Five Films to Watch at Cambridge Film Festival

Manchester by the Sea

Dir. Kenneth Lonergan

Kenneth Lonergan has made only three films in 16 years – You Can Count on Me (2000), Margaret (2011) and now Manchester by the Sea – and they’re always worth the wait. His latest centres on a knockout performance from Casey Affleck, who looks bulked up and sturdy. He needs to be, because this tale of trauma and guilt set within a blue collar Irish-American family is bruising. Lonergan films the New England town of the title like it’s a Caspar David Friedrich seascape, cold and distant but swelling with emotion. It’s a film about despair, but Lonergan's cast – who also include Michelle Williams and Kyle Chandler – bring such warmth and humanity that it’ll make your heart soar in moments too.

Crash + Always (Crashing)

Dir. David Cronenberg / Simon Barker & Jason Wood

There are many reasons to recommend David Cronenberg’s audacious adaptation of JG Ballard's novel about sex and car crashes. First, Cronenberg recognises how deeply cinematic the automobile is, filming the driving with the same sensual intensity with which he shoots the sex scenes. The performances are also great, with leads James Spader and Holly Hunter bringing real melancholy to Cronenberg’s minimalist surface. But the chief reason is that, behind all the salacious content, behind the smash of glass and the crunch of metal and bodies, there’s a dark and tragic love story at its heart. Screening with poetic doc Always (Crashing), this is a rare big screen outing for an underrated masterpiece.

Toni Erdmann

Dir. Maren Ade

The nearly-three-hour German comedy you didn’t realise you wanted or needed. A brilliant study in awkwardness that might cause even Larry David to look away from the screen, Maren Ade’s third feature follows a goofy music teacher who reinvents himself as a big-business guru so that he can spend some time with his cold, corporate daughter, who’s working as a consultant for a shady international company in Romania. Hidden between the funniest use of a pop ballad in cinema since Spring Breakers and a toe-curling birthday party that could have been dreamed up by Luis Buñuel, there’s also a biting attack on neoliberal culture that’s as sharp as any of the jokes.

The Love Witch

Dir. Anna Biller

Shot in ravishing 35mm, The Love Witch is a strange but compelling labour of love from the intimidatingly talented Anna Biller. Not only did she write and direct this stunning and densely detailed pastiche of the cycle of sexploitation films of the 60s and 70s, she also edited it, composed the score, designed the costumes and dressed the sets, all with the fastidious attention to detail of Stanley Kubrick or Wes Anderson. Biller’s faithful recreation is so acute, that this could easily be mistaken for a lost relic from that era if it wasn’t for the film’s righteous sexual politics, which are blunt but sincerely delivered. Bro genre fans will likely adore it for its loving homage, but so will feminists of all stripes. Beneath the lurid story of an oversexed witch looking for true love, it’s a film about the myriad of ways in which a woman can be disappointed by men. Oh, and it’s also wicked funny.

Young Frankenstein

Dir. Mel Brooks

Talking of wicked funny, Cambridge Film Festival is paying tribute to the late, great Gene Wilder, who died in August. As well as screening Wilder’s most famous performance, as the title character in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, they’re also screening his best: Young Frankenstein (“it's pronounced Frankensteen”). Pauline Kael once said that “Gene Wilder’s hysteria seems perfectly natural,” and you’ll see what she means in this, his most hysterical (in both senses of the word) turn. Writer-director Mel Brooks is at his absolute peak too, using the old Universal sets to help create his most visually inventive movie. As well as being wildly funny, Young Frankenstein is also strangely touching, as all good Frankenstein movies should be. This screening is the perfect way to say goodbye to one of the silver screen’s most loved goofballs.

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Cambridge Film Festival runs 20-27 Oct. For full programme details, go to cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk

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