London Film Fest Day 2010 Day 7 - MEEK'S CUTOFF

Meek's Cutoff is a real-life trail in Oregon, originally followed by Stephen Meek in 1845. He led a group of pioneers down that route, losing many to dehydration, but eventually helped open up Western Oregon with his trail. In director Kelly Reichardt's (WENDY AND LUCY) movie the story is stripped down and pared back. Rather than hundreds of pioneers we have three families, and rather than epic confrontations with Native Americans we have a single dramatic relationship. Lost, desperate for water, the pioneers capture a lone Native American, and force him to lead them to water. This confrontation brings out the worst prejudices of Meek, and the paranoia of some of the women who have been brought up on vicious tales. But it also brings out the essential decency and courage of Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams) - the moral and emotional heart of the tale. The ultimate idea of the movie is subversive. The trail is named after Stephen Meek, and the pioneers are much to be admired, but as the movie progresses the captive becomes captor. He is still bound up by the pioneers, but they are completely dependent on him to find water and to survive.

I find Kelly Reichardt's films alienating. I find the stillness, the quietude, disturbing and, ultimately, dull. I admire the beautiful cinematography and the acting - but it's a kind of abstract admiration. I suspect that audiences will either love this film - for its visuals and its central idea - or hate it - for its silence, and its oblique ending. I am glad I watched it, even if I didn't really enjoy it. I admire the project, if not the product.

MEEK'S CUTOFF played Venice and Toronto 2010. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

London Film Fest Day 3 - LIFE DURING WARTIME

Todd Solondz is back in the place he loves best: contemporary Jewish-American middle-class suburbia where normal looking people deal with drug addiction, perversion, pedophilia, suicide, neuroses, and anything else you might deem "inappropriate" to talk about in front of the kids. Solondz picks up characters from his previous, brilliantly disturbing films WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE and HAPPINESS and has them deal with events from those flicks. In the case of the family recovering from the father's child rape conviction, the action takes place in sunny Florida rather than the more typical Jersey ("a state of irony") bu the grim humour remains the same. In short, if you like Solondz you'll love this film.

Tech credits are, as ever, polished, with sunny-suburban production design contrasting with the painful subject matter. Casting is superlative. Special praise is due for Allison Janney as the wife of the convicted paedophile, and Shirley Henderson as her sister, who works with convicts and whose lovers have a habit of topping themselves. Ciaran Hinds skulks around as the pederast and achieves something very difficult: he evokes our sympathy. Charlotte Rampling is typically strong in a cameo as frustrated older woman. The glue that binds all these characters together is the idea of forgiveness.

LIFE DURING WARTIME played Telluride, Venice (where it won Best Screenplay), Toronto, New York and London 2009.