My second — and sadly final — 2017 London Film Festival screening was for Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Battle of the Sexes. The 'it's not really about tennis' story of a 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and former tennis champion turned hustler and self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig, Bobby Riggs.


Many of the cast and crew were out on the red carpet on Leicester Square last night, as well as assorted ball boys and girls and other tennis-related paraphernalia. I spotted Dayton and Faris posing together first, and then Emma Stone and later Elisabeth Shue and Heather Watson. Alas, I was ushered on into the cinema before Billie Jean King herself appeared.



Once festival director Clare Stewart got things started, however, we got to hear from various actors and crew members. Producers Danny Boyle and Christian Colson, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy and both directors came onstage to talk about their work on the film — and how they were all terrified that King would hate the end result.; "we wanted to do her justice," Faris explained. As it turned out, they did and King was delighted to be depicted by Emma Stone, urging the audience members to keep fighting for equality and freedom.





And so to the film... I wasn't aware of the titular battle until I started reading about the film and although I tried to avoid finding out the outcome, I didn't succeed. This didn't really matter, though, because as the directors, Boyle, Beaufoy and Stone all noted, Battle of the Sexes is much more of a love story with elements of political drama than a sports movie. As the film opens, Billy Jean King (Stone) has just won a tennis championship but finds out that at another upcoming tournament, the men's champion will receive a prize eight times greater than the female winner. She and Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman), a fellow advocate of the women's tennis game, protest to Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman), who has just issued a press release for the US Lawn Tennis Association about this news, but he doesn't see the problem. "The men are more exciting to watch, faster, stronger... It's just biology," he says.

King decides to found a separate Women's Tennis Association, signing up some of her fellow female players, including Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee) and Rosie Casals (Natalie Morales), and creating a women's only tennis circuit, to Kramer's consternation. King's husband Larry (Austin Stowell) remains at home for much of the tour to avoid distracting her, and one day she meets and soon forms a friendship with hair stylist Marilynn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough; in reality, Barnett was King's personal secretary). Before long, her feelings for Marilynn develop into something more and the two become lovers, despite her own anguish and warnings from some of her friends, including the players' wardrobe master (the ever-wonderful Alan Cumming).

Meanwhile, after enjoying much success as a tennis star in his youth, Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) has fallen into a cycle of hustling and gambling. He wins a Rolls Royce, which turns out to be the final straw that leads his wife Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue) to kick him out. He needs one big, final gambit to win her back and soothe his aching ego, and decides that playing King in a televised tennis match is the way to do this. In 1973, King was 29 and at the top of her game, while Riggs was 55 and no longer quite as good as he would like to think. King refuses to accept the challenge for some time — she sees it for the spectacle that it is. But eventually, she gives in when she realises that it may be her best opportunity to prove not that women can be as good at tennis as men, but that women deserve to be treated fairly and equally. Will it all backfire or will the time Riggs dedicates to being parodically sexist, arrogant and obnoxious prevent him from practising enough?

I enjoyed Battle of the Sexes — it is entertaining and uplifting, and while Stone's performance as King stood out, Carell deserves kudos for being quite so pitiable. It's Pullman's Kramer who seems the more insidious character, however; as King points out during the film, Riggs is just putting on an act for the attention, but Kramer genuinely seems to believe that women belong in the kitchen and the bedroom and sees King and her 'women's lib' compatriots to be a danger for the game of tennis. I think the film would have been stronger had it been a broader biopic of King, focusing less on the pantomimish Riggs, whose story consumed all too much of the film. The best scenes were between King and Barnett, and the subtler scenes between King and her husband. Although Larry tells Marilynn that they are both just sideshows and that "tennis is her first love," actually, it's her love for these two important people in her life that comes through most strongly.

Another year, another London Film Festival — my eighth, in fact, and you can read my coverage of previous years here. I usually try to go to four or five films, including the Surprise Film, but this year I'm only going to two — unless a ticket becomes available for the screen talk with David Fincher, one of my favourite directors. The reasons for this are twofold: first, I will be out of the country for part of the festival, and second, I've been trying to save for my big out-of-the-country trip, and LFF ticket prices have become very expensive over the years.


I was really pleased to score a ticket to last night's opening night gala, Andy Serkis's directorial debut, Breathe. I missed out in the ballot, but checking back regularly on the BFI website landed me a great seat in the fourth row of the Odeon Leicester Square. It had been a while since I'd attended an opening-night gala and I'd forgotten how busy Leicester Square gets. Usually, I loiter near the red carpet until the cast or crew member I am hoping to see heads on to start giving interviews, but the queue was so big last night that I just had to go to the end and cross my fingers that the queue gods were on my side.

Happily, I managed to snap a few photos of one of the stars, Andrew Garfield. Funnily enough, it was at the LFF opening-night gala for Never Let Me Go in 2010 — also attended by Garfield, along with Kazuo Ishiguro, who just won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature — where I first developed a fondness for Mr Garfield.




The show was running late but organ music kept us entertained, and I was also excited to have a minor encounter with Jason Isaacs, who was in the audience.


After BFI Chief Executive Amanda Nevill and the ever-colourfully-attired London Film Festival Director Clare Stewart had made their introductions, director Andy Serkis and producer Jonathan Cavendish came on stage and introduced some of the cast members, including Garfield, Claire Foy, Tom Hollander and Hugh Bonneville. Jonathan Cavendish is also the son of the couple depicted in the film, and his mother Diana also joined the cast and crew.






After all of this excitement, it was time for the film to begin. Breathe tells the true story of Robin (Garfield) and Diana Cavendish, who meet and marry in the 1950s before moving to Kenya where Robin begins a tea-broking business. Disaster strikes, however, when Robin contracts polio and becomes paralysed from the neck down, his survival relying on a mechanical respirator. Given just months to live, he wants to die and begs Diana to take her freedom and start again. She refuses and what follows is powerful, warm and inspiring tale of love and of challenging expectations.

Supported by Diana, their families (including Diana's twin brothers, both played by Tom Hollander) and friends, Robin is able to 'break out' of the hospital to move home and live an increasingly full life. Eventually, he is able to travel — thanks in part to innovations, such as a wheelchair with a built-in respirator, created by his friend Teddy Hall (Bonneville) — and goes on to become a campaigner and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities, defying the assumptions of the time.

If Tom Hardy's single eye stole the show in Dunkirk, Andrew Garfield's eyebrows deserve their own credit in Breathe. The actor's whole face is wonderfully expressive, though, and the convincing and tender relationship between him and Foy and their chemistry really carry the film and stop it becoming overly sentimental. Although often emotional, Breathe is also very funny at times; Garfield achieves much of this with his facial expressions and dry remarks, while Hollander's Blacker twins often act as the comic relief (one scene was perhaps a little too Chuckle Brothers). Added to a beautiful score from Nitin Sawhney and gorgeous cinematography from Robert Richardshon — showcasing England's green and pleasant lands as well as the sun-drenched Kenyan landscapes — and Serkis's film is a pleasure to watch.

Although Armie Hammer appears in both Nocturnal Animals, which I saw on Friday night, and Free Fire, which was last night's BFI London Film Festival closing night gala, the two films have little else in common. It's a sign, perhaps, of Hammer's versatility, and I enjoyed them both a great deal.



Free Fire is the latest film from Ben Wheatley and if you don't like movies that involve a lot of blood, violence and swearing, it probably won't be your cup of tea. However, the 90-minute shoot-'em-up, which unfolds entirely inside a warehouse near Boston in the 1970s, is tightly edited, thrilling and, frankly, hilarious.



The set-up is reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs and the plot is thus: Justine (Brie Larson) arranges for ne'er-do-wells Ord (Armie Hammer) and Vern (Sharlto Copley — pictured in my second red carpet snap above) to sell some weapons to Frank (Michael Smiley) and Chris (Cillian Murphy). Both gangs show up at a disused warehouse and before they have even got to the stage of trying to screw one another over, gunfire breaks out between two of the more junior gang members (Sam Riley and Jack Reynor). Before long, it's a full-on bloodbath and, given the number of bullet wounds within the first 20 minutes, I did wonder whether any of the characters would live to see the halfway point of the film.

There are all sorts of surprises and betrayals along the way. Will anyone end up with the suitcase full of dosh? Will anyone even survive? Do we even want any of the characters to survive? These questions miss the point somewhat: no one has any particularly redeeming features and it doesn't matter who, if anyone, 'wins' because the film, in its dark and gory way, is hugely entertaining. It's also very stylish with a great soundtrack and some very '70s hairstyles and costumes.

The characters think that they are so smart, cool and hard, but in fact, Wheatley frequently shows them for the greedy, impulsive fools that they really are, and there is a strong sub-text of irony and self-knowing running throughout the film. There is a particularly brilliant use of John Denver's Annie's Song in one scene that in itself generated much laughter in the audience. Again and again (and not for the first time in a Ben Wheatley film), we have to ask ourselves: should we be enjoying this quite so much?

Copley, in particular, steals every scene he is in — so much so that I was desperately hoping for Vern to make it through to the end. Vern gets all the best lines, but Copley's comic timing and delivery are so impeccable that he turns even lines like, "redeem yourself and get that case", into something so funny that you question whether you should really be laughing quite so hysterically amid such intense violence. Hammer's performance is also very impressive. His character, Ord, originally seems to be the straight man, but as the film progresses, his funny, stoner side comes out too, and he too has wonderful comic timing. Murphy is as good as always, conveying so much with just a glance, and Larson, as the only woman in the film, more than holds her own against all the Y-chromosomes.

Last night, Wheatley was joined on stage at the Odeon Leicester Square by most of the cast (there are only 14 people in the cast) — Larson was the notable absence — and from the way they were jostling one another, laughing and taking selfies, you could tell how much fun they had making the film, which was actually filmed in Brighton. I won a ticket to the gala in the BFI ballot (having already spent all my pennies on three other tickets, I still felt I couldn't turn it down) and I was really glad to be in the front row. It was a great end to a wonderful London Film Festival experience.

After tonight's UK premiere of Nocturnal Animals at the London Film Festival last night, I saw someone tweeting that Tom Ford's talents are wasted as a designer. I don't agree with that and yet it is remarkable that Nocturnal Animals is only Ford's second picture. It is literally breathtaking, beautiful and devastating with a superb performances from Amy Adams, Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.


Before heading into the cinema, I managed to snap a few red carpet shots, including of Mark Kermode interviewing Ford and Taylor-Johnson; co-star Armie Hammer and his wife; and the arrival of Amy Adams (wearing Tom Ford, of course).




They were joined on the stage by one of the young co-stars, Ellie Bamber, to introduce the film along with London Film Festival Director Clare Stewart. Ford didn't say much about the film: "it should speak for itself," he explained.




I hadn't read much about Nocturnal Animals beyond the description in the LFF programme — and after reading the blurbs about dozens of films, I didn't remember a great deal. This actually worked in my favour as Nocturnal Animals is the kind of film best experienced from a blank slate. Although, as usual I try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, it's hard to discuss this film without going into some of the details about the plot so you may wish to click away now if you want to see this film completely fresh.

The opening scene is one of the most arresting I've ever seen: visual striking, it is at once brash and enigmatic, beautiful and sad — much like the film itself. It turns out that the sequence relates to the new opening at Susan (Adams)'s gallery. She and her businessman husband Hutton (Hammer) live in a beautiful house in Los Angeles and appear to have a perfect life and yet, she confesses to her friend at a party, "I feel ungrateful not to be happy." Her friend asks if she still loves Hutton but she never gets the chance to answer.

The following morning, Susan receives a package in the mail from her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) — a proof copy of his first novel, entitled Nocturnal Animals. "I didn't know he could write," sniffs Hutton, before heading off to New York. Susan, meanwhile, begins to devour the book, and the film splits into three at this point, alternating between Susan's life in LA and her reactions to the novel; the dark story-within-the-story of the novel; and flashbacks to the earlier years of Susan and Edward's relationship.

In the novel, for reasons that remain unclear, Tony (also played by Gyllenhaal), his wife Laura (Isla Fisher) and daughter India (Bamber) drive off in their car through rural Texas late at night. But, after a terrifying car chase, they are driven off the road by a gang of young thugs headed up by Ray (a terrifying Taylor-Johnson), who clearly have far worse things than carjacking in mind. Later, Detective Bobby Andes (an understated but brilliant Shannon) must try to get to the bottom of the crime — and to ensure that justice is served.

Although the tone is more languorous than fast-paced, Nocturnal Animals remains supremely gripping as we try to unravel the various mysteries of the film and determine exactly what point Edward's novel is trying to make. Fragments of dialogue — sometimes even single words — seep from the flashbacks into Edward's novel and cause present-day Susan substantial pain. Watching her react to chapters of the novel immediately after we have, although with a very different perspective, is narratively very interesting. Adams excels in this challenging role, conveying so much just with her eyes. There are also some fabulous cameos from the likes of Michael Sheen (Susan's friend's gay husband), Jena Malone (a fellow museum board member whose 'creative' outfit trumps even her Hunger Games costumes), and Laura Linney as Susan's overbearing mother ("Just wait," she threatens. "We all eventually turn into our mothers.").

Visually, the film is as gorgeous as you would expect from Tom Ford, cutting from the twinkling lights and modernist architecture of LA to sunrise in the Texas desert. Abel Korzeniowski's haunting score could have slipped right out of a 1950s film noir and is the perfect complement. I left Nocturnal Animals feeling emotionally bruised (in need of a stiff whiskey, like Susan) and yet wishing I could watch the film again; I think I would get even more from it the second time. Complex, beautiful and tragic, I think it might make my top five films of the year.

Much as I usually dislike spending time in Leicester Square, the BFI London Film Festival is one notable exception. As soon as I arrive for my first film gala each year, I find myself swept up in the excitement of the festival. I booked three tickets this year and then was pleased to find I had also won a ticket to the closing night gala, Free Fire, in the ballot. Usually, the events I attend are split between the Vue cinema and the big, showy Odeon Leicester Square, but this year, they are all in the latter. On Saturday night, I went to two events, including the surprise film, which I've already blogged about. First up, though, was the European premiere of Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea.


I timed my arrival well and spotted both the gorgeous Michelle Williams and the film's lead actor Casey Affleck on the red carpet. Naturally, my LFF excitement levels immediately rose quite dramatically.





I had managed to book a seat in the third row — a little closer to the screen than I usually prefer, but it did mean that when Lonergan, Williams, Affleck and several producers took to the stage to introduce the film, I had an excellent view. Talking about the writing process — and the difference between writing and directing — Lonergan noted that it was amazing how you could be writing a film on a boat outside Manchester-by-the-Sea, a small town on the Massachusetts North Shore, and then a year later you're making a film about a boat outside Manchester-by-the-Sea. "It's the kind of film people should see," Lonergan added. "Even if you don't like it."






Well, although I thought that Lonergan's last film Margaret was interesting but flawed, I was very taken by Manchester by the Sea, a heart-wrenching family drama that leaves its audience as battered as the boat that gets so much screen time. Affleck stars as Lee Chandler, who is working as a janitor in Boston. He is good at his job but hates small talk and yet, as we see in a serious of vignettes, he is forced to try to listen to his clients' personal problems as well as to try to fix their plumbing. Some of these interactions are quite amusing (Lee overhearing a client ask her friend if it's wrong to fantasise about the man fixing her toilet), but the overall impression is that Lee is not a happy man. He seems to have particular problems letting people get close to him.

Then, a phone call bearing tragic news brings him back to his hometown, the eponymous Manchester by the Sea, where he must take care of his teenage nephew Patrick (the excellent Lucas Hedges). Uncomfortable in his father-figure role, Lee struggles to offer Patrick the support he needs, especially as his return to Manchester has awakened all sorts of demons from his past. Through a series of masterfully constructed flashbacks, Lonergan gradually reveals what happened to Lee. It isn't fair to say that he is reflecting on happier times — one has to wonder whether Lee is even capable of being happy — but he has a good relationship with his wife Randi (Michelle Williams) and his three young children, plenty of friends and a supportive older brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler). So where did it all go wrong?

Although Manchester by the Sea could benefit from a little tightening up, the story kept me gripped, partly owing to Lonergan's subtle show-don't-tell storytelling techniques: for example, the recurring presence of Lee's three framed photographs, whose contents are never revealed, and the origin of the name of the family boat. In less skilful hands, these plot details would have been handled through clumsy exposition, but they feel all the more poignant here. Lonergan's treatment of sound is also excellent: from the loud, jarring organ music, to the mobile phone vibrating during a funeral, to the complete lack of audible dialogue during the funeral scene itself, leaving the audience to imagine what might have been said during these critical interchanges.

It is also a very visceral film, both emotionally and physically. A lot of the characters are in pain — there's a particularly nasty moment where Patrick bashes his head on the freezer door; we see it coming but are powerless to stop it, just like the emotional deluge that is about to break free. But despite the dark themes, Manchester by the Sea has some great comic moments. There are some funny lines — Hedges, in particular, has great comic timing — that help to lighten the tension.

But it's Affleck who holds all of this together. His Lee is broken-hearted and just plain broken: he wants to do the right thing but isn't sure that he can anymore. Afleck flips with ease from the lighter quips ("those are the Misery Islands — where your aunt Randi and I got married") to frustrated bouts of hot-headedness (he has a nasty habit of punching people in bars). This is a very on-the-nose portrayal of a man who has lost (almost) all that is dear to him and for whom life holds little attraction. His chemistry with both Williams, who is terrific in her very limited screen time, and Hedges what could otherwise be a brutal and devastating film a strong emotional core.

My 2016 BFI London Film Festival experience started last night with a double-bill of Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea (review to follow) and the surprise film. Although the surprise film has disappointed me more often than it delighted me in the five times I attended between 2009 and 2014, it's still usually my favourite event of the festival. There's just something very exciting about going to the cinema when you don't know what you're going to see. Last year, I was in Lisbon during the surprise film screening, so I was glad to get a ticket for this year's event.


I didn't have time to do any more online research as to the likely candidates for the surprise film than a quick scroll through the #surprisefilm hashtag on Twitter. Looking through people's guesses online often creates overly high expectations, I have found, but on the plus side, at least if one of the suggested films gets picked, you might know a little about it — and the running time, which is quite crucial when you've just got out of another 2h15 film and there are no working female loos in the Odeon Leicester Square!

London Film Festival Director Clare Stewart and her colleagues were having a little fun this year ahead of the reveal ("did you book a surprise film?" / "I thought you were going to do it") but they must have known they were onto a winner. What kind of audience would be disappointed with the selection of a Clint Eastwood film in which Tom Hanks plays the 'hero of the Hudson'? That's right: this year's surprise film was Sully. It was a safe choice, for sure, and as someone who has sat through epic Chinese-language martial arts films and Michael Moore invectives in past surprise films, I was very happy to get a preview of an upcoming blockbuster, even if it is one that is already on general release overseas.


As for the film, it was an exhilarating ride and I enjoyed it a lot. It tells the story of Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger (Hanks), the US Airways pilot who famously landed a plane in the Hudson River after bird strikes took out both engines; notably, all 155 people on board survived. The story reached the UK, of course, and indeed, I flew into New York just two weeks after the 'water landing' ("it wasn't a crash," Sully insists), apparently without concern, but I don't think I ever heard much of the follow-up story.

Eastwood's film opens as Sully has already made the landing but is having nightmares in which he is flying a plane right through the middle of New York's Midtown, crashing into the skyscrapers in horrific fashion. Meanwhile, as the whole nation hails him as a hero, he and his co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) are called into meetings with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), who say that the evidence suggests that after the engines failed, Sully could indeed have landed the plane safely at La Guardia airport or another nearby New Jersey airport. Sully initially is confident that he did the right thing in the situation — his actions based on four decades of flight experience — but the doubts soon begin to creep in. Is he really a hero or is he a fraud?

In many ways, Sully has more in common with David Fincher's The Social Network than with, say, Robert Zemeckis's Flight, a hugely fictionalised version of the story, in which Denzel Washington's Whip Whitaker, manages to land a rapidly disintegrating plane (coincidentally, I also saw this film as a 'surprise film' of sorts at a press/bloggers film showcase). A lot of the film focuses on Sully's NTSB hearings, there are a lot of lawyers and there's a lot of flying/pilot jargon. Eastwood turns this into compelling cinema viewing partly thanks to the quietly convincing performance of Hanks and partly thanks to the various flashbacks we get of the ill-fated flight. Even when you know the outcome, those scenes are still nail-bitingly tense, as is the final run-in with the NTSB where Sully finds out whether or not the human simulations will back up his actions as the right call.

The film is also surprisingly concise for a Clint Eastwood film, running at just 1h36. At times, it veers into melodrama: the scenes with some of the passengers on the flight (the inevitable family who very nearly missed the flight, for example) were a little weak, although I see that there had to be some way of showing the impacts of Sully's actions on the people he saved. I preferred the shots of the real Sully and the real passengers in the end credits — this was a nice touch.

In real-life, the interactions with the NSTB took place over almost 18 months, Aaron Eckhart told us in a Q&A after the film, but were necessarily condensed for the film. Everyone knows the story of Sully, but not what happened with a safety board. Eckhart himself didn't get the chance to meet the real Jeff ("he's an active pilot so he has a busy schedule"). "Sorry for not being Clint Eastwood or Tom Hanks," he quipped  when he came on stage (we'd been told to stay in our seats at the end of the film). I don't think anyone was disappointed! He also confirmed that Tom Hanks was indeed the nicest man in Hollywood.


Overall, Sully is a compelling portrayal of a hero — a remarkable man who was exceptionally good at his job. Eastwood's storytelling is often understated — apart from during the fight scenes — but engaging and Hanks's performance, while subtle, perfectly conveys what the real Sully must have gone through as his reputation, his career and even his conscience are put at stake. Thanks, BFI: I approve of this surprise film choice!

"Does he know how old I am?" This is how Michael Caine responded when he heard that Paolo Sorrentino wanted to cast him as the lead in his new film Youth. Actually, his first response was, "You mean he's heard of me?" I saw the film tonight at a London Film Festival screening, which was attended by Sir Michael, Sorrentino, and various co-stars, including Harvey Keitel, Paul Dano and Paloma Faith. Suffice to say that it was a fun night — and the film itself is a compelling story of friendship, success, regret and hope.


Almost all of Youth takes place at a luxurious spa retreat deep in the Swiss Alps. Fred Ballinger (Caine), a renowned composer and conductor, likes to get away from it all for a few weeks every summer at the same hotel. His close friend Mick (Keitel), a film director, is also there, along with a gaggle of young, self-deprecating writers who are trying to help him decide how to end his next film, Life's Last Day. The two chat about their children — Fred's daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz), who is also his assistant, is staying at the hotel too — their work, life itself and their inability to pee.



Events happen around them — Mick struggles with the casting on his film, while Fred must deal with his heart-broken daughter and fend off the advances of an emissary to the Queen of England, who is desperate for him to conduct one of his most special works — yet very little really happens. The hotel is packed with activities as diverse as rock climbing, spa treatments and live music, but everyone seems bored. Ennui is the dominant emotion.

Despite this absence of activity, the film is beautifully made and extremely enjoyable. The chemistry between Caine and Keitel, who met for the first time on the set of Youth, is wonderful and you feel that you could watch the two of them pootling around the Alps, making small-talk, for hours. But although the gorgeous scenery predominates, there are some particularly cinematic moments: Fred — ever the conductor — sits in a quiet field listening to the sound of the cows' bells tinkling, but in his head, it sounds like a symphony. Then there is the morning rush to the pools and treatment rooms: guests and staff, clad in white robes and uniforms, flit through the halls of the hotel in perfect synchrony as though they are part of a corps de ballet.

The other hotel guests provide some light relief for Fred and Mick: Paul Dano plays an actor who hates that everyone knows him only from a role in a robot movie, for example. Mick fails to recognise both Miss Universe and Paloma Faith, who has a small role as herself. There are some very funny lines, but there are sadder moments too. Fred and Lena talk wistfully of Fred's wife, Melanie, and Weisz has a particularly powerful and angry monologue that takes place while the two characters are having some kind of chocolate facial. Amid all the small talk there is a lot of emotion, and Sorrentino does a beautiful way of communicating this through sound and touch as well as vision.


During the Q&A, an audience member asked Sorrentino if Youth was a sort of sequel to La Grande Bellezza (which I still haven't seen), but Sorrentino explained that it was more the opposite. He said that Youth is as simple as La Grande Bellezza is complex, and that in many ways this was his effort to distance himself from the latter, in the same way Paul Dano's character in the film goes to dramatic lengths to distance himself from the robot movie. Meanwhile Caine said that what he loved most about the film was that every scene involved something he had never done before, to the extent that it felt like being a youth again.



Sadly, this is my last film in this year's London Film Festival. Next year I really must try not to book any holidays during the festival so that I can go to a few more screenings.