land or the insistent belief of the inhabitants upon ‘huldufólk’ (roadworks being routinely altered to avoid offending these ‘hidden people’ or elves), there is a distinct eeriness to its desolate, black rocks and its milky, blue waters.
If there were clichés that disappointed me in the film Beach Rats, then Rift is a really great advocate for what can be done with LGBT cinema, when you think outside of the box and outside of the standard genre piece. The two leads are, mercifully, at ease with their sexuality, although still clearly affected by their broken relationship. The challenge for them comes not from a clichéd wrestling with their tortured sexuality but rather on something far more supernatural.
When the film opens, Gunnar (Bjorn Stefansson) is in a new relationship, when he receives a late-night call from his ex, Einar (Sigurdur Thor Oskarsson). Seemingly concerned for Einar’s state of mind, Gunnar drives to Einar’s secluded family retreat, where they both become threatened by ‘something’. Whether they are being stalked by some ghostly manifestation of their mutually painful past histories, or by something, or someone, altogether more tangible is open to interpretation. Indeed, the film’s ambiguities might frustrate some people but I was intrigued by them and I loved being teased.
There are horror and ghost story tropes aplenty – ghostly knockings in the night, mysteriously locked and unlocked doors, derelict buildings, desolate landscapes and stormy nights – even some homages to other horror films (particularly, the red coat in Roeg’s Don’t Look Now), but somehow these never feel clichéd. I think this is because the film takes the time to make us care about the central characters, something which is so rare in horror that it comes as a pleasant surprise.
Unusual, atmospheric, haunting – please go and see it upon its release.