BFI London Film Fest 2015 – Day One

It never fails to amuse me, arriving bleary eyed at the Odeon Leicester Square when it is spookily devoid of tourists or late night revellers, a bucket of coffee in tow in order to hot-wire a start to the day with our first press screening of the season. Suffragette seems to hit all the buttons for the initial film of this years festival, indigenously funded and crewed with predominately UK thespians and technicians, and a strong message of female empowerment which is a theme that is being championed throughout the entire festival. I also managed to scuttle over to the press conference at the Lanesborough Hotel on Hyde Park Corner, mostly to grasp the opportunity of seeing Meryl Streep in the flesh. Now I don’t wish to derail this with my general antipathy to Streep’s pantomime performances over the past decade or so, other than to say that just like Daniel Day-Lewis she is one of those performers that always seems to scream ‘I AM ACTING’ in whatever she or he are appearing in, even as they can turn in an outstanding performance maybe one time out of three which reminds us why they have secured the iconic levels of respect which they richly deserves – see also Robert De Niro. Still, we need to remember she was in The Deer Hunter, Silkwood  and Sophie’s Choice which are immortal and important films, and she must be a hugely inspirational role model for upcoming film interested  ingénues. Here’s the press conference;

I think Streep makes a very good point about the balance of gender in film criticism and those Rotten Tomato and New York Times circle statistics are shocking.  This is an anecdotal point I know, but as far as I can see the split is 60 / 40 in the female favour when it comes to the press activity I’ve conducted in London, but riddle me this – how many female film critics can you name? Yeah, thought so. I’m also not the only person to read about the protests here and think to myself that the paragraph opening sentence ‘New mother Cary Mulligan…’ and think to myself – what the fuck has that got to do with anything? That this human being is being a good little child-rearer? And that is in the fucking Guardian? Jesus Christ. Anyway, here’s some more nonsense from the opening gala;

Hopefully my first tranche of reviews should be going up soon. Now, the burning question is when exactly am I supposed to find the time to craft my review of Sicario which I’ve just seen, and which I’m still reeling from…. ;