BFI LFF Review: Enough Said

TV lost one of its all-time greats this year, but Screen Editor Rob Harris finds Enough Said a smart, witty tribute to James Gandolfini.

Billed as one as James Gandolfini’s last undertakings into film before his untimely death back in June, Nicole Holofcener’s latest endeavour immediately stands out as one of the best comedies of the year.

Image credit: BFI

By taking a refreshingly mature approach to the traditional rom-com formula, it stands as a prime example of how a film should handle the seriousness of a relationship without neglecting the all-important laughs. And boy, there are laughs.

After meeting at a ritzy middle-aged party, Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a divorced physical therapist, forms a relationship with Albert (Gandolfini), a slobbish but deeply kind and humorous giant of a man. As the two become closer, the relationship is gradually poisoned by Marianne (Catherine Keener), one of Eva’s clients and awkwardly for her, Albert’s ex-wife.

As the plot progresses and she is fed more and more stories about her boyfriend from the unknowing Marianne, Eva soon becomes locked in an internal struggle as she tries to balance Albert’s good and bad qualities without him or his former wife finding out about her connection between the old couple.

Usually, declaring the movie’s humour as ‘adult’ throws up connotations of nudity, swearing and cringe-inducing sex jokes, Enough Said brings it back to reality by tackling a multitude of very real issues.

From the stress of divorce to their kids leaving home and going to college, these genuine moments engage superbly with the sincerity displayed by the film’s two leads, generating witty but never tiresome dialogue as well as a relationship just as believable and warm as any you would find in the real world.

Whilst the usual rom-com tropes may prevent some from enjoying the flick as a full-fledged comedy, Enough Said does more than enough to keep you entertained from start to finish and definitely warrants more than just one viewing.

Rob Harris, Screen Editor

Are rom-coms smarter than ever? Tell us on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.

BFI LFF Review: 1

Rob Harris, Screen Editor looks back at one of the hidden gems of the LFF: a factual little brother to the blockbusting Rush.

Image credit: BFI

Rush may have been and gone, but this year’s BFI London Film Festival certainly had something to whet the appetites of Formula 1 fans and Chris Hemsworth aficionados alike.

Tucked away in a sparsely occupied cinema screen, Paul Crowder’s 1 has done more than enough to show that documentaries can be just as thrilling as their big-budget Hollywood counterparts.

Following the sport since tyres first touched-ground at Silverstone back in 1950, the film looks back on the evolution of F1 as the cars became faster, the drivers more eccentric, and the fans louder.

However, as the 60s and 70s hit, it soon turned out that despite its explosive popularity, it was a career choice defined by the archaic ways of a post-war world yet to fully comprehend the dangers of racing.

From Jochen Rindt to the Ayrton Senna, the electrifying personalities of the drivers who lit up the tracks and papers of the time are expressed in a captivatingly detailed manner, filling the viewer in on every detail of their lives on and off the circuit.

Image credit: BFI

Rare archival footage combined with interviews with an impressive range of legends and innovators centres the film well and truly on Formula 1 not only as entertainment, but as a thriving culture.

However, as every segment probes deeper into what makes these racers tick, it is nearly always derailed by the abrupt death of each man on screen. The immediacy of these instances, whilst done perhaps too regularly, succeed in juxtaposing the insane, adrenaline-fuelled highs ofdexterity and victory with story after story of these very public, yet crushingly personal tragedies.

Whilst it may alienate some as it gets more bogged down in the details of improving safety and infrastructure, for the most part, 1 is a fantastically realised documentary with an obvious passion for the sport.

It may not reach the lofty heights of Senna, but for anyone with at least a passing interest in Formula 1, this is definitely a film worth giving up two hours for.

Rob Harris, Screen Editor

Will you be seeing 1 on its general release? Tell us why on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.

Ten Things We've Learnt from LFF So Far

1. You can’t be a player without a mocha. You just can’t.
2. First one to tweet their thoughts is the winner. GO.

   

   The Odeon Leicester Square, site of many lessons.
   Image credit: Odeon

3. Watching film journalists trying to pick a cinema seat is like watching Maggie Smith play anything, i.e variations of disdain.
4. No one hates Tom Hanks. Grumpy cat smiles when Forrest Gump comes on TV.
5. “There are loads of people here with similar interests to me. I know, I’ll sit in the corner with my macbook and go on reddit!”
6. Wearing your press pass while striding about in public literally feels like you and the world just fist-pumped.
7. The phenomenon of seat smugness: Oh, you’re late to the screening? That’s a shame. Cause I got here an hour ago and I’m sitting BACK CENTRE bitch.
8. People with curly or obtrusive hair are to be avoided at all costs. They are not your friends.
9. Ew. Who would want a polystyrene cup full of watery tea? Oh it’s free?! COME HITHER, SWEET NECTAR.
10. Only badasses wear scarves. Chunky knit = big in the game.

BFI LFF Review: Inside Llewyn Davis

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At a smoky Greenwich Village joint called the Gaslight Cafe in 1961, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) croons a soulful ballad. “Hang me, oh hang me,” he pleads, “I’ll be dead and gone.” Such is the rhetoric of Inside Llewyn Davis, a film more sweetly tragic than perhaps any yet in the Coen Brothers canon.

Image credit: BFI

Described by Ethan Coen as an “odyssey”, Inside Llewyn Davis follows the winding path of the titular folk singer Llewyn Davis, a man for whom impeccable facial hair is the only apparent comfort.

Loathed by his ex-lover Jean (Carey Mulligan), who calls him the “idiot brother of King Midas”, and rejected by manipulative agents and record execs alike, Llewyn finds himself skipping from couch to couch, barely able to survive in the bitter New York winter.

In a trajectory reminiscent of Barton Fink, things escalate when Davis loses the marmalade cat of a bourgeois couple who lend him their couch and a plate of moussaka for the night. A few hours later, he learns that Jean is pregnant, and that he’ll be paying for the abortion.

Paralysed by indecision, Llewyn turns to what he knows – the military, his ex-marine father, his sister – and finds them staring blankly back.

Carey Mulligan as Jean.
Image credit: BFI

Impossible though his situation may be, Inside Llewyn Davis is not a defeatist film. It’s peppered with blackly comic performances, from Carey Mulligan’s irate Jean, to John Goodman as a hulking, thoroughly unpleasant jazz musician. Its tragedy comes in the form of powerlessness, firstly against the music industry, and therefore with that most folk of enemies – society in general.

Giving rhyme to the protest is, of course, the music. T Bone Burnett’s arrangements are given unprecedented screen time – so much so it makes O Brother Where Art Thou?  seem vaguely quiet. The songs are beautiful, but as the film progresses they begin to sound increasingly futile, like cries in the dark. In one scene, Llewyn goes to visit his senile father in a nursing home, and sings him an emotive ballad. He simply turns away.

Just as the music turns back in on itself, Llewyn’s narrative begins to circle around the plug hole, winding back via trauma and Greyhound buses. If Inside Llewyn Davis is an odyssey, it represents a failed one. Bittersweet, intelligent and witty, its absolute achievement is to spare the melodrama, and to instead allow for that raw impulse to take over – hot, unfathomable injustice.

5/5

Jess O’Kane, Online Editor