London Film Festival: Marriage traps, disability and being derivative

There have been a couple of movies at this year's London Film Festival which dealt with the prison-like conditions of marriage. One, Nightbitch starring Amy Adams and directed by Marielle Heller (based on the novel by Rachel Yoder) is a delight though that sounds bizarre given the subject matter. It's a black comedy about a woman being trapped in motherhood. Adams plays a one time semi-famous artist who gives it all up for marriage and to raise a family - er, one two-year-old boy. Yet her life is drudgery, totally taken over by the 24-hour travails of sleeplessness, mess-cleaning and the mind numbing meeting of other moms in the park or at library singalongs, which the character despises. One day she finds dogs are increasingly attracted to her and she's growing fir and developing more nipples. OMG, what is happening!? You'll find out if you see the movie. Another was Sister Midnight, Karan Kandhari's take on India's arranged marriages. Uma (Radhika Apte) finds herself with a man (Ashok Pathak) who is a total stranger and in no way appealing. She acts out her frustration in a number of bizarre ways, which also have overtures to animals. The difference between Nightbitch and Sister Midnight (similar titles though) is that the first had a semblance of reality and nuance, the second goes for fake laughs with ridiculous scenarios. The audience lapped it up, however, cheering wildly at the end. One of the finest films of the 11 I've so far seen at the festival is French director Anne-Sophie Bailly's My Everything (photo). Her directorial debut is a subtle yet enduring portrait of a mother's relationship with her developmentally disabled son. Laura Calamy (Mona) of French TV series Call My Agent, and Charles Peccia Galletto (a developmentally disabled actor) take you into a very real story about the joys and frustrations of such bonding. Calamy is absolutely terrific as an everyday working class mom, trying to keep house and home together under sometimes trying circumstances. The entire film is brilliant and hopefully presages more wonderfulness from this director. I've never been a fan of French avant garde directior Leos Carax (Boy Meets Girl, 1984 and Holy Motors, 2012) - too disparate in their story telling and plainly pretentious. This 41 minute film is stirring but absolutely derivative in the tradition of Jean-Luc Godard, a Carax hero, with the audience hit with image after image of everything from the meaning of film to modern catastrophes, all stamped with huge sans-serif text. The best of the night came after the movie when Carax, on stage, mumbled short responses to long-winded audience questions that said more about the questioners' egos than anything.