London Film Fest 2011 Day 1 - 360

Jude Law and Rachel Weisz as an estranged couple in 360

It has long been my experience that the most interesting and exciting films showing at the London Film Festival are those tucked away in the heart of the programme, rather than the red-carpet galas, where one suspects the programmer's hand has been forced by the exigencies of publicity and sponsorship.  Sadly, 360 proved no exception to this rule.  Worse than that, one suspects that Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' early success with the dazzling CITY OF GOD was a fluke.  Ever since then, his films have maintained their visual style, but lost pace, energy, and tackled subject matter with a heavy handed earnestness that belies their insight.  One wishes that he would stop trying to be clever-clever with his narrative devices and just tell a good, simple story.  

The too-clever concept at the heart of 360 is to show the interweaving stories of people across the world  - the only commonality is how each of them experience a seemingly arbitrary event changes their lives.  The story takes us from a failing marriage in middle-class London (Jude Law, Rachel Weisz) to hookers and Russian mafiosi in Vienna (Moritz Bleibtrau) - from  sex offenders and grieving parents in Denver (Ben Foster, Anthony Hopkins) to forbidden love in Paris (Jamel Debbouze).  In each case, characters are introduced, their love affairs and dilemmas explained, an event occurs, its ramifications start to be explored, and the matter is dropped. Perhaps in a later strand we will meet the character again and see them from a different angle.  But by then, so much has been going on, so many characters introduced, so little time given to being able to emotionally bond with them, that we are past caring.  I left the cinema feeling totally "blah".  I had watched a parade of characters and frankly, didn't care about a single one of them.  And as for the "message" of this ponderous work, it's hardly revelatory or profound.  Some people are cynical sleazebags - some people still naively take a chance on love - the world keeps turning - and random events can change the path we move along. 

Jude Law and director Fernando Meirelles present
360 at the Opening Night of the BFI London
Film Festival 2011.

The result is a film that is utterly unmemorable and actually rather tragic when one considers the talent deployed.  To be sure, cinematographer Adriano Goldman (JANE EYRE, SIN NOMBRE, CONVICTION) creates some arresting visuals, but the rest of the talent is below par.  The actors have little to get their teeth into and are rather unforgettable, except for Anthony Hopkins hamming it up. To be fair, Hopkins is only responding to one of those awfully obvious crass Academy-Award-aspirant speeches by screenwriter Peter Morgan (THE QUEEN) when he finally comes to an epiphany in an AA meeting. 

Overall then, 360 is yet another film by Fernando Meirelles that is technically accomplished, but fails to provide us with characters that we care about and situations that are compelling.  A serious own-goal by screenwriter Peter Morgan too, moving from his typically more straightforward biopic material into some more narratively ambitious, and clearly beyond his capabilities. 

360 premiered at London 2011 and will play Toronto 2011. It will open in Sweden on October 19th 2012.

Late review - London Film Fest 2010 - HORS LA LOI / OUTSIDE THE LAW

This review is brought to you by guest reviewer, Alex:

Director Rachid Bouchareb’s story of a family of Algerian immigrants to France and their lives from 1945 to 1962 has been likened to “The Godfather” or “Once Upon A Time in America”. Like the excellent “La Haine” which touched on the same themes, the movie provoked protests and high security when it played the Cannes film festival and right-wing French politicians labelled it historically revisionist and "anti-French".

Bouchareb’s previous Oscar-nominated 2006 movie “Days of Glory” shamed the French government into supporting Algerian veterans who fought for the French state against the Nazis in World War Two. “Outside The Law” reunites many of the previous film’s cast. Brutal, real and enjoyable, “Days of Glory” had me slavering at the chops for more. After all, a well-made action movie with a social message is the best of both worlds – the equivalent of Saturday night in the pub and early Sunday morning mass rolled into one. Sadly, I was disappointed.

“Outside The Law” limps prosaically through over two hours chronicling the brothers varied involvements in the cause of the arm of the FLN, a terrorist group whose premise was to campaign for Algerian independence, from within French borders. One leads it, asserting control first over the organisation’s French chapter and then over rival groups, the other, a veteran of the doomed Indochinese war, is the violent facilitator of the FLNs’ ends, and the last distances himself from the group until forced to participate.

The irony of this premise is little explored, except in the film’s intellectual denouement when arch-nemesis police inspector Colonel Faivre (Bernard Blancan) is forced under duress to meet with our boys in a posh Parisian in private club. Abdelkader’s comparison, and the ironic synchronicity, of his own political and armed struggle for Algerian freedom with the Colonel’s previous decoration for his role in the French Resistance to Vichy regime is well-made.

Bouchareb has used the family tale as metaphor for French immigrant experience; represented by brothers Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila), educated and politicised; Roschdy Zem as Messaoud, the brutal bag-man and assassin, and Jamel Debbouze (of “Amelie”) as Saïd who is amoral, entrepreneurial and secular. Stoic and grim, the boys’ mother (Chafia Boudraa) is the patriotic conscience and maintains the family’s religious and traditional practices; she is also the most vibrant of the female cast members, although that’s not saying much. Messaoud’s wife is dutiful and introverted and Sabrina Seyvecou as Hélène, a white French sympathiser and financier to the FLN cause is anaemic and obsessed with unfulfilled desire for Abdelkader. His rejection of her advances in favour of total devotion to the cause is clumsily portrayed and represents a token attempt at character development.

Better handled is the conflict played out between the brothers. Saïd’s dream of creating the first French boxing champ of Algerian origin, representing ideas of assimilation, is opposed by the very real threats he faces from his ideologically torn brothers who see his fighter as a courtesan of the despised French state. Given that we already know how violent the group’s measures can be, how far will they go to stop the fight, we wonder?

Action scenes such as the opening recreation of the infamous Sétif massacre in 1945 were well made (Bouchareb admits he was trying to create "a sort of western") but the plot develops falteringly and there’s a sense that in trying to popularise the movie beyond its natural audience, an action scene has been added every so often to cattle prod us awake again between the characters’ soap opera-like vacillations.

Telling the story of a 20th century conflict from the underdog (and ultimately winning) perspective is undoubtedly a rich, unmined cinematic vein; Vietnamese Bảo Ninh’s novel “The Sorrow of War” would be an interesting antidote to the abundance of Hollywood movies on the same topic. Arguably “Outside The Law” is another take, from a different angle, on the much better “Battle of Algiers”.

If Bouchareb wished to again provoke social change and political action he has succeeded. There is even some similarity in his film in this respect to Visconti’s “Rocco and his brothers”. If he wished to entertain, he has fallen short of the mark, but not failed entirely. Add to your Lovefilm rental queue but don’t pay good money to watch at the cinema.

HORS LA LOI / OUTSIDE THE LAW played Cannes, Toronto and London 2010 and opened in France, Switzerland and Belgium in September. It opened in the US in November.