Young @ Heart (2007)

Very few and far between are those movies that genuinely affect on an emotional level. Film's ability to merge both sound and vision and to tune those specific, sentimental neurons is one championing factor not available to many other mediums. The Wachowski's have made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and Kubrick has scared the living daylights out of me. Haneke has made me wince and Vinterberg has made me cringe. Moore has made me want to kill someone and Buñuel has made me want to kill everyone.

Until now though, the only film to make me weep like a baby was Winterbottom's truly powerful and vastly underrated A Mighty Heart (2007). British film-maker Stephen Walker has added another to this list. With Young @ Heart he gives us a very potent and heartrending documentary following a chorus band with an average age of 81. It's the final 7-week rehearsal period before their next live annual performance and songs by Sonic Youth, Talking Heads, The Troggs and James Brown still require a lot of work.

Founded in 1982 by manager Bob Cilman (52), his meticulous ability to apply pressure on his divos and divas is equal only to the selection of songs that are both amusing and poignant. As the gig approaches general health concerns arise and there are even deaths to contend with. So much so that the films crescendo to the final concert brings different meanings to songs heard throughout the film, most significantly Coldplay’s Fix You.

It is perhaps further amazing that all this is accomplished despite the look and feel of a BBC2 documentary on par with Louis Theroux. Walker is just as annoying yet thankfully has fewer on-screen moments as the film progresses. What a shame then that more of that off-screen time wasn’t spent keeping Cilman in check. His tendency to break the fourth wall seems out of place, almost like a video diary more akin to Big Brother rather than a documentary.

As opposed to crowning concert-movies like Stop Making Sense (1984), Heart of Gold (2006) or Gimme Shelter (1970), Young @ Heart offers an opportunity to enter a world of unknown stars. An exhausting, emotional, roller-coaster of a film, complete with 25 retirees at the helm, truly amazing.

Unrelated (2007)

Danny Boyle's reminder earlier this month at the LFF’s Closing Gala on the importance of film festivals has never been so appropriate. His basic gist was that festivals allow the films to speak for themselves. After screenings the distributors can successfully gauge the buzz surrounding a particular film. Boyle speaks from not so distant experience. His latest film Slumdog Millionaire wasn't picked up for distribution until its premiere and subsequent screening at both the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals. It seems absurd that a film-maker of this caliber with such a faultless commercial and critical back-catalogue should struggle to find distribution deals.

Robert Beeson and Pam Engel (founders of UK/USA DVD distributor Artificial Eye) have recently set-up new UK film distribution company New Wave Film. Their first release is Unrelated, a new wave film indeed, especially for British cinema. Our very own, Joanna Hogg, making her feature length directorial debut, and what a start it is. A delicious slice of dysfunctional family life bursting with qualities normally attributed to that foreign film genre. This is indeed, something very extraordinary.

Comparisons can be drawn with my favourite Dogme film Festen (1998). Less cringing perhaps (what isn't?), but the realism is wholeheartedly intact.

Anna (Kathryn Worth) ventures to Italy to meet up with Verena (Mary Roscoe), a friend from her early school days. Upon arriving alone she is questioned by Verena, her clique of upper/middle class friends and their families about the whereabouts of her husband Alex. Conversations proceed to flow as liberally as the wine yet Anna, in a plot driven desire to re-connect with her youth finds more solace hanging-out with the "youngs" rather than as socially accepted or expected, with the "olds".

Her strongest bond is with twenty-something leader-of-the-pack Oakley (wonderfully embodied by already established on-stage and rising on-screen talent Tom Hiddleston). Whilst the theft of his father's prized bottle of wine is willfully accepted, the writing-off of the neighbour's car is the final straw. Unfortunately for Ann, as the insider of both groups with all the knowledge, her values and principles are torn between newfound friends and old lost friend.

All this narrative ruckus is leisurely overshadowed by the emergence of truth surrounding Anna's relationship troubles with husband Alex, a character that is quite often at the film's focus but whom never actually makes an on-screen appearance.

A film of the year.