Cambridge Film Festival 2009 Review!

This year's Cambridge Film Festival offered an interesting and eclectic mix of films, from Lynn Shelton's brilliant recent comedy Humpday right through to Carl Th. Dreyer's classic 1932 horror film Vampyr. There were special sections centred on, amongst others, British spy cinema, German Cinema Today and the late great Jack Cardiff. Thrown into the mix of UK Premieres and archive screenings were a number of films already familiar to regular festival goers from this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival (including Humpday), but there was enough on show that even the most ardent film watcher still had plenty of new titles to wonder at...in both senses of the word. In the couple of days I was there I was only able to see five features and one collection of shorts but, as it happens, they were all made by British directors, which gave me an interesting opportunity to survey the current state of British cinema.

Unfortunately things didn't get off to a great start, with Phil Hawkins' adaptation of Philip Pullman's The Butterfly Tattoo leaving quite a lot to be desired. Although the film contained some nice sensual moments and pulled off some occasional touches of subtle humour, the interesting mystery at its centre quickly became obvious and, although ultimately tragic, the film never managed to sidestep corniness for very long. Matters weren't helped by the almost continually moving camerawork, uneven performances and coincidental character timing (i.e. one character arriving at a place just in time to witness a key moment for another character). Furthermore, the film was apparently rescored in only two weeks after a complication with the original score and, quite frankly, it showed. It does feel wrong, however, to be too critical of the film – despite the big name behind the source material, the film was made on a microbudget of $400,000, with the aim of giving young filmmakers the opportunity to learn on the job. Still, it's hard to completely attribute the film's failings to lack of money and experience, given that the best film I saw at the festival was a debut feature made for a paltry £12,500.

Directed by recent NFTS graduate Brian Welsh, Kin marks the arrival of several staggering new talents on the UK scene. The film tells the story of an autistic man, Frank, who leaves his quiet life in London to visit his ailing mother in their family home. Once there, Frank's sister, tired of caring for their mother all by herself, slowly but forcefully tries to prevent him from leaving. There's no denying that it's a horrible, quietly devastating film, but it's all the more powerful for it. In addition to Welsh's superb direction, special mention must also be made of the remarkable performances and of Dominic Kinnaird's portrayal of Frank in particular. It's the type of bold, believable and human performance that a bigger name would be Oscar nominated for.

There was also great acting on show in two of the other films I saw, Katalin Varga and Creation. The former is a hard film to talk about without giving away too many spoilers, but it's a film which can perhaps best be described as 'Tarkovsky meets Tarantino' – or, to put it another way, as a film which offers an art-house take on the exploitation genre. The film has an incredible mood and texture to it, arising from both the stunning photography and the pitch-perfect score. Ultimately, however, for all of its beauty, the film does remain essentially an exploitation piece and while it does raise some interesting moral questions, those seeking existential depth will need to look elsewhere. However, those seeking simple poetic beauty will find plenty to enjoy. Creation, meanwhile, felt somewhat perfunctory as a whole. A self-labelled 'imaginative penetration' into the life of Charles Darwin, the film aims to capture the spirit behind the science by recounting the events in Darwin's life which led up to the publication of On the Origin of Species. At the centre of the film bristles a fascinating inner conflict, a man wrestling with his demons and his conscience as he contemplates whether he has the strength to go up against none other than God Himself and become, in many ways, the man who killed God. Unfortunately, however, despite all this, the film somehow rarely manages to transcend the average, despite the gusto and passion with which it was clearly made. The film is not without its moments, though, and as alluded to above contains strong performances all round, perhaps most notably from Martha West as Darwin's daughter Annie, which is all the more astounding considering that she's never acted before.

Likeable child performances were also to be found in Gareth Jones' debut feature Desire. Played by the director's own children, the kids of agoraphobic screenwriter Ralph and his soap-star wife Phoebe injected humour and life into an otherwise fairly dull and pretentious film. Underneath a droning voice-over which provides many of the film's unintentional laughs, Ralph and Phoebe both become entangled in an emotional and sexual relationship with their new au pair girl Néné, while Ralph continues to write a screenplay – called Desire, no less – about a couple embroiled in a relationship with an au pair girl. What could have been an amazing Borgesian tale of creation and interwoven narratives unfortunately falls flat on almost every level. At one point Ralph even proclaims 'It's a film called Desire, and I've trashed it!' Indeed.

The shorts that I saw fell under the banner of 'Tridentfest', and were predominantly no-budget films made by the staff of the Cambridge Picture House. The late-night screening was full of shouts and whoops and a generally electric atmosphere. As a whole the screening felt maybe one or two shorts too long, but they were all good fun and indicated a burgeoning and exciting film scene happening within Cambridge. It would be nice to see some of the 'Tridentfest' filmmakers step up to making features in time for next year's festival. From the features on show this year, it seems like there is a new variety (both in content and quality) bubbling up within the independent British industry and, as Kin shows, it doesn't matter if the budget isn't there, as long as the talent is.

Alex Barrett