Notes from Britain

Want to see a film and have a beer while at it in, in Britain? It will cost you. In Canterbury – a charming city just as you might expect, full of half-timbered Medieval buildings – I stumbled upon a little theater run by the British Curzon cinema chain. Curzon, as I've discovered, can play a lot of mainstream flicks, but this small theatre was a through-and-through arthouse. It had a great little lounge, serving up coffee, beer and wine, even pizza, and intimate screening rooms. It was a Sunday afternoon and I opted for The Lesson (Alice Troughton) with Julie Delpy, Richard E. Grant and Daryl McCormack. The film is a quiet Hitchcockian thriller set in a mansion in the bucolic English countryside. Delpy plays an aging matriarch and art curator, married to a high strung “Great Novelist” type (Grant), whose lives become mediated by an aspiring writer (McCormack). It’s a slow burn and captive enough though I had some difficulties with the presumption of the plot – did McCormack really have to be the fulcrum between Grant and Delpy’s characters? But my point is that it cost me a grand total of $33.75 (CAD) for one beer and one ticket to the film. It’s expensive in the UK! 

In London, I wanted to see the film Fair Play (Chloe Domont) “set in the cutthroat world of high finance” and an “erotic thriller.” Its subtitle is “Competition is Close.” It’s screening at, among other places, the Regent Street Cinema, when I walked by it last weekend. Great, I’ll go next week. Then I saw it opens on Netflix Oct. 13. (It was even advertised this way at the theatre.). My question: why go to a movie and pay relatively big bucks when I can wait a week and see the same thing online?

The London Film Festival kicked off last night – with gala opening Saltburn (Emerald Fennell), which got five stars in today’s Telegraph - and runs till Oct. 15. The festival looks to have a great line-up but I came upon it late and virtually all films have long been sold out. Maybe next year, if I come back to London, I'll be aware and book earlier. The festival’s centerpiece venue is the British Film Institute (BFI) (photo) on the Southbank, sandwiched between the National Theatre – where some of Britian’s greatest playwrights’ works are performed – and Royal Festival Hall, a famed orchestra space. This is the most spectacular building devoted to film I’ve ever been in. Besides having several screening rooms, there is a Mediatheque, where the public can relax in numerous deep cushioned pods and view 95,000 titles from the BFI’s archives. There's a film library. There’s also a spacious café and a sprawling bar. It’s a space made in film heaven.