Time Travel Is Dangerous!

 A British indie sci-fi mock doc, TTID! reaches for the stars and flies high if unsteadily over the roof tops, as Ruth and Megan discover a time machine and use it to restock their vintage shop in Muswell Hill. What could possibly go wrong?

Directed by Chris Reading and written by Reading and the Shakespeare Sisters, the film is narrated by a typically acerbic Stephen Fry and features the requisite shaky camera work and whip pans typical of documentaries. Ruth Syratt offers a hangdog performance as Ruth while Megan Stevenson is more expressive as Megan. The sound dipped at various points, perhaps as a nod to the documentary method and sometimes swallowed the dialogue but the two actors have good chemistry.  

There is also a host of Easter eggs for those with the energy to look for them, in the form of actors popping up from Buffy, The Witches and The School for Good and Evil. Plus Brian Blessed as an octopus, and, dear lord, Johnny Vegas as an angry robot. I know some find Vegas hilarious, but every time he appears on screen, he seems to suck the life out of every scene he is in. Jane Horrocks appears in a very odd steampunk sequence shouting a lot and I actually did not recognise her.

Truth be told, the pacing and tone of the film are all over the place. When the cast are trying to sort out the issues of time travel it is a lot of fun, but the more serious scenes feel out of place. 

So, yeah, time travel is a bit of a bumpy ride. 

Time Travel Is Dangerous! is on UK release from 28 March. 

Trailer

Barrelstout's Women's Day Picture Show

 The DIY filmmaking duo of Bev Zalcock and Sara Chambers has been collaborating for a few decades now, producing underground cinema drawing on Eisenstein, Deren and a host of others. On Friday they presented a selection of their work at Birkbeck Cinema. 

I had not been to Birkbeck for some years, probably pre-Covid for an earlier Barrelstout night. It was very odd to be out after dark and around lots of people. I am still being cautious, so I sat at the back and looked down on the audience, many of whom also appear in the films.

 While I have seen a lot of their work, several films were new to me, including two world premieres. While Bev favours Super 8, Sara is more in the digital realm, so the films are often a mixture of media. Suzi and Brandi in Needlepoint featured old S8 of two friends, which Bev had worked with a needle. Very hands-on. SLAGS, on the other hand, was composed of still photos of friends and the Kent town of Sandgate, which presumably were all digital. Those were the two new films.

Of the older ones Andi Andi was also new to me, featuring a femme biker cooking in full leather, and I recognised Diamanda Galas on the soundtrack. Diamanda was a total shock to me when I first heard her in the 1980s, thanks to a goth friend. At some point I played one of her records at the wrong speed and quite liked the effect. In any case, it was good to hear her soundtracking frustrated lesbian desire played out in the domestic sphere. 

Humour tends to run through Barrelstout's films and their punny titles reflect this. Among the films not shown were Oh, Odessa! and Mad, Bad and Barking, but these may come back at some point. There was a mention of re-editing some of the older films, which was intriguing.

Well worth a journey out on a Friday night and I also got to see some lovely spring flowers in the gardens around Bloomsbury.

Oh My Goodness!

 This one is a lot of fun. Nuns + cycling is the combo we didn't know we needed and this farce from director Laurent Tirard provides a marvellous cheerfully blasphemous confection. 

St Benedicts convent somewhere in rural France gets involved in a local cycling race hoping to use the prize money to bolster the funding for an old people's home. But only one of the sisters, trainee Gwendoline, shows any aptitude on a bike. Then a crew of rival nuns turn up and things get ugly.... 

Well, as ugly as a comedy about cycling nuns can get. The two mothers superior turn out to be old frenemies and concoct various schemes to do each other down. It is great fun watching nuns be devious and I did laugh out loud several times. For one brief moment it looks like the two trainees might run off but the mothers get it together and nobody goes to hell. Phew.

Trailer 

Oh My Goodness! (Juste Ciel) opens in the UK on 14 March. 

Die Alone

The stark title of this film by writer-director Lowell Dean really does not do it any favours. A futuristic dystopian thriller, Die Alone drops the viewer into a global environmental crisis in which human beings are being attacked by some kind of virus that turns them into plant zombies. At first the filmmaker seems to be drawing some kind of parallels with Covid, as newspaper articles speak of riots and resistance.

But then the film goes off in another direction. A young man called Ethan stumbles from his car and searches for his girlfriend Emma. A woman called Mae (Carrie-Ann Moss) takes him in and looks after him. As he gets in a number of scrapes, his amnesia prevents him from remembering those around him. Mae seems to be some kind of survivalist who carries a gun and has to keep her cranky generator running. Very few human beings are left after the plant attacks but there is one skeleton called Myrtle that hovers in the background.

Suffice to say Ethan and Mae are linked in some way and there is a massive twist toward the end.

Preposterously intriguing or intriguingly preposterous, Die Alone tries to be a sci-fi thriller and love story and perhaps also a warning of the damage human beings are wreaking to the planet. The zombie angle is not really pursued to any satisfaction. Why do they attack some things and not others. What happens to the people turned into plants? Do they decay and die or live forever? Who was Myrtle? I wish the film had filled in some of these details as the premise is solid. But it does rather let itself down. Great to see Carrie-Ann Moss being a badass but something is missing. Not so much Die Alone as To Die or Not to Die.

Trailer

Die Alone will be available on Home Entertainment from 10th March 2025

Who We Love

 This adaptation of his short by director Graham Cantwell is a well intentioned if rather clumsy drama about Dublin teens negotiating school, parents and budding queer life. At the start Lily seems to be in bed with a woman in flashback, but then heads off to school to give her best bud Simon a badge she tells him is from her visit to San Francisco over the summer. Since we have seen her cutting out the letter S I thought perhaps she made up the story of her visit and indeed the romance and spent most of the rest of the film wondering when she was going to come clean. But No, that sequence was so that we would see the exacto knife she used to cut the letter. The reasons for that will become clear later in the film...

Lily seems to lack confidence and does not seem to have told Simon she likes girls even though he is clearly out and proud. Nor does she tell her parents or anyone at school or even go online to find support. Seeing as Simon and Lily live on the outskirts of Dublin their isolation from a queer community seems most odd. The film really feels like it should have been set in the 1990s, not the present day. I could easily imagine it as a Channel 4 Out on Tuesday production. There are so many on-the-nose moments as characters make histrionic declarations like "Leave me alone!" as if their feelings are so hard to understand. There really is an Only Gay in the Village vibe that feels very off. 

So rather than go find some queer kids their own age, Simon takes baby dyke Lily to a gay pub to meet Oonagh who for some reason has taken on the role of lesbian den mother and gives  Lily a pep talk while constantly insulting Simon in language that feels more like a peer than an older woman chatting to a teen. Again it feels off.

Sadly, Oonagh is one of very few "older" characters who has any kind of compassion, with the parents being hostile or distracted and school authorities completely out of touch with the students. Lily's nemesis is her friend Violet who has violent tendencies and a mother who tells her she is "winning at life" in some of the worst parenting committed to screen. Another "older" character is a sleazy voyeuristic gay man who likes to watch. It gets quite uncomfortable. 

There is some satisfaction in watching Lily turn the tables on her bully but the film is an exercise in frustration at watching a collection of stereotypes and melodramatics in search of a coherent plot or character development. 

Trailer

Street Trash

 For my first post of the new year, it's this trashy remake of the 1987 film of the same name, courtesy of director Ryan Kruger. Set in Cape Town, Street Trash presents a familiar tale of underdogs vs The Man, as evil Mayor Mostert plots to do away with the troublesome homeless by vaporising them with a spray called Viper. 

The aesthetics are very much teenaged boy humour (lots of chat re: erections and humping) and B-movie sci-fi (exploding bodies and slime). Sometimes it works, with characters emerging over the piece to show a depth of emotion. Grizzled street dweller Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael) and newcomer Alex (Donna Cormack-Thomson) are particular standouts, growing from grudging allies to good pals. A sub-plot involving the subterranean Rat King is rather confused and adds little. 

What is impressive about this film is its embrace of lo-fi strategies and the energy of the cast. The feel of griminess is palpable. The mayor is little more than a cartoon character but the desperation and anger of the disenfranchised comes through strongly. Quirky exchanges between characters seem a bit reminiscent of Tarantino and the addition of a blue sex-obsessed ghoul only visible to one character is certainly an interesting story choice.

I could have done without the phallic obsession and the cringy post-credits coda is typical of this. Perhaps the director suffers from insecurities in this area. Grow up, Ryan.

Trailer

Wilding

 Don't be alarmed. It's not a reflection on the hideous tabloid freakery from the 1980s. No, this is a documentary based on a book by Isabella Tree about revisioning a family farm.

The doc is narrated by an unnamed woman, who I assume is Tree. Odd she is never named, and she repeatedly refers to Charlie, who turns out to be her husband. Some little pointers for the viewer going in cold would not go amiss. The first three minutes are also marred by a poor sound mix as Unnamed Woman fights to be heard above the strains of T-Rex. 

Tree and Charlie had inherited the farm, Knepp, in Sussex and realised they needed to do things differently if they wanted to bring the soil back to life. After hundreds of years of ploughing, fertilising and pesticides, the soil was almost dead. So, they did some research and instituted a version of rewilding, allowing the land to regain its more ancient state.

Interestingly, at least to me, this involved bringing in animals, among them ponies and cattle and letting them roam. This would allow the animals to interact with the landscape, shaping it and revitalising it. At one point Tree refers to the animals being managed but does not elaborate. So, I wondered, how wild were these animals? Were they vaccinated, have their hoofs and teeth checked? Was there any intervention if they became sick or injured? No information was given, although the couple do refer to questions by their neighbours who are not keen, which suggests they thought these questions were beyond the pale. Not really.

Instead there is a lot of footage of pigs rootling, stags wandering, birds nesting and water flowing. Beavers are brought in but this is also not explored. I had to go online to discover the two beavers who were brought in initially did not last long at the farm. I would love to see if the beaver experiment succeeds. 

Charlie concludes he could see the animals making their way to the sea, but how would this happen, what with motorways and other human creation in the way? The film ends on this note, which is rather unsatisfactory. But the ideas are intriguing, even if most of us do not have a spare 3500 acres lying around to pursue them. 

Trailer

Things Will Be Different

 This indie drama/sci fi/horror from writer/director Michael Felker is intriguing and well made if a bit confusing. Siblings Joseph and Sid (Adam David Thompson and Riley Dandy) meet in what we assume is the present before he takes her to a remote location to hide out after some kind of robbery that has earned them $7m. Entering a certain closet allows them to go somewhere else in time until they can return safely. Except they can't. 

The time travel plot device plays out rather awkwardly in places as the two kill time in a big house and offer minimal exposition. Why are they estranged? Why did they commit a robbery? Eventually a strange force called The Vise enters their lives in the form of a mysterious safe with tape recorder. (Quite lo fi for a time travel film!) They need to follow instructions to get back safely. 

One oddity is how the two siblings are so well armed. Did they serve in the military? They stalk the property with their guns and then retreat to the kitchen to make use of the automatically restocking fridge. Once I noticed the contents resemble film set craft, I couldn't shake the notion the whole film is a metaphor for DIY film-making: being stuck in a location with a limited supply of food while the world proceeds unbothered. 

Anyway, Sid and Joseph await an unwelcome visitor and the whole thing goes full fight-to-the-death for a bit. And then gets weirder. By the end I had no idea what had happened or why. It seemed improbable certain characters would or would not recognise each other. So, it proved a frustrating watch, albeit with fully committed performances from the actors and some clever film-making to work within what was clearly a limited budget. 

I want an automatically restocking fridge!

Trailer

Paddington in Peru

 This third entry in the Paddington series finds our ursine hero and his human family the Browns en route to Peru to visit Aunt Lucy at the Home for Retired Bears. The title suggests an opportunity for the tables to turn as Paddington revisits his birthplace and the Browns are along for the ride as the outsiders. 

And to a point that is true. There are bears galore at the retirement home which is run by nuns led by Olivia Colman in shimmering grinny form. She even sings! 

And much later when the family is lost in the jungles and encounters some wild creatures it does appear as if Paddington is equipped to lead the way. But this is not really how things play out which is a disappointment.

So much time is spent on the hunt for Aunt Lucy and giving screentime to Antonio Banderas's hammy riverboat captain (clearly hoping to repeat the Hugh Grant in overdrive trick of the second film), that very little thought is given to the bears at all. Think about it: this would be the first time Paddington would be in the majority. Surely he would want to revisit his old home, perhaps pay tribute to his Uncle Pastuzo, use his own language? 

Not a bit of it. The climax which finds the family face to face with some unexpected inhabitants affords zero time to Paddington even considering his birth roots. Everything is quickly wrapped up and then it's back to London for a quick cameo from an old face. 

Never thought I would say it but Paddington really needs more bears and fewer human beings. 

Trailer

Members Club

 If someone, somewhere has been searching for a horror comedy about middle-aged male strippers encountering an ancient witch, this one's for you. The ahem members of the troupe, Wet Dreams, are booked in for a gig in Essex at a strangely deserted working men's club. Then something stirs.....

The set-up is fine, a sub-plot about stripper Alan's attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter Daisy emerging as all hell breaks loose. There are some laughs and a bit of gore. It's all good fun. Oh, and Peter Andre turns up in a ludicrous wig for no discernible reason. 

The gender politics are harder to determine. Is this meant to be a reversal of the age-old premise of hot young strippers being imperiled? Most of Wet Dreams have seen better days and the lads spend most of the film clad only in tiny glittery shorts. Then there are the witches, in multiple. Is witchcraft inherently bad? Not clear. There is quite an ugly scene toward the end that rather ruined the viewing experience, as Alan suddenly steps up to take action, urged on by his mate Deano. 

Ah, yes, Deano. So, Deano has an interesting anatomical feature only revealed right toward the end. Is this meant to be a joke? Is the whole film a health film in disguise? Not clear. A bit of a dampener, one might say. 

"It's cock-a-clock!" one character announces. If that appeals, this is your film. 

Trailer

Studio One Forever

 This documentary almost feels like it should have an exclamation mark at the end of the title. As West Hollywood councillor John Duran stands on stage, he bellows the words to his audience of former revellers and the attendant unseen angels. More on that later. 

There is no exclamation mark but the entertaining film revisits a lost gay club popular in the 1980s with plenty of archive footage and remembrances from staff and visitors. There is quite a large quotient of name-dropping, as well as everyone from Elton to Cary to Sylvester was there. Chita Rivera (RIP) is interviewed about launching her cabaret at the club's back room and admitting how daunting it was crossing the dance floor to get to her show. 

All of this great but so what? Lots of clubs existed in the 1980s. What made this one special? The hook is that the now-shuttered club is about to be demolished in 2018 as a big bad developer has taken over the property. Duran and his pals are keen to stop the demolition, and they put on a reunion to raise the club's profile. It takes until the 70th minute for anyone to mention AIDS and then it turns into a memorial as Duran speaks of all the lost angels looking down on them. This is moving but many people who were mentioned earlier are never given their due. What happened to them?

The editing is bizarre, skipping from a declaration that the club owner ran a racist admission policy to talking about Can't Stop the Music and then on to the DJ playlist. Visits to a local archive are interesting and there is a brief glimpse of some lost and now found photo negatives. But it's a bit of a mishmash. 

If this gives a new generation an idea of how club life functioned in WeHo pre-AIDS, then all to the good. I do wish there had been a bit more reflection on Studio One's cultural context. Spoiler: the party ended very, very badly. 

Trailer

Portraits of Dangerous Women

 This British indie film is a real burst of fresh air, quirky, inventive and surprisingly moving. Pascal Bergamin is not a name with whom I am familiar, but the writer-director has crafted a delightful film, peopled by a brilliant cast, among them the luminous Tara Fitzgerald, Yasmin Monet Prince, Mark Lewis Jones and Jeany Spark, abetted by small cameos from Sheila Reid and Joseph Marcell. 

These characters navigate around each other in an unnamed small British town with outstanding scenery. Everyone seems to live in a period cottage while Lewis Jones' character operates a small art gallery. Who are these people? How do they fit together? The film takes its time establishing links but I found it refreshing it was neither broad comedy, trite romance, nor heavy drama. 

The titular portraits are small found photographs of women in unusual poses, from shooting to climbing. They are gathered by Ashley (Monet Prince) who is trying to establish herself in the art world and strikes up an alliance with John (Lewis Jones). Meanwhile Tina (Fitzgerald) and Steph (Spark) work in the same school, but in very different contexts. Steph is a teacher while husky-voiced Tina spends her days in a boiler suit skulking around toilets and testing chairs, as she is the school caretaker. 

Watching Fitzgerald at work is fascinating, her way of inhabiting this moody, flinty character suggesting hidden depths. It's a marvellous performance and anchors the film, even if Spark and Lewis Jones have more showy parts. 

Broken relationships, a dead dog, many unexplained financial issues. These all figure in this film but really it's a clever ensemble piece featuring flawed human beings attempting to find their ways through. A triumph. 

Trailer

Inherit the Witch

 Well, Hellooooo, camp as tits folk horror film! We have missed you! Inherit the Witch is a batshit crazy lower than lo fi UK film featuring an OTT witch running amok in the New Forest, plus a toxic gay couple and family drama galore. 

Cory returns to his hometown for his dad's funeral, alongside Scandi f-buddy Lars but never makes it as he is visited by estranged sister Fiona who wants him to remember weird shit that happened in their childhoods. Plus, an older couple are enacting some ritual with a metronome. Then Fiona stumbles into a basement..... 

Bizarre set pieces, terrible acting, a nonsensical plot and some questionable accents mean that this one is a very, very guilty pleasure but I enjoyed it mostly. I really wanted to see a proper Final Girl but Fiona is so, so passive, spending her time in peril mostly gasping for breathing and shrieking. FFS, girl. Run!

At least Fiona gets some nice lighting, especially when she is bumbling through the forest with her lit torch, hunted by robotic Lars and possibly satanic Cory. Hide, girl!

One part Hammer Horror mixed with The Owl Service, Inherit the Witch is not a great film. But it is entertaining. 

Trailer

Fitting In

 For the first ten minutes of this new film by writer/director Molly McGlynn I thought: "Wow! This film is amazing. So clever and well written!" Fitting In tailed off after that but is still a thought-provoking watch. 

Lindy is a teenager who has never had her period. Her mother Rita is concerned and anxious. Lindy has friends, runs track and is seeing a hunky guy. Her mother has her own issues that are so quickly established, you might miss the fact she has had cancer treatment. Later this will come up again. 

But then Lindy discovers she has a medical condition which explains her lack of periods. She actually has no uterus and what the gyno calls "a vaginal dimple". The medical terminology is quite eye-opening and the film is very good at putting you right in the middle of Lindy's consultations with an array of male medical consultants who do nothing to put her at ease or make her feel good about her body. She feels obligated to try stretching her vagina with a dilator so that she might experience sex as she sees it, i.e. penis in vagina. Nobody seems to want to suggest there are other ways of having sex although there is an entanglement with a non-binary character that promises more than it delivers. 

So, the film zooms from a breezy family comedy drama right into an intense healthcare journey which means jarring tonal shifts. 

I wish we had seen a lot more of Lindy's interactions with her best friend Viv, rather than her repetitive meetings with her boyfriend Adam and her arguments with Rita. A lot of scenes end with Lindy running out of rooms and it gets a bit tiresome. She has an array of suitors she treats badly and she also ignores Viv for most of the film. As a result, Lindy becomes more and more isolated and unhappy. 

But lessons are learned and toward the end there is a rather on the nose scene in which Rita shows her daughter her own surgical scar that leaves the viewer thinking Eh? Surely, more time could have been spent understanding the mother's POV rather than shoehorning it in at the end. I also did not like the way the film seemed to let Lindy off the hook for her own obnoxious behaviour, particularly toward a guy she used for sex. 

Kids, eh?

Trailer

Days Out: Chelsea Physic Garden

 Having lived in London for more than 29 years,  I am attempting to hit some places I have never visited. Having read a book recently in which the main character has a day out at Chelsea Physic Garden and decides to change her career, I thought I might do the same. 

I chose a Sunday morning and arrived just before opening time to discover the doors were open so in I went and spent a few hours wandering the grounds of this lovely spot tucked away in Chelsea on the banks of the Thames.

First I strolled through the green houses and discovered a hidden channel that ran along the back. I do love a green house, ever since my first visit to one in the New York Botanical Garden in the 1970s. The balance between humidity and heat is always a challenge. But I emerged into the fresh air and made my way round the perimeter, checking out the various gardens, such as Edible Plants and Useful Plants. I think there were beehives in one corner but they are away from the path. 

I stumbled across the Tank Pond and wondered how many unsuspecting visitors attempt to take a short cut through it and fall in. I stopped to look at the male and female ginkgo trees entangled across a path. I took a breather in the Garden of Medicinal Plants, then cut back across the lawn for a look at the Cool Fernery, disturbing a robin which flew out an open window. I finished up with a peep at the carnivorous plants, always fun. 

It really is a dreamy spot, only spoiled by a quite outrageously priced cafe, but that is the way of things nowadays. 

I have not yet changed career, but I don't discount the possibility. 

While I have pictures I want to upload for this post, Google will not allow me to do so. 

GRACIE AND PEDRO: Mission Impossible

An animated feature about a dog and a cat teaming up to find a way home after getting lost by an airline, this film is a mixed bag. The animation is very much of the moment--the animals look pretty cool but the human beings have a weird rubbery texture that is oddly in vogue. The humour is dorky and the film plays out as a series of set pieces putting the titular pets in danger time after time: will they make it out of the airport, the desert, the abandoned theme park? 

What is interesting is the notion of home the film presents. Mom and Dad venture out to bring the missing pets home, while Grandpa stays to look after the kids. The teenagers, Sophie and Gavin, squabble but team up to put out a video on social media slamming the airline for losing their pets, which is one of the high points. Gracie and Pedro also argue but are united in their determination to make it back home, a home they have never seen as their family was moving. 

The impediments are structural as well as physical: airline bureaucracy, human foolhardiness, greed. Interestingly, all the other animal species understand them, including a rabbit voiced by Susan Sarandon. Human beings, on the other hand, seem rather inept in their communication. 

The voice work is disappointing. The main characters have no chemistry but the A listers are all given cameo roles, including Brooke Shields as a horse and Bill Nighy as some kind of predatory bird that lives on a train. Many plot points like this are bizarre and seem random. A plot point putting them on a bus to Las Vegas with a magic troupe promises much but delivers nothing. 

In the end, lessons are learned and peace is restored. Mission accomplished. 

Gracie and Pedro will be coming to UK cinemas from 9th August. 

Trailer

Cyndi at 71

 Hard to believe the great Cyndi Lauper is 71. I grew up on her music and adored her New York thrift style. The first two albums are all time classics and I even have a soft spot for her early New Wave band, Blue Angel. 

Cyndi has stopped off in the UK for a performance at Glastonbury this week and despite Twitter being aflame with suggestions the sound was terrible, I am pleased she has had this opportunity to play a festival ahead of her (sob) farewell tour next year. I only saw her once, back in around 1992 in San Francisco at a small club. She deserves a big stage to go out on. Here is a clip of her appearance on BBC Breakfast. 

Heart of an Oak

 This enchanting documentary, courtesy of Laurent Charbonnier and Michel Seydoux, charts one year in the life of an oak somewhere in France. There is no narration and no subtitles, making it a viewing experience that depends on attention to detail and enjoyment of the soundtrack. There is occasional music,  some of it jarringly intrusive. 

But mostly Heart of an Oak is about the creatures that call this mighty ancient tree their home, the red squirrel that has made a nest on an extended branch, the boar and dree that come to graze, the insects that are hatched, grow up and die under its gaze, and the birds that come and go as they please. 

The four seasons are the structure for the film, with summer explosions of colour leading into the more withdrawn seasons of autumn and winter and ending with the return of flowers and leaves in spring. It is gorgeously shot and one does wonder at the technical wizardry that allows viewers to watch mice traversing their tunnels underground, as well as an acorn growing and sending up shoots. CGI may well play a part. 

The drama comes from encounters between frogs and weevils, predatory birds stalking their prey and the ingenious squirrel evading both snake and birds. Human beings are notably absent. Hurrah. 

This is nature taking centre stage and showing off its gifts, among them the humble acorn growing into a sapling next to its progenitor. 

Heart of an Oak is released on Icon Film Channel on 10 June. 

Swede Caroline

 

This indie comedy promises much, positioning itself firmly within the micro genre of British whimsy. Jo Hartley stars as the titular Caroline, who has been disqualified from a giant veg growing contest in Shepton Mallet.  She attracts the attention of a documentary maker who vows to follow her as she works toward the next year's contest. 

So, we are in mockumentary territory and that is where the film falls flat, with lots of hand-held shots, long mumbled conversations that go nowhere and utterly unfathomable plot twists involving exes, rival growers and a swinging couple who are detectives. 

Somehow the writer-director team of Brook Driver and Finn Bruce manage to make this almost entirely laugh-free. Hartley does her best but the writing is flat, the characters lacking heft and the story nonsensical. Alice Lowe turns up for a needless cameo with an alleged Swedish accent and then runs away, possibly to batter her agent. 

One of the issues is that we never learn much about Caroline or the two men in her life, Paul and Willie, with whom she spends much of her time. Paul is her housemate and Willie their neighbour, but it is hinted there is history among them which is never clarified and their relationships remain underwritten.  

Possibly if this had been scripted more tightly, it might have worked. As it is, the film drags on and on toward an absurd climax involving corrupt politicians and murky deals. Okey doke. 

The overgrown veg look intriguing and the diversion in a country house offers some amusement. But Swede Caroline suffers from stunted growth. 

Swede Caroline opens in UK on 19 April. 

BFI Flare: Life's a Beach...

 Possibly my last reviews from this year's Flare, although there are many films left unseen. 

Lesvia, a personal documentary from Tzeli Hadjidimitriou offers an insider's perspective on the fabled isle of Lesvia aka Lesbos. The filmmaker grew up there and is also a lesbian, so she has a life's worth of material to work with, starting from her earliest memories of visiting Eressos in 1980 and seeing naked women. There is great archive footage of the various eras of Eressos, from camping on the beach, to the development of lesbian-owned businesses, to downturns in tourism.

There is also a rather juicy conflict between the locals and the visitors which the filmmaker also outlines with a series of interviews, no doubt getting unvarnished views owing to her local status. If one might want a little more on just why Lesvia attracts so many lesbians owing to its status as the birthplace of the poet Sappho, well one must look elsewhere. 

Heavy Snow

As for Heavy Snow, well, I was just baffled. A Korean melodrama about the relationship of two school girls, Su-An and Seol, it veers off into bizarre diversions involving surfing and hiking through snow. By the end I was not even sure it was meant to be a real romance between two women but rather a metaphor for self-deception or a fever dream or even a death hallucination. Possibly one of the worst films I have ever seen. Or a work of obscure genius. No idea.