Nothing quite clicked into gear today, I’m afraid – the one screening I really wanted to make, Xavier Dolan’s warmly received sophomore feature “Heartbeats,” filled up before I could get in the door, while the films I did see made for a pretty uninspiring day’s viewing.
I’m usually quite a stickler for taking notes during festival screenings – overlapping and psychotically askew, given my minimal mastery of night-writing, but notes nonetheless – but today the notepad stayed largely unblemished. That usually means one of two things: I’m too lost in the film to keep jotting, or it simply provokes no thoughts from me whatsoever. Guess which one applies today.
I’m afraid it was with a mostly clear conscience that I sacrificed an early evening screening of Jia Zhang Ke’s “I Wish I Knew” in order to attend the swish London Film Festival shindig at the Palais Stephanie Hotel. (Yes, any big festival teems with parties for other festivals – just drink your champagne and go with it.) I confess I didn’t get on that well with Jia’s previous feature “24 City,” and guessed the new film would be in a similar vein – friends’ reports suggest that was a good guess.