London Film Fest 2011 Day 14 - HUNKY DORY

Minnie Driver is the only recognised name in Marc Evans' musical drama HUNKY DORY.

Welsh director Marc Evans (SNOWCAKE, MY LITTLE EYE) bravely takes on a "concept" film with his new musical coming-of-age flick, HUNKY DORY. Minnie Driver (with impeccable Welsh accent) plays a teacher in a Welsh school, putting on a musical version of Shakespeare's The Tempest that incorporates the popular music of 1976 - David Bowie, Nick Drake, The Beach Boys - the year in which the movie is set. And while Driver is the only recognised name actor, she's actually not the person carrying the film. Rather, the young cast of talented kids steal the show, with the lead schoolboy Aneurin Barnard making an impressive debut. 

I found the movie earnest, joyful, but uneven and unsure of what it wanted to be. French writer Laurence Coriat (WONDERLAND) has penned a script that isn't an out-and-out big dance number musical in the manner of GLEE or HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Indeed, it seems to want to be one of those authentic realist teen flicks of the US indie movement - AMERICAN GRAFFITI or DAZED AND CONFUSED. And even then it can't resist one of those plot devices that seems totally out of scale with all that preceded it - stupidly clumsy deus ex machina. Combining social realism and musical numbers is a hard trick to pull off, and HUNKY DORY is no BILLY ELLIOT.

HUNKY DORY had its world premiere at London 2011 and has no commercial release date yet.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 14 - SUBMARINO

Nick and Martin are brothers living in contemporary Copenhagen, struggling to deal with the childhood trauma of their little brother dying of neglect as the result of their mother's alcoholism. Nick has served time, and now passes the day at the gym or drinking and the evenings with a hooker. Martin is a junkie who turns to pushing to support his little boy. Both of them, in their own fucked-up way, try to protect the kids in their lives, as a sort of penance for having failed their little brother.

The movie is austere, closely observed and unrelentingly grim. It is a return, if not in form, but in content, to the Dogme style of film-making that Thomas Vinterberg (DEAR WENDY) originated in. The lead performances are strong, and the stories of the two brothers - who are estranged for much of the film - are deftly inter-twined. However, I am not sure why, but I just couldn't get into the film. Something about the unrelenting self-annihilation kept me at a distance, just as the brothers try to distance themselves from their emotions, with alcohol and smack respectively. As a result, SUBMARINO is a film that I admired rather than enjoyed.

SUBMARINO played Berlin 2010 and was released in September in France, Finland and the Netherlands. It opens in Belgium on November 17th.