From biopics to family dramas to intelligent lobsters

New British Films is a series of premiers and press conferences dedicated to the best new films from the UK, held by the British Council in Ukraine jointly with the Ukrainian company Arthouse Traffic. Over the 15 years of the festival’s history, Ukraine has seen the premiers of more than 50 films.

This year’s festival opened with Sarah Gavron’s historical period drama Suffragette. The term “suffragette” was used in the early 20th century to denote feminine activists who advocated voting rights for women. The story is laid in London of 1912. Despite its documentary air and a load of melodramatic twists and turns, the film – based on real events – wins thanks to a brilliant cast: Carey Mulligan as Maud Watts (the protagonist, a working girl secretly recruited by suffragettes), Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst, and Helena Bonham Carter as Edith Ellyn. Secondly, certain directness is quite appropriate: at any rate, this is a mainstream, audience-oriented film, and straightforwardness comes handy when it is necessary to bring across the message about the price of gender equality, which is now taken for granted.

Andy Goddard’s black-and-white tragicomedy Set Fire to the Stars includes biographical elements: in the 1950s an ambitious author John Brinnin (Elijah Wood) invites a famous poet Dylan Thomas (Celyn Jones) to appear in a series of literary soirees in New York and thus turns his life into a real nightmare: the genius turns out to have an extraordinary, unpredictable temper. The film has its ups and downs, but it is brilliant in its own way.

A biographic accent is laid in Nicholas Hytner’s The Lady in the Van. One day a shabby yellow van is parked in the driveway of screenwriter Alan Bennett’s home in London Borough of Camden. The driver, an eccentric homeless old lady called Miss Shepherd (Maggie Smith) promised she would not stay longer than 3 months, but eventually spent 15 years there, turning into the star of the neighborhood, a local attraction and, finally, a protagonist of Bennett’s play, on which the film was based.

Andrew Haigh’s psychological drama 45 Years is a complete opposite of this light-hearted and humorous story. 45 Years is as regular as sorting out old family linen. Kate and Geoff Mercer get ready to celebrate a big anniversary, 45 years of their living together. Everything is shattered by fatal news: a letter for Geoff, informing that in Switzerland the body of his ex-girlfriend, German Katya was found, 50 years after she tragically died during their joint mountain hike. The story is built on close attention for gestures, words, and responses. Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay won Silver Bears at the recent Berlin Film Festival as the best actor and actress. Making a thrilling story of a couple who have lived half a century together is a tough task, but at least the director was able to find decent performers for the main parts.

Of course, the best known film of the festival was Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster, awarded the Grand Prix at the recent Cannes Festival.

As we all know, one of the episodes from the Odyssey takes place on the island ruled by goddess Circe, who could turn people into animals, and thus transformed a large part of Odysseus’ crew into pigs, lifting the curse only for the sake of love for the legendary sailor.

We do not know for sure if the young Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos was inspired by Ancient Greek epos, but in The Lobster a transformation of humans into animals is as inevitable as antique Fatum. The world order in the film rejects loneliness mercilessly. Lonely people are evicted from the city, imprisoned at a special hotel, and given 1.5 months to find a partner among other guests. If they fail, the exiles are transformed into animals (fortunately, they are allowed to choose the species) and sent to the woods. However, life in the woods is not so simple since a loner guerrilla movement entrenched there (the leader is played by Lea Seydoux, who starred in The Life of Adele and the most recent James Bond film, Spectre). However, The Lobster is a tragifarce rather than a tragedy. The protagonist (Colin Farrell) wants to reincarnate as a lobster. Farrell as David is exquisitely comical, absolutely up to the point. The other characters are also more or less humorous: the cast is next to impeccable, and Lanthimos keeps a perfect balance between absurdity, color minimalism, and sarcasm.

In a word, although British cinematography is in many aspects inferior to its European counterparts from France or Germany, it nevertheless regularly produces enough films to cater to virtually all tastes.

Maybe we live to see something of this kind in our country.