Here is a list of the films I watched at this year's film festival:
River (Junta Yamaguchi, 2023)
Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, 2023)
Nomad (Patrick Tam, 1982)
Kidnapped (Marco Bellocchio, 2023)
Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)
Monster (Hirkoazu Koreeda, 2023)
Evil Does Not Exist (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2023)
Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki, 2023)
I had aimed to see more but, well, things didn't exactly work out as planned.
This year, the schedule was spread over three weekends, rather than the usual two. It's quite heartening to see so many packed screenings and I heard about numerous titles that had sold out, with extra showings added due to high demand. The festival organisers have done another fine job of picking up well hyped new titles from around the world. In the main selection, we had this year's Palme d'Or winner (Anatomy of a Fall) and films that have made a strong impression elsewhere on the festival circuit (Poor Things, Fallen Leaves, closing film Slow & The Taste of Things among others).
I missed the preview event in October but was able to access the programme online while I was away. As usual, I was holding out for at least one of two new films by Hong Sang-soo but will have to seek them out elsewhere. It was actually through the film festival that I first became acquainted with Hong's work when I watched In Another Country in 2012, which I admittedly was only interested in seeing because it stars the matchless Isabelle Huppert. Subsequently I was able to see Claire's Camera at LiFF 2017 and The Novelist's Film at LiFF 2022. There were also films that had been screened at the London film festival last month that I am very eager to see but didn't make it up North on this occasion. These include by far my most anticipated film of 2023, Víctor Erice's first new feature length work in over 30 years, Close Your Eyes, Catherine Breillat's Last Summer (also a return from a lengthy hiatus), Radu Jude's Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, Angela Schanelec's Music and the ever-prolific Wang Bing's Youth (Spring). Some other time, perhaps.
By far the most frustrating aspect of the whole event was that Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron, undeniably one of the major film events of 2023, was not in the initital programme and a screening seems to have been quietly added to the lineup for the final day at Hyde Park Picturehouse. By the time I was aware of this, it had already quickly sold out. It will go on general release in the U.K. on 26th December so I won't have to wait too long, but it would have been great if I'd been able to get to an early showing. It's almost certainly a case of a showing being agreed upon well after the schedule was finalised but they could have done terrific business with an extra screening at a larger venue. If only the Town Hall had been available. What could have been by far the hottest ticket of the whole event became almost an afterthought. Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest was also an unexpected add-on to the programme but, pardon the pun, of zero interest to this viewer.
I didn't actually get to Hyde Park Picturehouse this year but did go to several showings at my nearest venue (Cottage Road), as well as the Everyman and the VUE. Things got off to a shaky start when I watched River, an amiable science fiction comedy from Japan that had me feeling queasy with its frantic, handheld shaky-cam style in numerous scenes. I'm okay with this style of filmmaking on a small screen but on a big screen with subtitles, it makes me dizzy and nauseous. Running under 90 minutes I managed to struggle through it but my overall assessment of the film was that I managed to get through it without vomiting. Hardly endearing stuff.
Things got worse with the second film. In this instance, I was forewarned. I went in to Anatomy of a Fall knowing almost nothing about the film besides its success at Cannes earlier this year. In the sold out showing I attended at Cottage Road it was revealed that the film is primarily a courtroom drama. For as long as I can remember I have had a disdain for courtroom dramas and legal thrillers. For me, legal procedure and courtroom settings are not at all compelling and wholly uncinematic. The major box office run of the series of adaptations of John Grisham paperbacks in the 1990s remains one of that decade's most baffling trends. Anatomy of a Fall runs for an excruciating two and a half hours. With prizes given to ideologically driven hot garbage films like this, The Square and Titane, Cannes risks losing some of its prestige. It's hard to remember that it once gave its top prize to pioneering, audacious and enduring works like La Dolce Vita, Viridiana, Blow-Up, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, Kagemusha, The Ballad of Narayama, The Pianist and so on. Perhaps they should be more selective when it comes to picking their juries.
In many ways its cynical and hateful tone was surpassed by Poor Things, another internationally acclaimed film that is being discussed for all the wrong reasons. I was actually rather saddened to see the great Hanna Schygulla caught up in this deeply loathsome affair. It's a shallow attempt at something subversive but the unsubtle messages and worldview is not far removed from that of modern Disney fare, with anti-motherhood, anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-religion and misandrist perspectives all clearly spelled out for the viewer.
If this all strikes a note of despair, I should point out that the occasion was not a total washout, but it left a lot to be desired. Kidnapped is a handsomely crafted historical drama, done with a level of care, detail, emotion and intelligence that felt like it had come from another era. Japanese cinema provided some welcome offerings in the form of Monster and Evil Does Not Exist. Both of these however I would consider to be second or third tier outings from directors who have reached far greater heights in prior works. Coincidentally both had endings that struck me as uncertain and not wholly convincining. I don't mind ambiguity but in both cases it felt more like the filmmakers hadn't entirely figured out a satisfying way to resolve the story and decided to roll the dice. There were films showing in the final week that I chose to skip as some greater realisation had triggered a rethink about my whole attitude towards modern film.
I went to my final screening on Saturday 18th. Fallen Leaves was another prizewinner at Cannes this year, in this case the Jury Prize. With his two previous features, Le Havre and The Other Side of Hope, Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki's career took a disastrous turn in to global political concerns, which had the perverse effect of losing the universality of his best work. His latest film is a sound but unremarkable effort, that returns to some of the themes and settings of his early 'Proletariat trilogy'. The occasional allusions to the conflict in Ukraine however came across to me as didactic and intrusive. Perhaps that was intentional but I feel like it unnecessarily breaks the flow of Kaurismäki's wonderfully stylised environment and characters.
The highlight of the festival came in the rather unlikely form of a restoration of the Director's Cut of Patrick Tam's 1982 film Nomad. Tam's work remains relatively unknown and unheralded in the West so the presence of this film in the lineup was a pleasant surprise. Perhaps its part of a broader trend of the seemingly endless treasures of Hong Kong cinema from roughly the 1960s through to the 1990s being given a new lease of life and exposure over the past decade. UK Blu-Ray labels like Eureka and 88 Films seem to be well on board with this extensive survey. Long may it continue. Tam's film is brimming with energy, passion, colour, humour and youthful exhuberance that puts so much cinema of recent vintage to shame.
The pandemic made me miss the filmgoing experience but my outlook has changed on this and a lot of other things in 2023. This marks the year that my interest in contemporary film has more or less completely dissipated. New films just don't grab my interest the way they used to and the few that catch my attention are mostly late works by old masters and showcases for certain screen performers I like. My feelings about modern cinema have developed considerably over the past 6 months or so. It's something I've been aware of for some time but this was the year my disillusionment with the medium in general became impossible to ignore. I won't be doing my usual "year in film" writeups anymore as there's so little that is worthy of discussion although I will still share some highlights. Simply put, I'm out of the game as this now feels like a failed relationship and going forward with it is just making it more painful and seems to be avoiding the inevitable. What's to blame? Was it the rise of streaming? Prestige TV? The decade long reign of terror of Marvel Studios at the Box Offfice? The growing involvement of big tech in the entertainment industry? Cancel Culture? Overt Globalist Liberal Propaganada? Culture Wars BS and the politicisation of art and entertainment? Maybe all of these things or something else entirely. All I know is that I'm checked out. I'm glad to see the film festival continues to deliver a wide-ranging programme and be popular with filmgoers in the region. It's film culture itself that seems to have taken a turn for the worse and I feel audiences deserve something more worthwhile. Here's hoping for better things in 2024.
