On the eve of its 20th anniversary, the Festival du Film Britannique continued its exclusive celebration of UK movies by showering awards on a film that British audiences could only see on the small screen – John Crowley’s Boy A, which screened on Channel 4 in November 2007. Paradoxically, some of the other films on display here would have worked far better with a remote control and 42-inch plasma screen...

In truth, your correspondent approached this year’s Dinard Film Festival with some trepidation. Having watched in excess of 500 British films between 2004-07, I have spent most of 2008 in a foreign country with little access to UK movies (although, ironically, Boy A was one of the few Brit films to screen at the local multiplex). Having been immersed in Brit pics for many years, the concern was that my absence would now lead me to see them in a new light – a bit like loving someone, warts’n’all, for four years, going on an expedition for six months and then only noticing the warts upon your return.

As well as being a delightful resort, Dinard is a great way of catching up with current British cinema (and a few treasures from the archive – notables this year included Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and Robert Hamer’s The Scapegoat). There were several films on offer which had already been released in the UK: Chris Waitt’s A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures; Noel Clarke’s Adulthood; Saul Dibb’s The Duchess; James Watkins’ Eden Lake; John Maybury’s The Edge Of Love; Rupert Wyatt’s The Escapist; Baillie Walsh’s Flashbacks Of A Fool; and James Marsh’s Man On Wire. The latter lived up to my expectations; several others didn’t. My stand-out film was Eden Lake, a repellently watchable cross between Deliverance and a Mail On Sunday editorial.

Two films screening which are unlikely to do much for the UK tourism industry were Neil Thompson’s Clubbed and Adrian Vitoria’s The Crew. Shot in glorious Testosterone, sorry, Technicolor, both were slick-looking dramas depicting Alpha Males in their natural habitats. Clubbed was the more convincing, telling the story of a seven-stone weakling who becomes a nightclub bouncer in the West Midlands at the tail-end of the 70s. The narration occasionally grates but the soundtrack scores, and - for better or worse - the voices all sounded authentic.

Authenticity isn’t something you’d accuse The Crew of. While Clubbed was based on Geoff Thompson’s autobiography Watch My Back, The Crew is inspired by Kevin Sampson’s 2002 novel Outlaws and features more lap dancers than even Paul Verhoeven would deem necessary. The action is well choreographed though, and the film is blessed with a great performance by Scot Williams as a Merseyside Mafiosi whose gang/life is coming apart at the seams. Williams also shines in Clubbed, although the Scouse accent is the only thing that’s recognisable between his two characters.

Although Lesley Manning’s The Agent and Marek Losey’s The Hide betrayed their stage roots, both were quietly compelling two-handers set in confined spaces. The Agent – with a budget of £23,000 - is a blackly comic drama about a desperate writer (Stephen Kennedy) taking events into his own hands when he tires of his agent’s procrastination and evasiveness. William Beck plays the oily agent who’s trying to slip out of an awkward predicament with a plausibility that suggests one too many lunches at The Ivy. The Hide, meanwhile, is a comic thriller about two men thrown together in a bird-watching space. The twist may be slightly telegraphed but that doesn’t diminish the film’s appeal; the same can’t be said for chicken spread, which plays a pivotal role.

From chicken spread to Hunger: Steve McQueen’s debut feature turns 80s Republican hunger striker Bobby Sands into an art installation – and that’s a compliment, by the way. As visually assured as you’d expect from a winner of the Turner Prize, McQueen also delivers a film with immense power and passion. Michael Fassbender (who also stars in Eden Lake) is a commanding presence as the Maze prisoner driven to extreme measures, and the static, single-camera set-up between Sands and a priest (Liam Cunningham) could be the most hypnotic scene of the year.

The winner of the Hitchcock d’Or in 1996 for Jude, Michael Winterbottom has been a regular at Dinard ever since. This year he called the festival organisers and asked if they’d like to take his latest film, Genova, as a late edition. They happily agreed, and Genova was a welcome addition to proceedings. Its advance billing labelled it a ghost story, but that doesn’t really do justice to the Italian-set family drama, which sees a father (Colin Firth) and his two daughters come to terms with the loss of their mother (Hope Davis). The Italians call the city of Genova ‘La Superba’, and that’s an apt tag for this haunting – in every sense – tale.

The name of Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy’s company, Desperate Optimists, got a big response as the credits unspooled for their debut feature Helen, but that’s where the laughs ended. Helen debuted at Edinburgh earlier in 2008 and it’s an ambitious movie strong on nuance and atmosphere, but less strong on narrative and story arc. Newcomer Annie Townsend is mesmeric as the eponymous Helen, a teenager slowly finding herself after agreeing to appear in a police reconstruction for a missing girl. Lawlor and Molloy previously made the stunning short Who Killed Brown Owl?, and if Helen lacks the choreographed brilliance of that, it’s still a promising start to features – and one hell of a community project.

With so many films focusing on UK social meltdown - the chavs and have-nots - it was also heartening to see two films dealing with matters of the heart. David Rocksavage’s Shadows In The Sun was a touching family drama, heightened by the magnetic presence of Jean Simmons as an elderly woman in the twilight of her life. Set in Norfolk at the end of the 60s, Shadows looked pretty as a postcard and told its rural tale with style and efficiency.

The most unashamedly enjoyable film of the festival was Jackie Oudney’s French Film. A romantic comedy that managed to be both romantic and comic (no mean feat, as anyone who has ever seen a film starring Kate Hudson will confirm), Oudney’s debut was sincere, warm, believable, and laugh-out-loud funny. Hugh Bonneville and Anne-Marie Duff star, although Eric Cantona steals the show as a French film director offering his own distinctly French take on love – let’s call it Gallic symbolism. Despite watching a film which offered gentle mockery of their nation throughout, the positive audience reaction recalled a quote by Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna Everage): “Never be afraid to laugh at yourself. After all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century”.

Hunger is released in UK cinemas on Friday 31st October 2008. Clubbed and The Crew will both be released in January 2009. Asif Kapadia’s 2007 Dinard competition entry, Far North, will finally be released in the UK on Friday 26th December 2008. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is on general UK release.

Adrian Hennigan | Published 10 October 08

send to a friend 

start a new discussion