London Film Festival 2024 - Daniel Craig, Amy Adams, Twiggy, Christopher Reeve and some snails

Queer

William Burroughs’ eponymous novel was nearly filmed by Steve Buscemi in 2011, but it has finally reached the screen under the helmsmanship of Luca Guadagnino. It bombards the viewer from a variety of angles and leaves plenty of treacherous crevasses to fall into, but is bound to be remembered mostly for Daniel Craig’s central performance as William Lee, an expatriate American of invisible means living a life of self-exile in Mexico in the early 1950s.

If Craig was hell-bent on burying James Bond for good, he could hardly have chosen better (007 tends to blot out the impressive variety of his career, from Our Friends in the North to Layer Cake, Munich, Knives Out etc). Lee, who’s possibly trying to be a writer judging by the typewriter on his desk amid a scatter of typed pages, is living a life of nihilistic self-indulgence. He spends his days shuttling between bars, gossiping with the local American gay diaspora (including Joe, a barely recognisable Jason Schwartzmann), cranking himself up on tequila and morphine. He eyes up almost any passing male with the sort of predatory lasciviousness that would get him arrested north of the border.

His eye is caught by a tall, lean newcomer, who turns out to be Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). There are hints that Allerton is involved in clandestine intelligence work, and he has regular meetings with an enigmatic red-headed woman, but he regards Lee with a sort of quizzical impassiveness. They end up exchanging fluids in a squalid hotel room, but Allerton is emotionless. When Lee invites him to tour South America, all expenses paid, he kind of shrugs and says OK.

It turns into a mind-bending trip, as Lee tries to track down a mysterious drug called Yage, which someone has told him makes users telepathic. The bonus here is that we get a drastically transformed Lesley Manville as wacky scientist Dr Cotter, who’s gone native in the jungle and keeps a huge yellow viper where other people might have a Dobermann or a corgi.

Set to a great soundtrack featuring Nirvana, Prince, New Order and more, Queer is what you make it – a quest for identity, a psychedelic nightmare, the kind of travel adventure you’d pay good money to avoid, Hunter Thompson’s “journey to the dark heart of the American dream”…

Nightbitch

Widely regarded as more grounded and relatable than the average Hollywood star, Amy Adams throws vanity to the winds in Marielle Heller’s screen realisation of Rachel Yoder’s novel about a woman who becomes convinced that she’s a dog. The film sometimes trips over itself as it tries to blend mythology, metaphor and live action, but Adams’s portrayal of Mother – the key characters are called by their roles rather than their names – is a riot of conflicting emotions and rebellious hormones.

She’s expanded to about double the volume we’re used to seeing in Ms Adams, and enacts the battle-scarred exhaustion of new motherhood – we’ll call her son Son – with disturbing intensity. An academy graduate who was previously pursuing a promising career as an artist, she’s struggling to be home-maker and diligent parent while Husband (Scoot McNairy) pursues his career in the city (pictured above, Husband, Mother and Son). There’s a superb encounter with a female friend, who tells Mother she must be loving being able to spend all her time with her child. Mother gives two different answers, firstly a ferocious rant about how she’s trapped at home and is losing her mind and her identity, and the “official” answer which is “yes, it’s wonderful”. Her torment as she joins the other mothers at Book Babies gatherings, Baby Yoga and Tyke Hike is painfully comical.

The depiction of her husband’s crass obliviousness to the unequal division of labour is both hilarious and infuriating. He can’t even give the kid a bath – or for that matter make a pot of coffee – without summoning Mother for assistance. But there’s a kind of rebirth in the offing, as Mother taps into the ancestral and primal spirit of womanhood, helped by memories of her own mother and the mysteriously wise local librarian Norma (Jessica Harper). It’s a little bit crazy, but it works.

Twiggy

She was born Lesley Hornby in Neasden in 1949, and as Twiggy she became a pop culture icon in Sixties London (the Daily Express called her “The Face of 1966”). But, as director Sadie Frost’s film illustrates, the gamine teen who changed the face of fashion proved to be a multi-talented phenomenon who moved smoothly between stage musicals, the recording studio and film and TV work. She won two Golden Globes for starring in Ken Russell’s The Boyfriend, duetted with Bing Crosby, and got name-checked by David Bowie in “Drive-In Saturday” (“and she’d sigh like Twig the Wonder Kid”).

The classic photographs and film clips of Twiggy are instant reminders of her unique magnetism – the spindly foal-like figure and the megawatt smile – and spooling through the vintage footage brings it all back, from Biba to Broadway and Beatlemania. Frost has assembled a splendid gallery of talking heads who all contribute to the party, from Joanna Lumley and Dustin Hoffman to Sienna Miller, Brooke Shields, Robert Powell and Twiggy’s husband Leigh Lawson. Twiggy did it all, it seems, without ever losing touch with her inner self. As Lumley says, “she doesn’t have artifice, she doesn’t play games.”

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

Christopher Reeve’s horse riding accident in 1995 which left him paralysed from the neck down was a horrific tragedy, and hideously ironic for a man who loved skiing, sailing and flying and shot to stardom as Superman. But with unswerving support from his wife Dana and his children, Reeve somehow found the strength to salvage something positive from it. His remorseless campaigning for research into spinal cord injuries has benefited many sufferers who came after him. Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui have assembled a film which is inspiring and tear-jerking, drawing on interviews with friends like Jeff Daniels, Susan Sarandon and Glenn Close and members of Reeve’s family to create a portrait of a genuine Man of Steel. It’s poignant to watch footage of Reeve’s close friend Robin Williams, who lifted his spirits by bursting into his hospital room masquerading as a Russian proctologist about to give him an examination. Glenn Close offers the poignant thought that Williams himself might have lived longer if his great buddy hadn’t died.

Memoir of a Snail

Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail is a stop-motion triumph, telling the story of twins Grace and Gilbert. Their mother died very early, followed by their father (a French street entertainer and juggler). The children are split up and sent to separate foster homes, unaware of their respective divergent paths. Gilbert finds himself effectively imprisoned by a family of fascistic religious zealots, while Grace (pictured right) is housed with a couple of swingers who go to key parties. She finds solace in nurturing snails and collecting snail artefacts. It sounds ridiculous, but Elliott has obviously poured heart and soul into what develops into a powerfully emotional fable. Check it out and surprise yourself.

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