Don’t miss! Four films for Wednesday 17 October

Two Plains & a Fancy

Having conjured up a satirical vision of the 1990s with L for Leisure (LFF 2014), independent filmmaking duo Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn have gone back to the 1890s for their hilarious and highly original follow-up. Shot on 16mm and described as a ‘Spa Western’, Two Plains & a Fancy undermines cowboy genre machismo at every turn. Artistic dandy Milton Tingling, French geologist Ozanne Le Perrier and conwoman-turned-mystic Alta Mariah Sophronia traverse the stunning landscapes and strange ghost towns of Colorado in search of hot springs and New Age thrills. Alternately philosophical, silly and sincerely mind-expanding, this is one journey where digressions are more important than the destination. Fans of sensual bathing, candlelight meditation, paranormal humping and/or John Waters will enjoy.

Manish Agarwal

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Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story

2014’s Frank fictionalised the identity of an artist performing under an outsized papier-mâché head with distinctive Pacman-shaped eyes. The truth is arguably even stranger. Manchester native Chris Sievey dreamed of pop-music stardom but belated recognition only came incognito, through his loveably anarchic creation. Working from Sievey’s own exhaustive self-documentation (old cassettes, degraded video) and deftly incorporating interviews with loved ones and admirers (including former band members DJ Mark Radcliffe and Frank’s co-screenwriter Jon Ronson), director Steve Sullivan assembles a compelling portrait of a mercurial, often tortured artist with a chequered private life. Though the Sidebottom head is revealed as both a vehicle for success and eventual aesthetic straightjacket, the film fittingly evokes Sievey’s painstaking, handcrafted art at its frank, freewheeling best.

Leigh Singer

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Enamorada

The early life of the great filmmaker Emilio Fernández was steeped in Mexican history – his mother hailed from the indigenous Kickapoo people, his father was a revolutionary general and as a teenager he himself fought in the revolution. By 1946, he was the acclaimed director of some of the most extraordinary films in Mexican cinema’s Golden Age, drawing on the influence of Sergei Eisenstein to create unforgettable images and grand historical yarns. Enamorada finds him at the peak of his powers, telling the story of the tumultuous affair between revolutionary José Juan Reyes (Pedro Armendáriz) and Señorita Beatriz Peñafiel (the magnetic María Félix), the independent-minded daughter of an aristocrat. The film has never looked more splendid than it does in this impeccable restoration, endorsed by an admiring Martin Scorsese.

Danny Leigh

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Maya

Physically and emotionally shattered in the wake of his release from captivity, war reporter Gabriel (Roman Kolinka) returns home to France. Struggling to make sense of city life after the brutality of his experience, along with the guilt he suffers knowing that a colleague remains captive, he retreats to his childhood home in India. An attraction to 18-year-old Maya (Aarshi Banerjee), the daughter of his godfather, blooms into an affair that helps Gabriel heal, even as it pricks his conscience. Working with a predominantly female crew, Hansen-Løve gently examines the nature of crisis and restorative power of life’s rhythms. And cinematographer Hélène Louvart (The Wonders, Happy as Lazzoro) savours the textures of the Goan locations so much that you can smell the sea air while the sun warms your face.

Tricia Tuttle

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