Art films don’t have to be serious, but a lot of them are. Madness, suffering, death—at times these become depressingly familiar themes at film festivals. For this reason, the rare comedy film is welcome: comedy highlights of last year’s festivals were Matchmaking Mayor at Berlin and Sons of Norway in Reykjavik. Although you’re primed to enjoy them, comedies are a reliable choice, as they typically have to be original, as well as funny, to be included in the festival.

What if you could have a festival that showed nothing but comedies? And what if it cheered you up during the most depressing month of the year? That’s just what the charity ‘Loco’ has done this year. London’s very first comedy film festival is taking place this weekend at the BFI. It started last night, and you’ll have to be quick if you want to take part: it ends Sunday night, and tickets are selling fast.

Two of tonight’s films have been selected by Edgar Wright, who wrote and directed Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs the World. He will be at the BFI to introduce screenings of his own film, Shaun of the Dead and Mike Leigh’s Life is Sweet. Alongside these two established talents, Loco will present its ‘Discovery Screening’ this evening: Black Pond, the feature debut of Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe, and ‘All Consuming Love: Man in a Cat’, an animated short with a decidedly unusual premise.

Sunday starts with a Keaton-Chaplin double bill (Sherlock Jr and The Champion), followed by a 50^th anniversary screening of Go to Blazes, a British comedy about a bunch of jewel thieves who choose a fire engine as their getaway car. The festival concludes with its most unusual and intriguing event: the first-ever live reading of The Day Off. The script was written in the 1960s by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson (creators of Steptoe and Son), and intended for a film starring comedy legend Tony Hancock. Unfortunately, the film was never made, but maybe a modern adaptation will be in order if this weekend’s live reading proves a success.

Last night, the festival kicked off with two previews: a sell-out screening of The Muppets, followed by The Fairy (La Fée, 2011). The Fairy is set in the port city of Le Havre, and stars the film’s three writer-directors: Dominique Abel as ‘Dom’, a night porter at a cheap hotel, and Fiona Gordon as ‘Fiona’, a scruffy guest who introduces herself as a fairy who can grant Dom 3 wishes. Bruno Romy plays the perilously short-sighted owner of a local bar, ‘L’Amour Flou’. The film’s creators act alongside an excellent supporting cast, including Philippe Marz as troublesome British guest ‘John’, with ‘Mimi’, his beloved Westie.

The programme guide describes The Fairy as influenced by Michel Gondry, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Jacques Tati. True, it does contain something of Gondry’s whimsical imagination, Jeunet’s eccentric and grotesque characters, and Tati’s near-silent physical comedy, but these are merely comparisons that help audiences to know what to expect. The Fairy has its own original spark, and couldn’t be confused with the work of any of these directors. Its comic situations are highly original, often laugh-out-loud, and at times daring: many gags made the audience not just laugh, but gasp with shock, or cringe in pain. While The Fairy pushes the envelope, its overall tone is rarely as exaggerated or baroque as either Gondry or Jeunet, and its storyline has more drive than Tati. As stand-up comedian Stephen K. Amos remarked in a surprise introduction to the film, the trailers really don’t do this film justice. Any one sequence from the film could reasonably stand alone as a comic sketch, but the real power of the film’s comedy only emerges when the scenes are linked together into a coherent whole, building on each other with their repetition and variation, enacted by an endearing cast of characters.

While The Fairy is a thoroughly enjoyable and original comedy the first time around, much of its appeal lies in surprise, so it’s probably not a film that you would want to watch again and again. Classic comic films often rely on verbal or physical gags that can be easily repeated: this way, we enjoy them again, mentally, every time we are reminded of them by situations in our everyday life (the perennial response to ‘Surely…’ in Airplane! for example, or The Young Frankenstein‘s use of ‘Ovaltine’). In The Fairy, there is very little verbal humour, and its physical humour is so extreme that it evokes cartoon more than reality—you will probably never encounter anything like it in real life. I still recommend this film wholeheartedly, though, for its genuinely funny gags, its originality, and last but not least, its lovely aesthetic, which splashes cheerful patches of colour onto a modestly washed out backdrop.

As for Loco itself, the festival is a fantastic idea, at the perfect time of year. A comedy film festival should have the potential to attract a broader audience to the festival experience. True, it’s not as though we can’t get comedy when we want it, on TV or at the multiplex. But the popularity of events like Secret Cinema has proven that people want not just content but a proper experience: a night out with friends, some live entertainment, and a chance to participate: Loco, with its parties, workshops, special guests and public screenings provides just that. I hope that it will be back again next year, hopefully lasting longer than just 3 days, and with a line-up that includes more contemporary international fare. As The Fairy proves, comedy can travel very well.

To find out more about Loco, visit their website.  To buy tickets, visit BFI.

The London Iranian Film Festival is only in its second year, but already it boasts an enchanting and highly professional-looking trailer, as well as a varied line-up of films that blast open the old 80s stereotype of Iranian films as being superficially sweet studies of childhood in which social commentary was necessarily covert. It is of course important not to lose sight of the real censorship and official bullying of filmmakers that takes place in Iran, the most infamous example at the moment being Jafar Panahi. The London Iranian Film Festival has certainly not forgotten Panahi: it screened his new documentary, This Is Not a Film (In Film Nist, 2010), which records his struggle against the 6-year prison sentence and 20-year ban on filmmaking imposed by Iranian authorities last December.

The festival demonstrates the inspiring variety of contemporary Iranian filmmaking. Obviously, this year’s festival had to include A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin, 2011); although it already had a general UK release over the summer, it is a film that can be watched again and again, both for its acting and its intricate layering of truth and deception. The festival also included films which most London audiences will not have encountered before: A Very Close Encounter (Barkhord-e Kheyli Nazdik, 2010), a thriller about the criss-crossing relationships linking two women involved in a car crash, and Please Don’t Disturb (Lotfan Mozahem Nashavid, 2010) a low-budget comedy about an elderly couple afraid of the repairman, a pickpocketed cleric, and a woman threatening to leave her abusive television-personality husband.

I attended a screening of a film that, from its description, seemed to correspond more to the lyrical, child-focused Iranian films of the 1980s. The Other (Digari, 2010) concerns Reza, a boy of about 10, who lives with his recently-widowed mother. Reza goes on a trip to Tehran with Mr. Ebrahim, his father’s old friend and business partner, to sell the business’s van. Reza’s uncle is forcing Ebrahim to sell the van, but doesn’t trust him and so sends Reza to supervise. Mr Ebrahim, himself a widower with a 6-year-old daughter, would clearly like to marry Reza’s mother, but the uncle is opposed to the match. Reza himself is initially hostile towards Mr Ebrahim, but they grow closer over the course of the trip.

The Other is director Mehdi Rahmani’s first film, and in many ways it shows. The film’s technical quality is lacking: its colours are at once saturated and washed out, making the film look like it was made in the 1970s rather than just last year. This, combined with drab, worn-out surroundings means that shots of visual appeal are rare. The script, too, is not quite as unified as it could be: while the dialogue feels largely authentic and moderately interesting, it lacks momentum at times. The exposition is also a little confusing at first: luckily, the film’s plot and characters are restricted, so just by patiently listening to the characters, it becomes clear what is going on and what is at stake—rather as in real life.

With such reservations, I felt like I wasn’t really enjoying the film at the time. Over the hours and days following the screening, though, many themes and images kept coming back to me, making it clear that for all its roughness, this was a film that presented an authentic picture of present-day Iran, and had something serious to say about its social structures. It may have been the austerity and hardship that the film presented that provoked my initial negative reaction, as much as the film’s artistic weaknesses.

In retrospect, it is easy to see why this film won Best Children’s Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards last December. On the one hand, The Other will have cross-generational and cross-cultural appeal through its focus on the difficult relationship between children and any adult who attempts to stand in for a missing parent. On the other hand, the film examines Iran’s particular situation with regard to women’s marital rights: aside from the example of Reza’s mother, who can’t remarry until her brother-in-law says so, Reza and Mr Ibrahim encounter a troubling example of family strife in the room next door to theirs at the hotel in Tehran. While The Other can be a troubling film to watch in terms of its portrait of life in Iran, its heartfelt authenticity will remain with the viewer long after the end credits.

For more information about past and future editions of the London Iranian Film Festival, consult their web site: http://ukiff.org.uk/

This year London’s Czech Film Festival, ‘Made in Prague’ celebrated its 15^th edition (10-27 November). The theme for 2011 was ‘Film and Literature’, and included hard-to-find retro delights such as the 1959 adaptation of Jaroslav Hašek’s comic novel, The Good Soldier Švejk, and Czech New Wave classics like Jiří Menzel’s Capricious Summer (1967), adapted from a novel by Vladislav Vančura. More recent productions included A Walk Worthwhile (2009), directed by Miloš Forman and his son Petr Forman, based on a jazz opera by Suchý and Šlitr, and Of Parents and Children (2008), an adaptation of a novel by prize-winning contemporary writer Emil Hakl.

Czech New Wave director Juraj Herz attended the festival to present his famously dark The Cremator (1968), as well as his most recent film, Habermann (2010). Based on a story by Josef Urban, it joins an increasingly long list of films examining the mass deportation of Germans from Czechoslovakia following World War II.

Clearly, the Czech Republic has a strong literary history, from Kafka, Čapek, Nezval and Hrabal to Milan Kundera. Václav Havel, Czechoslovakia’s last president following the fall of Communism, and first president of the Czech Republic, was an established playwright before he even entered politics. This year’s ‘Made in Prague’ festival showcased Havel’s directorial debut, Leaving (2011), based on one of his most recent plays. The film reflects his experience as a politician, his background in theatre and, unfortunately, his inexperience with cinema. Many plays have been made into excellent films, but this only works when the director has a good sense of cinema’s specificity: not just the special expressive capacities that cinema offers, but what it takes to make a good film. A play, recorded on camera, is not a film.

Leaving concerns Vilém Rieger, a politician who is about to leave office. It is clear that he is not quite ready to let go of power, and equally unwilling to relinquish of his ministerial mansion in the countryside. There, he is surrounded by his family: mother, glamorous but jealous trophy wife Irena, teenage daughter cocooned with her laptop and mobile phone, and grown-up daughter constantly pushing legal documents at him to secure her inheritance. While the staff divide themselves between catering to the family’s needs and preparing for the move, the great man receives three very different types of visitor: a cynical tabloid journalist; a reverential sex kitten of a graduate student; and the incumbent chancellor, whose bright, loudly patterned clothing reflects his vulgar character.

In its favour, Leaving boasts a number of well-known actors, including veteran Josef Abraham (I Served the King of England [2006], Dita Saxová [1968], Courage for Every Day [1964]) as ex-chancellor Vilém, and Havel’s own spouse, Dagmar Havlovà, in the role of trophy wife Irena. The film also seems to feature a characteristically Czech sense of the absurd: the set includes two ridiculous obstacles that the characters continually have to negotiate (a badly-placed rock and a large puddle), and the family itself is marked by a baroque, outdated air of aristocracy, which they are determined to maintain even in the face of a stark change in fortunes.

There are two principal problems with the film, though: first, none of the primary characters are sympathetic, making it hard for the audience to care about what happens to any of them. Vilém may be seen as a distorted reflection of Havel himself, a man who understands the challenges of life in office: so many good intentions, so little possibility of realising them fully. In spite of the grace with which Josef Abraham plays this character, Viém is at base a vain womaniser and reactionary, and therefore difficult to truly like.

The film’s female characters, meanwhile, fall correspond to one of two extremes: sex objects (his wife and the graduate student) or cold, rather austere women (his mother and daughters). All, however, are materialistic and calculating: while this could be said to show their shrewdness, at base it reflects the fact that these women depend on men for their material wellbeing. The figure of the absurdly sexualised graduate student is most objectionable: even when a woman devotes her life to the intellect, Leaving insists on her physical attributes above all. The film even parodies academic interests, as the student instantly switches her studious adoration to the new chancellor, making her yet another stereotyped female opportunist.

Ultimately this film parodies every character, though it is a bit softer on the Vilém’s teenage daughter: the only constructively resourceful character in the film, it is she who ultimately saves the family through a cross-cultural relationship (notably conducted in English, over her mobile phone and the internet). Perhaps Havel intended to present the European Union as the best means of escape from an insular confrontation between the outdated elite and a new generation of uncultured, corrupt parvenus.

The other problem with the film is that Havel seems hardly to have grasped cinema’s language. There are attempts to make the film cinematic: the use of slow motion, baroque angles and, most disconcertingly, racking focus over a short depth of field, which gives a bilious fisheye effect. The entire film takes place in the garden of the ex-chancellor’s ministerial mansion, with the mansion itself as a backdrop and a pond in the foreground. There are precious few departures from this boring setting: a handful of shots show another part of the garden, or the field or road just outside the estate. Essentially, the film differs very little from a stage play with a single set. Even the initially amusing physical obstacles mentioned earlier feel like stage props, with one anchored at the centre and the other at the side of the set. The script itself, with its insistent themes, stilted lines, and formal entrances and exits, feels as though it has barely been altered at all from its original form. It creates the claustrophobic impression characteristic of a film that has been badly adapted from a play. We are shut in a small space with a bunch of unsympathetic characters: I can think of few greater cinematic tortures.

It’s a well-worn observation that the book is better than the movie. But what about the graphic novel? It seems reasonable to expect the transition from one predominantly visual medium to another to be smoother. It was pleasing to see Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis gain wider attention through the animated film adaptation she directed in 2007 with Vincent Paronnaud. While fun, that film still had nowhere near the impact of the original.

Satrapi recently paired up with Paronnaud again to direct a film adaptation of her shorter graphic work, Chicken with Plums (Poulet aux Prunes, 2011), this time using predominantly live-action rather than animation. Mathieu Amalric stars as Nasser-Ali, a violinist who decides it’s time to die when his beloved violin is broken. Neither his wife, his two young children, nor his brother can dissuade him. On his elective deathbed, Nasser-Ali recalls his past, above all his doomed relationship with the beautiful Irâne.

Chicken with Plums is a very strange film, but the directors first deserve praise for their remarkably creative approach. Even if the film’s parts did not hang together well, Satrapi and Paronnaud should be admired for their willingness to switch between starkly different aesthetic modes. The film’s dominant style is that of the period piece, a conservative mode which makes creative departures all the more surprising. The directors have reproduced mid-twentieth century Iran with an intimate, almost mystical atmosphere, predominantly green in hue: a sort of fairy-tale re-imagining of place that recalls Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Then, without warning, the film makes a brief departure into garish, mass-produced modernity: a flash-forward to Nasser-Ali’s son’s future life in the U.S., complete with obese children, junk food, and chihuahuas. While embarrassingly caricatured in its portrayal of the American lifestyle, this episode could be an Iranian response to the West’s equally stereotyped images of Iran.

Later, in one of the film’s most pleasing sequences, Chicken with Plums incorporates a colourful animated episode to illustrate a story that the devil, Azraël, tells to Nasser-Ali. Speaking of the devil, Satrapi and Paronnaud also open the doors to the imaginary within the film’s period setting: the giant, black, long-horned, bright-eyed Azraël, for example, or Nasser-Ali’s suicidal and erotic fantasies. These imagined elements, which can be easily incorporated in an illustrated medium, often appear literal-minded in a live-action film: unnecessarily grotesque enactments of every idea that passes through the character’s head. Here again, the film recalls Jeunet, but without that director’s sense of charm and nuance.

Aside from its uneasy baroque tendencies, there is the issue of the story itself, which is based on the life of one of Satrapi’s relations. In the context of one’s own family, it is easy to see how a story of lost love could be intriguing. In the wider world, though, romantic disappointment is all too common, making it hard to see why Nasser-Ali’s story should be of special interest to the public. Given that his love story is unremarkable, it makes it even more difficult to accept the story’s other details: that he agreed to marry a woman he didn’t love, and that he now decides to die, leaving his two young children alone with their overly-demanding mother. Perhaps Nasser-Ali was more a more likeable character in the original work. In any case, when it comes to stories with a more personal relevance, literature may be a more sympathetic medium than film.

Chicken with Plums was screened at the BFI London Film Festival.

The feature debut of director Tomáš Lunák, Alois Nebel (2011) is an animated film based on a trilogy of graphic novels by Jaromír99 and Jaroslav Rudiš. The film’s black-and-white images sometimes look like a graphic novel come to life. At other times, they possess the stark enchantment of woodblock prints. Through the use of rotoscope animation, the characters’ smallest gestures are incredibly lifelike.

Alois Nebel is a middle-aged train dispatcher in the village of Bilý Potok. It is the period leading up to the Velvet Revolution, which will see the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia, but Alois keeps remembering the end of another era. Every time a train passes through the station with a cloud of steam, a ‘fog’ descends on him, and he has flashbacks of the end of World War II, when Germans were deported en masse from the region—including a woman who had been a mother to him during the war. As a result of these episodes, his opportunistic comrades place him temporarily in an institution. There, Alois meets a mute fugitive with an important connection to his past.

A ‘fog’ is an entirely appropriate term for Alois’ rememberances of the past, as the exact events remain hazy for most of the film. This may have been a deliberate choice, in order to build suspense, and reflect the repression at work in Alois own memory. Yet even at the film’s end, when the mystery seems to be cleared up, some details remain obscure. Alois Nebel assumes, in addition, a certain degree of knowledge about Czechoslovakia’s history, which may limit its appeal to younger/international audiences. Still, the film will hold a lot of power for those familiar with the nation’s history, both political and cinematic. The film’s opening, in particular, which introduces the audience to life at the station, recalls the WWII-set Closely Observed Trains (1966): many of the shots of the station exterior, and of the small repeated gestures that make up everyday life inside the station, look as though they were modelled on Jiří Menzel’s film.

The LFF’s final screening of Alois Nebel will take place on Thursday, 27 October at 3:30 pm at BFI Southbank’s NFT 2. For details, consult the festival’s web site.

The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010) was a highlight of last year’s BFI London Film Festival. This year’s highlight looks set to be The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011), a film similar in many ways. At the dramatic centre of The Kids Are All Right was the desire of a lesbian couple’s two kids to learn more about their ‘father’ (sperm donor). As its title suggests, lineage is also a concern in The Descendants. George Clooney plays Matt King, the father of a family of mixed ancestry: half European colonialists, half Hawaiian royalty. The family’s ancient history is important in this film because a large tract of coastal land that has been passed down for generations must now be sold. It is up to Matt to decide whether to accept a lucrative offer from developers who will transform the virgin wilderness into a resort. Matt’s immediate family is a more pressing concern, though: his wife is in a coma after a power boat accident, leaving Matt to look after their two daughters, 17-year-old Alexandra, and 11-year-old Scottie. A workaholic, Matt no longer knows quite how to relate to his kids, but knows that he must do his best to stand in for their mother.

Like The Kids Are All Right, The Descendants takes a fresh perspective on modern American family life. Although Hollywood films commonly show kids misbehaving and being rude to their parents, the particular scenarios and language the kids use in The Descendants feels both more spontaneous and more authentic: Matt’s daughters and their friends say surprising things, sometimes shocking things, but not gratuitously. Alexandra’s boyfriend Sid comes out with some incredibly stupid statements, but has his funny and personable sides too. Sid also has his own sorrows to deal with: as is often the case in real life, such details are only revealed later, as we get to know him better. The Descendants is one of those films that is understanding towards all its characters, even the least likable ones, allowing every character their reasons and dignity. Matt’s father-in-law, for example, is aggressive and unfair in his criticisms, but just when he seems to have been dismissed as a grumpy old man, there is a candid shot of him watching over his comatose daughter in hospital, and the audience can appreciate the powerful emotions he must be experiencing.

In spite of their serious and potentially heart-rending subject matter, both The Descendants and The Kids Are All Right are highly watchable films: their engaging narrative, original comedy and, last but not least, big-name stars ensure their appeal to a broad audience. Last year, some people were complaining that aside from featuring lesbian parents, The Kids Are All Right was essentially a conservative film in its assertion of family values. The Descendants also centres on a well-to-do middle class family, valorises ancestry and presents a Hawaii where all residents are firmly in touch with the region’s specificity, from their dress and decor to their use of local greetings. At the same time, the film immediately challenges the romanticism commonly associated with warm climates: over shots of average people in Hawaii who are old, overweight, or in poor health, Matt introduces the film in voiceover, saying that when someone is ill, idyllic surroundings don’t change a thing.

One of director Alexander Payne’s previous successes, Sideways (2004), concerned a pair of middle-aged men going on a tour of California’s vineyards, not necessarily a subject that would interest everyone. The story of a family with a comatose mother also doesn’t sound like the most engaging film, but in both cases, with an outstanding script Payne manages to make the subject appealing. In The Descendants, he doesn’t achieve this by avoiding the pain of illness entirely: there are moments in the film that are very sad. Yet the film balances these moments with a lot of comedy, interesting dialogue, and character study. Moreover, he ventures into risky territory by allowing the family to criticise the mother, even though she is very ill and can’t defend herself. Again, this is not exploited for mere shock value: while it does give perspective, illness doesn’t erase a person’s mistakes. The Descendants recognises the spectrum of feelings that a family may go through in such a situation.

Have you ever wondered what it was like for spectators watching their first sound film? Michel Haznavicius’ latest feature brings home just how strange it would have been. For the most part, The Artist (2011) is a close imitation of silent film from the late 1920s: black and white, the only sound a piano or orchestral accompaniment, with inter-titles to convey dialogue and essential information about place and story developments. During one scene halfway through the film, and at the film’s end, voices and sound effects are suddenly introduced: the effect, after so many minutes of silent cinema, is dramatic.

The Artist is a self-conscious film in many ways: a silent film set at the end of the silent era, its protagonist is silent film star George Valentin, who will see his career sink with the introduction of sound. Meanwhile, his beautiful former protégée, Peppy Miller, replaces him as the sweetheart of the talkies. The cleverest scene in the film is Valentin’s nightmare, in which the world around him becomes sonorised while he remains mute. It begins when he sets his glass down on the table, and it makes a noise. Sound effects and voices begin to crowd in unbearably, until a leaf hitting the ground sounds like a bomb. In this, and the film’s closing sound scene, a modern audience is suddenly able to appreciate that sound could initially have felt like intrusive noise, rather than an enhancement of the film experience.

Haznavicius’ previous two films were also period pieces: OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006) and OSS 117 – Lost in Rio (2009) were both 1960s James Bond spoofs starring Jean Dujardin as the suave, unreconstructed secret agent who always manages to save the day (by accident). While The Artist is set some 30 years earlier, and in the world of Hollywood rather than international espionage, protagonist George Valentin is a similar character: a somewhat oblivious, old-fashioned charmer, again played with comic perfection by Jean Dujardin. As Peppy, Bérénice Bejo (who co-starred with Dujardin in Cairo, Nest of Spies) is less believable: there is a general lack of restraint in her movements and facial expressions which marks her as characteristically modern.

The Artist makes fun of silent film conventions (the style of acting, the dramatic exposition, the trusty dog), just as the OSS films made fun of the Bond franchise. But The Artist is neither as funny nor as exciting as the OSS films. There are a few innovative comic set pieces, such as Peppy’s use of Valentin’s blazer to act out a romantic fantasy about him (included in the film’s trailer). Much of the comedy in OSS relied on dialogue, though, which is necessarily restricted in a silent film. Plot-wise, The Artist is also limited: the audience must watch Valentin become increasingly depressed as he realises his career has ended, while Peppy expresses her love by trying to help him as he once helped her. While you do expect a certain level of predictability in genre films (whether a pre-sound romance or a spy film), there is an overall lack of surprise in The Artist that deadens its effect: unlike the OSS films, it’s not one that you could watch again and again.

The Artist was screened at the 2011 BFI London Film Festival.            

The principal problem in Where Do We Go Now? is that the village is half Christian, half Muslim. Although all of the villagers have learned to live peacefully together, any perceived insult to one religion or the other risks destroying the equilibrium. The village’s women refuse to let this happen: when they learn of Christian-Muslim tension in other parts of the country, they will do whatever is necessary to prevent the men from finding out about it. While their motivation is deadly serious, the idea of women banding together to enforce peace is both funny premise and an ancient one, recalling Aristophanes’ Lysistrata in which women go on a sex strike to end a war. The methods adopted by the women in Labaki’s film are more diverse: one method actually turns Lysistrata on its head, as the women invite Ukranian strip-tease artists to the village to distract the men. The film’s dialogue is also both witty and original, and impeccably delivered by a cast which included many non-actors, most likely playing roles that were familiar to them from real life. The audience at the screening I attended were obviously having a grand time. This corresponds to the film’s reception at the Toronto International Film Fest: Where Do We Go Now? took the Audience Award, a prize that has in the past gone to such subsequent success stories as Amélie (2001), Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and The King’s Speech (2010).

For me, the film did not quite live up to the standard set by Caramel. Taking place mostly in one salon on one street in Beirut, the viewer could quickly become familiar with the space in Caramel. In Where Do We Go Now?, there was not an overall sense of space. Although there were a few long shots of the village from the outside, the hills that surrounded it, and the precarious stone bridge connecting it to the outside world, the film did not develop a clear sense of the village’s geography, so that the action seemed to take place in a disparate set of interiors (church, mosque, bar, and a couple of homes), as in a stage play. Similarly, while Caramel centred mainly on a group of 3 friends, Where Do We Go Now? had a much larger cast, making it difficult to get to know any of the characters very well. While the women’s different schemes were funny, there was not a clear sense of direction to the film: it felt more like a series of gags. The love story between Madame Amal (a Christian) and her sexy decorator (a Muslim) could have served as a unifying theme, but was not fully developed.

Another notable strength of the film was its three musical set pieces, all marked by different moods. The opening was the most self-conscious, and felt like it could have come straight from Herzog’s Pina (2011): all of the film’s female characters, dressed in black, limp  and sway towards the camera, thumping their breasts, in a dramatic funeral cortege. The film’s next musical scene is much happier one, marked by white rather than black. While reminiscent of Bollywood insofar as it abruptly introduces a romantic song and (sort of) dance, it is realistically integrated as Madame Amal’s dream of a romance with her decorator. The film’s final set piece is also realistically motivated: as the women work together in the kitchen, preparing a selection of very special pastries for the men, they sing a very catchy song.

In spite of the narrative and spatial flaws in Where Do We Go Now?, Labaki should be commended for having made this film. Aside from being immensely enjoyable for the audience, the film takes a daring approach to inter-religious tension. It suggests that most people have so many concerns in common (love, family, food, entertainment) that it is natural for them to understand each other and get along—it is those with too much aggression in their systems who seek petty pretexts for a fight.

Jude Law and Rachel Weisz star in Fernando Meirelles's "360"

This year’s London Film Festival launched with a damp squib in the form of 360, Fernando Meirelles’ latest feature. How far Merielles seems now from City of God (2002). Set in Rio’s slums which force children to grow up fast, City of God was urgent, both socially and stylistically. Children taken from the street played roles which they knew all too well, and one particular scene of gun violence between children was heartbreaking and unforgettable.

360, by contrast, seems to have been inspired by two banal observations: first, in an age of easy international travel, there are a lot of opportunities for us to cross paths with people—so much so, everyone may be connected to everyone else. Hence the film’s title, though in truth the characters’ relationships do not form a circle: it is more a case of degrees of separation from a central character (a prostitute). The film’s second observation is that small choices made by different people every day must influence who meets whom, so a different choice on the part of just one person could alter events significantly. The notion of different paths to choose from is introduced early on by an appropriately goofy quotation from baseball player Yogi Berra: ‘When you come to a fork in the road, take it!’ As if once were not enough, the quotation is repeated at the end of the film, when a new prostitute appears on the scene, apparently starting a set of branched relationships all over again.

There have been a number of films about overlapping lives and the impact of small decisions: Babel (2006), for instance, and Sliding Doors (1998). The former film had a powerful social message about globalisation, while the latter was interesting for playing out in parallel the two different lives a character could live, as the result of catching a train or missing it. 360 just doesn’t justify itself in the same way.

Meirelles’ style does offer a few surprises, though they mainly come across as quirky or baroque rather than compelling. There is some snappy editing and sudden transitions that recall City of God, but with less motivation for the level of speed. More innovative flourishes include an airplane which takes off in one shot, then continues to fly through following shot, circling the head of a character obsessed by one passenger on the plane. There is also a shot which cleverly incorporates a split screen to make it look as though a sinister character on the phone is present in the apartment of the woman he is speaking to.

Without spoiling the suspense that is one of the mild pleasures of this film, I can say that 360 is a story of love and lust, as well as a tale of crossing paths, making decisions, and seizing the day: it is based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1897 play La Ronde. The film boasts a strong cast of international stars from Britain (Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law and Rachel Weisz), France (Jamel Debbouze) and Austria (Mauritz Bleibtreu), but the script gives them little to work with and, as a result, it is difficult to become genuinely involved in the story. Most of the characters live in affluent or somewhat less affluent EU capitals (London, Paris, Vienna, Bratislava) and are by and large bourgeois. A pimp, a gangster and a sex offender are thrown into the mix for some much needed tension. Unfortunately, all of the characters are clichéd and one-dimensional. What clear traits they do have are routinely undermined by stupid decisions, which aren’t easily justified by the film’s other banal mantra: ‘You only live once: how many chances do we get?’ When poorly defined characters make such obviously idiotic choices, it is difficult to care what happens to them. Worse for the viewer, these bad decisions never have the exciting consequences they would normally have in other films (Thelma and Louise, for example).

The 55^th edition of the London Film Festival (LFF) starts tomorrow, October 12^th, and runs until the 22^nd. This year the festival will screen 204 features and 110 shorts from 55 different countries. A selection of films will compete for the festival’s 4 main prizes: the Best Film Award, The Grierson Award for Best Documentary, Best British Newcomer and The Sutherland Award (for most imaginative and original first feature). In addition, the British Film Institute will present its highest honour, BFI Fellowships, to actor Ralph Fiennes and director David Cronenberg, the first Canadian ever to receive the fellowship.

The festival comprises nine different sections, from big budget films by well-known directors, to first features, encompassing innovative new films from all over the world. There is a section devoted to European cinema, and special sections for British and French cinema. There are also separate sections devoted to shorts, experimental films, and classic films that have recently been restored.

For this year’s opening and closing films, the festival seems to have looked close to home, selecting UK productions or co-productions for both. 360, which kicks off the festival tomorrow, is decidedly international in scope, though: directed by Fernando Meirelles, who made his name with City of God (2002), the film revolves around a set of interconnected love stories that span the globe. Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins and Jamel Debbouze star.

Rachel Weisz also takes the lead in the festival’s closing film, The Deep Blue Sea. This period piece is director Terence Davies’ adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play about a married woman and member of the haute bourgeoisie who falls for a young former RAF pilot.

George Clooney is another star who figures prominently in this year’s LFF: he plays an aspiring American presidential candidate in The Ides of March (which he also directs), and a dad who must step up to his responsibilities when his wife falls ill in Hawaii-set The Descendants.

The festival will treat the public to the work of veteran masters such as French New Wave icon Michel Piccoli (now 85), who plays the stressed pontiff in Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope. 81-year-old documentarist Frederick Wiseman’s latest film, Crazy Horse, explores life inside the eponymous Paris cabaret.

Though younger, director Michel Haznavicius also knows how to maintain links with the past. Having established a retro aesthetic over the past decade with two James Bond spoofs (OSS 117, starring Jean Dujardin), the director now turns his gaze further back in cinema history, alighting at the end of the silent era in The Artist.

Known for his contemporary French thrillers (Lemming [2005] and Harry, He’s Here to Help [2000]), Dominik Moll has set his latest film much further in the past. The Monk is an adaptation of a 1796 novel much admired by the Surrealists, and was filmed once before by Ado Kyrou in 1972, based on a script co-written with Buñuel. It will be intriguing to see whether Moll’s witty, modern approach to psychological tension comes through in his take on an original gothic novel.

Michael Winterbottom also takes inspiration from classic literature in Trishna, which sets the story of Tess of the D’Urbervilles in modern-day India, and stars Freida Pinto. In another promising meeting of past and present, Takashi Miike (13 Assassins) applies 3D technology to bring Japanese history to life in Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai.

Maintaining a focus on the East, following the success of Persepolis (2007) Marjane Satrapi co-directs another film based on her work as a graphic novelist, this time in a live-action feature, Chicken with Plums. In another a follow-up to a popular debut (Caramel, 2007), director and actress Nadine Labaki returns with Where Do We Go Now?, another joyfully female-centric film.

For more information on the London Film Festival programme, and to book tickets, go to bfi.org.uk/lff