The 38th London Film Festival promised the obligatory shocks and surprises, a couple of potential bans and a wealth of lesbian and gay interest.
BANDIT QUEEN was hyped as controversial and violent: stories circulated that the subject of the film, the outlaw Phoolan Devi, had tried to stop its release, and had threatened to burn herself alive if she lost her fight. The film - "based on a true story" - is certainly disturbing to watch, and if this wasn't Devi's real life, you would believe it too fantastical. Devi was married off when she was only 12 and left him soon after, only to be hunted and viciously raped by the police, who claimed she was "itching for it". Thankfully, but for this time only, the audience were spared the visual reality. The language is crude and base, and I began to wonder if the high and low castes really swore with such force and frequency. The film is not only tremendously atmospheric, (noisy market culture, rebel yells and lots of heat haze) but uses tight shots, aerial views and sweeping, almost unfocused filming to draw you into Devi's raw and vengeful world. She becomes increasingly embittered and hardened, while the audience remained grim-faced. I felt drained by the experience, as if I had been emotionally raped by the intense brutality of it all.
Onto the film touted as the smash hit of the festival, DALLAS DOLL, with the indubitably infamous Sandra "Sandi" Bernhard. As I squeezed myself into the 6' x 4' viewing box at the NFT, I was convinced I would detest this film, but colour me so surprised. The tale of golf-pro Bernhard, stunningly attired throughout, and the Australian family she plays cuckoo to is twee in places, black-humoured and teasingly delicious. The role allows Bernhard carte blanche to explore all dimensions of her chameleon sexuality. Sandi injures the family dog, fucks the son and father, ignores the UFO-obsessed daughter and flirts continually with the mother while playing Strip Golf and shoplifting jewellery. Of course there's lots of sex, but the camera, predictably, turns away sharply just as Sandi lowers her female conquest onto the divan. I actually liked this film (something of an admission as I find Bernhard quite abhorrent) but I remain unconvinced over her acting ability. The problem is her voice (and that bony, saggy body of hers) It's mostly a flat drone, and her intonation is quite appalling at times. It detracts from the wit and levity of the script, and deadens any scenes where tension is required. Shame really.
One film that was - I'm sure - unintentionally filled with candour and quips was SHE LIVES TO RIDE. It has two essential ingredients: women and Harley Davidson motorcycles. I was in Hog Heaven. Tasselled leather jackets, throbbing, rumbling engines, wide open spaces, a slide guitar and lots of beautifully kept Harleys. With an ambling granny biker who rode a soft pink Hog to a power-suited dyke who lead the SF Pride parade of chopper chicks, via a the all-black Cobra MC group and some fascinating archive footage, the 76 minutes zoomed by. I relished every heady moment.
For my sins, I also sat through the new epic
by Britain's blue-eyed wonder, Kenneth Branagh. FRANKENSTEIN and found
it, for the most part, to be overblown, overacted and light years away from
understated. Robert De Niro was the only redeeming feature, possibly because
he has a talent Branagh surely must envy, and by virtue of Daniel Parker's
astounding make-up. The cast, a hotch-potch of famous names, were wheeled
on for 10 minutes or so then promptly killed off. The second half - after
the "monster" remembers how to protect, feed and clothe himself and works
out his plan for revenge on his creator, flows a little more freely. The
effects are excellent (especially when Helena Bonham-Carter went up in flames,
but that just fulfilled my fantasy) but I can't see it as Oscar material,
unless it's awarded for the prosthetics or for De Niro's grunting.
Set in 1998 and under the newly elected Labour Government, Giving Tongue is the latest in a lengthy queue of dramas packed with political twists, further corkscrewed by dubious personal lives. As Barbara Gale, Charlotte Coleman takes on (yet another!) lesbian role as a hunt servant, whose intense teenage dalliance with Clare Holman's pristine MP, Jessie Fielding, threatens to surface when the latter proposes an anti-hunting bill.
While the flashbacks were washed out, virtually
devoid of colour, the plot was certainly saturated with it. In this slightly
surreal world - where thickly lipsticked female vicars follow the hounds,
the editor of the Guardian turns tabloid kibitzer, and fascist warmongers
support lil' fuzzy-wuzzy wildlife - the menace of cross-party sleaze didn't
seem wholly unfeasible.
Even the hordes of Eco-Terrorists (synthetically reared by the casting agent),
and the postcard imagery of Jessie's tryst (aged, shock horror, 15!) with
a freshly peered huntmaster, seemed par for the course.
Consider, this review is tainted by a deep crush on Coleman, even when she was a traumatic shade of ginger, but she adorned the screen with the most glorious presence. You knew full well Barbara was wracked by melancholy, angry at the perfidy displayed by the MP. You willed her to express the malice she developed for Jessie's slithering pillock of a husband (and preferably with a high calibre rifle). You knew that when her secret love was roundly harangued by maddened yokels, she would rescue her upon a white steed (and precisely, in this case). Given that, it's no wonder she forgave dialogue such as, "Lobby me... and I'll come out to play."
Emma Fortune's "first ever!" screenplay certainly is abundant with trenchant doses of wit, but suffers from the formula. It's a bog-standard disclosure of the skeletons in the closet of a Rt Hon Member, and how prosaic are those? It's not so much "wicked" as... normal. The pivotal reason for watching is to see how damned dashing (dare I say, foxy?) Charlotte looks in riding breeches.
© 1993-2001 Megan Radclyffe