Father of my Children: This stunning contemporary film from director Mia Hansen-Love is both realistic and seductive; based on the life of independent film producer Humbert Balsan, it is a warm, indulgent look at work and family life (with impeccable acting from children and adults alike) which changes tempo in a shocking way mid-stream. Almost two films in one - both astonishing.
Wild Grass: Delightful, unusual, and unclassifiably odd, this wonderful film by Alain Resnais about mid-life crisis, romance, obssession, and chance confounds expectations at every turn. It is light-hearted and flirtatious, with sinister edges, and flourishes of the absurd. Easily the funniest and most unconventional film I've seen in the festival so far.
White Material: From its opening shot of jackals in the beam of a flashlight to its shocking conclusion, this lean, intense, thrilling, beautifully shot and flawlessly acted film is another Claire Denis masterpiece. Set in her native Africa and starring Isabelle Huppert as a plantation owner who refuses to leave despite encroaching chaos, it is a tense, fraught, disturbing film - and still characteristically complex in its treatment of the individual, family, and society.
I Am Love: I can't believe that director Luca Guadagnino didn't know what he was doing when he set this weird, vague, lackluster story with its boring underdeveloped characters to a selection of modern composer John Adams' vital, complex, and challenging symphonic pieces. Starring Tilda Swinton as the standard repressed nouveau-riche wife and mother who is liberated by the chef, the film is internally discordant, alienated, inflated, and absurd. As an ironic recycling of Italian film cliches it's quite interesting. If that is indeed what it is.
Winter's Bone: The best thing about this film is its incredibly authentic-looking cast of sinister, redneck, crank-cooking outlaw characters. Their blasted, wizened faces are a true reminder of what this country really looks like outside of the cities. Unfortunately the reality principle doesn't extend to the heroine, who is too beautiful by far for this dismal scene. She's idealized in every other way as well - it's as if the dysfunctional conditions which have disfigured everybody else have just bypassed her completely. Script and plot are fairly standard Hollywood too.
