LONDON CALLING

Some exciting picks from the vast riches of the 67th BFI London Film Festival…

SALTBURN

The festival promises to get off to an absolute flyer with the new film by Oscar winner Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman). Starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Archie Madekwe and Carey Mulligan, it’s a wickedly sharp tale of privilege and desire.

ONE LIFE

This year’s American Express Gala is James Hawes’ One Life, starring Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Flynn and Helena Bonham Carter. It tells the true-life story of Sir Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton, a London broker who rescued 669 children from the Nazis in the lead up to World War Two.

THE KILLER

Every new David Fincher movie is an event, but that especially holds true when he’s obsessing over his favourite topic – killers. Michael Fassbender plays an ace assassin who has a crisis of conscience and takes on his employers in Fincher’s adap of Alexis Nolent’s graphic novel.

THE KITCHEN

British filmmakers Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya will close the 67th BFI London Film Festival with a social thriller set in a dystopian London. The Kitchen explores themes of community, inequality, family, resilience, defiance and care. The filmmakers call it ‘a love letter to our city’.

THE 67TH BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 4-15 OCTOBER. TICKETS CAN BE PURCHASED AT WHATSON.BFI.ORG.UK

DOUBLE TROUBLE

DANCE FIRST James Marsh brings us two Samuel Becketts for the price of one…

When British director James Marsh received Neil Forsyth’s Dance First screenplay, he was taken aback. ‘[It] was a biography of Samuel Beckett but a very selective one, constructed around the idea that Beckett meets a version of himself and talks to that person.’ The Oscar-winning filmmaker behind The Theory of Everything and Man on Wire allows himself a wry smile. ‘It’s a bit weird when I put it that way!’

Dance First begins (fictitiously) at the Nobel Prize for Literature ceremony in 1969, when the author of such spare, modernist dramas as Waiting for Godot is confronted by another Beckett – both played by Gabriel Byrne. ‘They’re not the same character,’ Marsh clarifies. ‘One is the conscience of Beckett, and one is the flawed, complicated Beckett.’ Sounds heavyweight? Not at all. ‘The whole thing is a playful construct.’

The film skips between pre-war Paris, with Beckett (played here by Normal People’s Fionn O’Shea) working as a researcher for fellow Irish writer James Joyce (Aidan Gillen), and his later years, caught between his wife Suzanne (Sandrine Bonnaire) and mistress Barbara Bray (Maxine Peake). Marsh filmed primarily in black-and-white, largely because it recalled the ‘received imagery’ we have of Beckett – pictures of his ‘nicotine-stained face’ shown in monochrome. As for the technical challenges of shooting the scenes with two Becketts, Marsh filmed in-camera. ‘It was a very demanding role for Gabriel. Long hours. Low budget. There wasn’t much comfort to be had.’

Maybe not, but Dance First was worth the grind, smartly honouring Beckett’s place in modern literature, as he plops his protagonists into existential crisis. ‘Waiting for Godot is a classic example. But Happy Days is another one, where you’re dealing with the inertia of characters. In Happy Days, she’s stuck up to her waist in sand, and in Waiting for Godot, they don’t really go anywhere.’ Marsh smiles. ‘Theatre is a different thing after Beckett arrived on the scene.’

DANCE FIRST IS IN CINEMAS FROM 3 NOVEMBER.