Death and Disability at the London Film Festival 2009
Among the many films on offer at this year's London Film Festival, there were a number of recurring themes, including coping with the death of loved ones and living with disabilities. If this sounds like it made for a depressing or overly earnest programme, then I can assure you this wasn't the case. Although certain films, such as 'Shirley Adams', took a miserablist approach, other films, such as 'Lourdes', were able to use disability as a backdrop for 'human comedy'. In place of the clunky, exposition-heavy dialogue and melodramatic contrivances of 'Shirley Adams', 'Lourdes' uses humour, a perfectly controlled visual pallet, and characters that one really cares about to paint an equally vivid and ultimately far more effective portrait of life with disability. The story of wheelchair-bound Christine's pilgrimage to the eponymous city of miraculous cures, the film is moving, engrossing, exciting, funny and at times devastatingly tragic. The choice of setting allows the film to delve into a number of wider issues, including hope, love, jealousy and faith, rendering it a profoundly complex tale. Without wishing to move into hyperbole or give too much away, it's also fair to say that the film contains shades of Carl Th. Dreyer's 'Ordet' – which is high praise indeed.
During 'Lourdes' a priest asks 'What is normal? Why is someone not paralysed 'better'? We were made to be diverse'. It's a shame that he wasn't around to say this to Gavrilo, a character in the Serbian war epic 'Saint George Shoots the Dragon'. After losing an arm in the First Balkan War, Gavrilo decides he's no longer good enough for his girlfriend Katarina, and swiftly dumps her upon his return to Serbia, in favour of spending time at the 'Invalid Cafe' and smuggling contraband across the border. Not one to be left alone, Katarina marries Gavrilo's former officer Djorje, now the village gendarme, but is soon embroiled in a sordid affair with Gavrilo. Although much of the film focuses on the love triangle between the two former friends now on opposite sides of the law, it nevertheless deals boldly with the physical and mental effects of war. At one point Katarina berates the men for not knowing how to love; they only know how to fight. Incorporating mystical elements (like clouds which form into the shape of St George), the film rattles along at an engrossing pace as events build up to the outbreak of World War One. Unfortunately, the last few minutes are a little nonsensical and rather twee, but it's still definitely a film to see.
Two other films which dealt with disability, though perhaps less directly, were David Morrissey's 'Don't Worry About Me' and Andrew Bujalski's 'Beeswax'. In the former, London-lad David spends a day wandering around Liverpool with local girl Tina. We learn that Tina's brother has Downs Syndrome, and that she spends a good deal of her time looking after him. Although she prefers not to see him as a hindrance – he is her brother, not a problem – it becomes clear that the combined pressure of looking after him and some skeletons in her own closet are taking their toll. Unfortunately, notwithstanding a couple of effective sequences (including striking use of Antony Gormley's statues on Crosby Beach), the film fails overall for a number of reasons, not least of which are the cringe-inducing opening and corny freeze-frame ending.
Much more effective was 'Beeswax', with which Bujalski deliberately set out to make a film featuring a disabled lead character without being about disability per se. Featuring wheelchair-bound actress Tilly Hatcher as Jeannie, the co-owner of a vintage clothing shop, the film deals with her anxiety over whether her business partner is going to sue her. A subversion of the conventional legal thriller, Bujalski's film is essentially a slow-burning character drama in a vein familiar from the director's previous films, 'Funny Ha Ha' and 'Mutual Appreciation'. At all times we sense Jeannie's fierce independence and her annoyance at people who want to help her simply because she's in a wheelchair – she's still an intelligent, capable woman. The film won't win any converts among people who disliked Bujalski's previous work, but fans will find much to appreciate. Although at times it plays a little like a parody of the so-called 'mumblecore' genre to which it belongs, it's also bitingly funny, wholly engrossing and sweetly tender.
Elsewhere in the festival, it felt like the spectre of Olivier Assayas' superb 2008 family drama 'Summer Hours' was in the air, with a number of films following in its footsteps by studying the effects of the death of a loved one. The most high profile and in my opinion the least effective of these films was 'A Single Man', the debut film from fashion designer Tom Ford. Featuring an excellent turn from Colin Firth as the man struggling to get on with his life after the death of his lover some years previously, the film regrettably rarely gives the viewer space in which to soak in the nuance of the performance, preferring instead to literally light-up the screen every time there's a moment of warmth in his dull grey life; the film is often so heavy-handed that watching it feels akin to being slapped constantly round the face. What makes this all the more frustrating is the fact that on the few occasions where the style calms down, the film really comes to life and shows how powerful the material could have been if treated with more subtlety. Although it feels a little too easy, and a little unfair, to accuse someone coming in from the fashion world of mistaking style for substance, one can't help but feel that this is exactly what's happened.
In total contrast to 'A Single Man' was Swedish film 'The Ape' which, although also not always successful, was pretty much all subtlety and nuance. Approaching the effects of death from a different angle, the film deals with the psychological aftermath of a murder on the perpetrator himself. Although this is the basic setup of the film, by saying this I've perhaps already given too much away, considering it isn't revealed until over a third of the way through the film...and therein lies one of the problems. For the first half an hour we witness an angry man going about his daily routine, with no hint as to why we should really care. By withholding information from the audience, director Jesper Ganslandt has unfortunately made a film more tedious than it is mysterious. At times fascinating, at times frustrating, 'The Ape' is a film which is perhaps more interesting than it is engrossing.
More captivating was Mar Coll's understated and sumptuous 'Three Days with the Family'. Beautifully photographed in a non-attention-seeking way, the film is a slowly unfolding drama of family dysfunction centred on the funeral of the lead character's grandfather. Thoroughly concerned with the nature of family, the film at times seems to push a little strongly in favour of family values and the idea of the family nest, yet never to the extent that one loses engagement with the wonderfully drawn and totally believable characters. If the film has a flaw, it is perhaps that it's a little slight, especially in the wake of the profundity of 'Summer Hours', whose ground it seems to tread a little too closely at times. However, though it may not always have the intellectual depth of Assayas' film, emotionally it is every bit its equal.
Also covering similar territory was 'The Father of My Children', a film inspired by the life and death of film producer Humbert Balsan, who committed suicide in 2005 during the shooting of Béla Tarr's 'The Man from London'. By depicting Grégoire (the Balsan figure) as a decent but flawed individual dedicated to both his art and his family, the film presents a haunting picture of the personal consequences which can arise from an unwavering dedication to the arts. Grégoire may support Stig Janson (read Béla Tarr) because he's a genius, but as one of the characters points out, his box office potential is still unproven. A man under pressure, Grégoire does his best to remain optimistic, to get his films made, and to be there for his family. But he is only one man, and the pressure is mounting. Things shift gears in the second half of the film, post-suicide, as Grégoire's daughter Clémence begins to take centre stage. At first Clémence feels abandoned by her father, but as her mother points out, Grégoire's death doesn't nullify his life, and ultimately he lives on through both his films and his three children. Played by real life father and daughter Louis-Do and Alice de Lencquesaing, the Clémence-Grégoire relationship is perhaps the real heart of the film (the two performances are superb, with Alice especially proving herself to be one to watch). In the current climate of economic uncertainty, 'The Father of my Children' seems like a timely reminder to filmmakers to stay on schedule and on budget, showing us the devastating consequences of the alternative. But more than that, as a film in itself, it also shows us the immense power that great art can have to enthral and to move its spectators.
