Film: Pick of the london film festival's second week
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Harmony Korine, the 23-year-old scriptwriter of Larry Clarke's controversial Kids, now directs his first feature, . It's as oddball as American indies get, with dysfunctional teens roaming low-rent Midwest neighbourhoods. Uncomfortably voyeuristic in tone, it leaves the strong sensation that, before he turned to film-making, Korine was the creepy kid who picked the wings off flies.
NFT1, tomorrow, 8.45pm.
Perfect Circle
This is Bosnian director Ademir Kenovic's account of life in Sarajevo during wartime. A feckless poet rediscovers his humanity while caring for a couple of runaway kids after his family flee the besieged city. Perfect Circle, a humane and moving film, provides a welcome corrective to Michael Winterbottom's confused celebrity-fest Welcome to Sarajevo. (See Emma Daly, page 2.)
NFT1, Sunday, 4.15pm.
Funny Games
Michael Haneke's deeply disturbing, confrontational examination of cinema's treatment of violence subjects a bourgeois Austrian family to a domestic onslaught at the hands of a couple of excessively polite psychopaths. While not the masterpiece that some critics are claiming, it's an intensely serious and self-reflexively moral examination of the spectator's collusion with cinematic extremities.
NFT 1, Thursday, 2pm & 6pm.
Western
"I wanted to make a road-movie in Brittany," explains French director Manuel Poirier, whose film follows the fortunes of two accidental travelling companions. Paco (Sergi Lopez) is Spanish, and a Latin lover, while his companion, Nino (Sacha Bourdo), a Russian immigrant, has much less luck with women. This charming comedy traces their friendship over their 10km travels.
Odeon WE1, today, 3.30pm & 9pm.
A Body in the Forest
This gripping and intelligent Spanish thriller by screenwriter Joaquin Jorda has Rossy de Palma as a Civil Guard investigating the death of a young woman. Serpentine plotting, a multi-faceted view of personal identity and the director's eye for the Spanish countryside all make this a buried treasure in the festival.
NFT2, 22 Nov, 4pm & 8.45pm.
Chris Darke
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