London Film Festival: Never Let Me Go

This much-anticipated adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel opened the London Film Festival yesterday. Although I’ve seen quite a lot of this year’s programme already, it feels right to kick off the first of my festival updates with the big opening film.

During the post-screening press conference, Mark Romanek talked in almost gushing terms about Ishiguro's source novel (coming across more like a softly spoken rabbi than a director). He paid tribute to screenwriter Alex Garland and spoke glowingly of how collaborative the experience had been. All fine and good, but this reverential tone might be one of the reasons that the end product was, for me, a well-intentioned, artistically timid and – to be honest – slightly ponderous experience.

Never Let Me Go simply doesn’t take enough risks with the original material to succeed as a fully-realised film. There’s something very sealed-off and parched about this movie. For a film that is ultimately about what it means to be human, it’s far too polite and conventional to truly resonate, connect or feel tragic in any way.

Despite the impressive cast, it’s the first part of the film – dealing with the central trio as children – that is easily the most effective, and affecting. Romanek displays a deft touch in these early stages, creating an alternative Britain of the 70s where we learn that “by 1967, life expectancy passes 100 years”.

The hermetically-sealed – part-Blyton, part-Kafka – Hailsham boarding school is home to a generation of cloned children who will be organ-harvested when they reach adulthood. They will be robbed of any creative or romantic future, living only to ‘complete’ – and become donors for human transplants.

There’s an eerie sense of impending doom to this part of the film, which is full of foreboding and sinister adolescent dread. I was reminded of Joseph Losey’s strange, unsettling The Damned, which also deals with children brought up in isolation.

Once the action shifts to their teenage years, this sureness begins to ebb away. The notes are all there but the playing is off, somehow. It’s a very tough call for the central trio, essaying characters who are essentially barren imitators of human behaviour locked in a world they can’t understand or relate to. But the devastating consequences of their fate don’t resonate through the performances, which are variable in tone. Carey Mulligan is the standout, displaying quiet wisdom beyond her years. Keira Knightly is stretched – but manages to be brittle and affecting. Andrew Garfield, well, it’s fair to say he has been better than he is here.

There’s an awful lot of emoting during a draggy midsection that feels more like a prestige TV adaptation. It’s at this point that we should feel closer to these characters – their frustrations, their passions, and the quiet desperation of their short existence. Instead the principle players drift around, quietly accepting their fate. The climax we are building to, never in any real doubt, should be inexorable, devastating and haunting. Instead it feels unearned and forced.

For a film laden with talent, this was a disappointingly low-key start to the festival. Romanek is a gifted director who can build a sinsiter mood very effectively – particularly in the overlooked One Hour Photo – but his approach here is too reverent and lacking in nerve.

Letting go of this one feels too easy.

Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Let Me In - review

(if you haven't seen 'Let The Right One In', this contains mild spoilers)




Last night I saw Let Me In - the feared/anticipated remake of Thomas Alfredson’s majestic Let the Right One In. Alfredson’s original, gentle, understated vampire fable received one of the most rapturous receptions I have seen at any festival, ever – with the exception of Del Toro's Pans Labyrinth – and effectively earned the status of an instant classic. So the ire amongst fans was palpable - and understandable - at the announcement that the new Hammer stable were to immediately remake the film for the US. Predictable grumblings ensued, and I have to admit to feeling a certain level of concern myself – that is until two things happened.

Firstly, I read John Ajvide Lindqvist book which if you haven’t, and you’ve seen the Swedish film, you must remedy immediately. In fact remedy it anyway. It’s a terrific companion piece, a book which works wonderfully well particularly after you’ve seen the film - shedding light on some of the darker material hinted at onscreen. There is a LOT going on in it.



Secondly, Matt Reeves was then confirmed as the director. Now for my money Reeves’ Cloverfield is a near-perfect film, a 70s Spielberg quality, thrill-delivering shaky cam shocker; one of the most audacious, confident and dazzling genre films of the last decade.

The natural thought for me at this juncture, and for many others too I'm sure, was that perhaps Reeves might go back to the book and take a very different approach. There’s no way he would just remake the understated original in a US setting, surely?

Well the strange thing is that Reeves has pretty much done exactly that, but the result is so impressive that I left the cinema both surprised and affected in equal measure. My companions were not so convinced. I’m not quite sure why I feel this way, and why I didn’t share their disappointment but the answer lies, I think, in the ‘small stuff‘. Reeves’ film makes tiny tweaks and modifications, some work, some don’t. It’s like a fantastically realised cover version that sounds almost the same but is a testament to how tiny alterations can affect remarkable changes in a film’s emotional register.

Reeves' film sticks very, very closely to the original, surprisingly filtering the narrative even further and distilling it down to it’s core essence – the heartbreaking relationship between a bullied, lonely young boy; Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and a damaged, mysterious monstrous 'girl'; Abby (Chloë Grace Moretz).

Effectively this decision marginalises the presence of Abby’s 'father' ('Hakan' in the book); a man for whom the term 'special relationship' barely scratches the surface - and effectively jettisons the darker subtext of their bond (explored in hideous depth in the novel).



Where Reeves has modified, the changes are ingenious and the re-routing from Sweden to Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1983 is a complete masterstroke. The roots of trickle-down economic disharmony are being sown and this political context is handled lightly, neither heavy handed or forced. The poverty and social collapse of Stockholm from Alfredson's film is replaced with an America teetering into a darker age of its own; Reagan is in full ‘evil empire’ mode, warning on the television of communist threat and there are various nods to the ‘satanic panic‘ that engulfed early 80s America (which also forms the basis of Ti West’s brilliant recent House of the Devil). The atmosphere of doom and moral panic is extremely persuasive.



I’m not sure the additional police procedural elements really add much to the film, but it's always a pleasure to see Elias Koteas who plays the investigator here. It's easy to forget what a fine actor he is, and he’s on good form - barely recognisable under a large moustache and what appear to be Stanley Tucci's paedo-for-hire clothes from The Lovely Bones.

Richard Jenkins (from Six Feet Under) essays the 'father' very effectively but the characters presence is reduced. His brief moments linger in the memory though and when he is onscreen with Moretz he makes an impact so strong you miss him when he’s not around.



There’s no doubt that Let Me In loses its nerve a little mid-way, and it's hard to shake off the deja vu if you've seen the first (particularly as there's only a couple of years between them!). Reeves does frame the scenes very differently though, favouring overwhelming close ups to the original's medium to long shots. There’s a little bit of dubious CGI here and there too and Abby's cat-like movements are rendered oddly and artificially, bringing you out of the film.
It's also an unfortunate fact that the original had one of the greatest set pieces in any horror film of living memory and Reeves, good as he is, simply cannot top or even match it. That said he throws in one stunning sequence of his own, worthy of Carpenter at his prime – a taut, agonising moment - where Jenkins lies waiting to strike in the back of a car - which goes horribly wrong and ends in a wrenching, point of view car smash. It's quite outstanding. Both children incidentally are wonderful, and Michael Giacchino's score is simply sublime, resonant, poignant and spooky in turns.

Look, not every one is going to go for this. For some the film just won’t be different enough, for others even the fact that the original was so quickly remade will stick in the craw. For me, personally, I'm often a big fan of remakes. I even like Van Sant’s derided shot-for-shot Psycho facsimile and contributed to this spirited top ten horror remakes list, in which I would be happy to include Let Me in.

The fact is that the original exists, the book exists and now so does this - a delicate film of quiet grace and longing, an impressively rendered cover. If it doesn’t quite have the freshness and piquancy of the original it’s still a film of great integrity, a very impressive start for the re-energised Hammer stable and further confirmation that Matt Reeves is a director of genuine skill.

And if it compliments an original work that not nearly enough people have seen and serves as a way of letting them in on a modern classic - that can only be a good thing.

RIP Arthur Penn

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Gone but not forgotten: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains!

So The Runaways is out.

I'm really looking forward to seeing it, and Stewart and Fanning definitely look the part, but can it in all seriousness be as good as THIS?



Starring a 15 year old Diane Lane (before her 80s Outsiders/Rumblefish/Cotton Club Coppola triple-whammy) this is a terrifically grotty, obscurist little number just ripe for Runaway-influenced rediscovery.

Made in 1981, it’s a pretty canny distillation of the transient nature of the punk-pop game, which is understandable given its director Lou Adler was a noted music producer and entrepreneur. Despite years of success in the industry he couldn’t save his own flick from sinking into almost complete obscurity immediately, but its memory has been fondly kept alive by cult aficionados over the years and it often bubbles up to the surface on various occasions when the zeitgeist chimes with its ramshackle tale of girl rockers in a rock n' roll rut. It was a bit of a riot grrl touchstone if I remember correctly.

WEIRD cast too, with a very young Ray Winstone, even younger Laura Dern, some of the Pistols and other assorted hangers on. Legit copies are nigh-impossible to find, but mark my words this will be out on a cheapo DVD spec edition by the time Joan and the gang hit DVD.

Good thing too.

FrightFest: Cherry Tree Lane

The interesting career journey of director Paul Andrew Williams and producer Ken Marshall continues with this uncomfortable to watch, occasionally brilliant home invasion film. A deliberately divisive work, it elicited accusations of Daily Mail-pandering from some audience members - the kind I last heard levelled at the near-perfect, more ruthlessly exploitative Eden Lake. Cherry Tree Lane is far less feverish than Lake, and even allows for some deadpan humour to seep through the grimness. And while its closest antecedent is Michael Haneke’s excellent Funny Games it doesn’t have any of the snooty audience game-playing elements of that film.

My fear when I initially heard about this film was that it would lean very heavily on the Haneke model, but Williams does some interesting things with form and tone, and it doesn’t feel like he’s holding up any mirrors to the audience - instead he’s inviting them right in, up close, to feel the discomfort, peril and outright terror of the situation. The set-up is ruthless, lean and economical - a young gang force their way into a middle class couple’s home, hold the pair hostage and assault them, while awaiting the return of the couple’s wayward son, for whom they have a major grievance, and terrible revenge to exact upon. Although it’s a very different work, this has an intensity and control that harks back to the pair’s first collaboration, London to Brighton.

And again he coaxes some real standout performances from a mostly unknown young cast - I was particularly blown away by the quiet authority of Ashley Chin as Asad, who delivers a nuanced, layered portrayal of disaffected, disconnected young man.



Williams’ confidence as a filmmaker is clearly growing and although some of the hypnotic atmosphere that is built in the opening thirty minutes (aided by an excellent UNKLE score) starts to ebb away slightly when the gang invite some additional, younger members over to the house, a frenzied and intense finale gets things back on track.

We might not like or feel at all comfortable with another film that uses white class-panic about feral youth as its basis, but while this contemporary fear continues to be ruthlessly exploited by tabloids and news organisations, it remains a subject worthy of exploration. Williams' film might not change any existing attitudes, but it stands up to the best examples of the genre, while forging an identity of its own.