London Film Festival 2019

JOJO RABBIT was our first film.   Set in the dying days of World War II, Jojo is an inept member of the Hitler Youth whose best friend is an imaginary Adolf Hitler, an hilarious performance by the director,Taika Waititi.   He discovers that his mother, played by the ever-delectable Scarlett Johansson, is hiding a young Jewish girl.   While part of him feels he should expose her, he realises what this would do to his mother and gradually becomes a friend of the girl.   Their time together contrasts with the time in the outside world though this is farcically portrayed until almost the end when the fighting arrives; Johansson is hanged for distributing pacific leaflets and the town all but destroyed with Jojo captured but set free.   The closing scene with the Jewish girl is touching and true.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY is set at a celebration of Catherine Deneuve's birthday en famille.   The discordant family has a wayward son trying to make a film of the event with a new girl friend in tow, a prodigal daughter who turns up with a lot of problems which she unloads during the film and a long-suffering older son who tries to keep things even - played by the director, Cedric Kahn who keeps out of the spotlight.   Over the top at times and reminiscent of some other French family dramas, well played by all.
ONLY THE ANIMALS is another French thriller about a missing woman whose car is found abandoned in a snowdrift, two warrring farmers one of whom finds her and keeps her hidden even though she dies while the other is duped by an African conman who convinces him online that he is sending funds to a beautiful young girl so that she can return to France.   The timeline of the film is anything but straightforward which is probably why I am having trouble now, a month later, remembering just who did what to whom.   Set, apart from the African interlude, in a bleak wintry countryside, it is beautifully photographed and satifactorily acted.
THE DUDE IN ME is a Korean comedy with a CEO gangster finds he has changed bodies with a nerdy student following an accident.   The student becomes super confident but his life is complicated by the fact that his mother and the gangster were once in love. Following several slapstick moments, a further accident reverses the body change with a happy ever after ending.
Takashi Miike's FIRST LOVE was the last film we saw.   A love story of sorts between a boxer dying from a brain tumour and a girl sold into prostitution to pay off her father's debts.   More subdued for
much of the time than many of Miike's films, it allows for the development of the two lovers before
the inevitable explosion of violence.
For once we seem to have made good choices even though the films differ a lot from each other
with the first two benefitting from star casts.   On balance, I think Jojo Rabbit takes first prize.