If it’s in back and white and a foreign language it’s usually my kind of film – pretentious dilettante that I am.
The winner of Il Leone d’Oro (said I’m pretentious) at the Venice Film Festival ticks the boxes: shot in black and white and in Tagalog; that’s more pretentiousness as it is usually called Filipino. Sorry, but I won’t be telling you anymore about Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Left is the title in English) as it is 228 minutes long – to save you the trouble, that’s almost four hours. If you do go to see it do tell me about it, not really.
Meanwhile there are two other winners from this year’s festival that I do want to see. Much to my surprise, Tom Ford not only turned his hand from designing sun specs to directing a film, but it was a good film. He adapted Christopher Isherwood’s short story A Single Man and by not mucking it around made a very watchable movie. Now he has had another go with Nocturnal Animals. It won the Silver Lion (Grand Jury Prize) this year and the critics say that it has more meat on the bone than A Single Man, made in 2009.
The Bad Batch bagged the Special Jury Prize this year. It may be more problematic than Tom Ford’s film as the plot summary hints: “a love-story among a community of cannibals based in a Texas wasteland”. It sounds irresistible.
Forty years after it was released, The Man Who Fell to Earth has been worked over with a digital duster and re-issued. You will recall that it is directed by Nicolas (Don’t Look Now) Roeg and stars David Bowie. I’m going to see it again. I seem to remember that it baffled me forty years ago.