London Film Fest 2010 Day 8 - WOMB

WOMB is a beautifully photographed, beautifully acted, deeply painful movie about an unboundaried relationship between a mother and son. Its entire run-time is basically a wince-inducingly uncomfortable exploration of unconventional emotional relationships - and you emerge from the cinema desperate to breathe. Writer-director Benedek Fliegauf creates - with just a few subtle strokes - a world like our own but with one sci-fi touch - cloning is possible. This is a key idea, but is introduced only after half an hour, and while its ramifications are hinted at, this is not really a sci-fi movie at all. What the concept does is allow an exploration of psycho-sexual transgression. Eva Green - Queen of independent cinema's messed up young women - plays Rebecca. She is reunited with her childhood sweetheart Tommy (Matt Smith - TV's latest Doctor Who). When a car accident robs them of a future together she decides, against his mother's wishes, to birth his clone and raise him as her son - all the while keeping him ignorant of this fact so as not to open him up to prejudice against "copies". So follows a brutal tale of closely observed suppressed emotions. Eva Green is superb - as usual - in portraying the single-minded madness of the thwarted women who comes to confront her guilt - expressing all this complexity with a remarkable stillness. Lesley Manville and Peter White - as Tommy's mother and father - are also superb in small roles.  The atmosphere is morose, oppressive and sinister without relief.  The result is a superb film marred only by one directorial choice - not to have Eva Green age - something that bugged me and brought me out of the movie throughout the second half of the film.

WOMB played Toronto and London 2010. It was released earlier this year in Russia, Germany and Hungary. It goes on release in Singapore on August 11th.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 5 - PICCO

German writer-director Philip Koch's debut feature is a closely observed prison drama loosely based on Alan Clarke's acclaimed BBC Play for Today, SCUM. Picco translates as lackey, and the protagonist is a quiet, diffident teenage boy landed in a prison cell with three other kids. The prison is claustrophobic, dull and full of sinister threat. The pivotal moment comes when the protagonist witnesses a rape, but is persuaded not to stick his head up above the parapet and report it. From then we see a subtle shift from bullied to bully, as he realises that there is no sustainable middle ground.

Koch portrays this with a fairly straightforward narrative style, and some impressive steady-cam work within the cell. The performances and production design all add up to an authentic feel. I guess my problem with the film is that it doesn't feel fresh or dangerous enough. The director warned the audience at the LIFF screening that it was going to be uncomfortable to watch, but actually it really wasn't. Certainly there was nothing to match the razor-blade scene in similarly themed UN PROPHET, and for those of us who'd watched LEAP YEAR earlier in the day, PICCO seemed like pretty bland fare by comparison.

I guess my overall reaction was that this was a coming-of-age prison drama like many others - quiet inmate turns bully to survive. It is well-told and well-acted, but ultimately, what does it add to the genre? Not much.

PICCO played Cannes 2010 and will be released in Germany on 25th November.