The 2015 New Zealand International Film Festival is officially underway, launching last night in audacious style with a spectacular and truly odd European film.
The festival is the best time of the year for New Zealand's most passionate film lovers and opening night always has a palpable buzz of excitement about that is a thrill to be a part of.
It takes place at the mighty Civic Theatre in the heart of our country's biggest city. Every year I seem to forget just how impressive that screen and sound system is until I'm sitting in there, under the beautiful star filled roof enjoying the delights playing out before me.
This year, the prestigious opening slot was occupied by The Lobster, and I certainly won't be forgetting it in a hurry.
The opening night event was somewhat marred by a few totally obnoxious audience members who yelled abuse at one of the opening speakers. If you don't like Auckland Mayor Len Brown, that's fine, but there's a time and a place to air grievances with him. This was not it.
As it happens every year, the Mayor of Auckland is one of the speakers before the opening film. They always say nice things about the festival and inspiring things about the New Zealand film industry. Whatever the mayor has done outside of the Civic doesn't matter in there - they're one of us, celebrating their love of film as we celebrate ours.
The hecklers weren't yelling anything intelligent or insightful. They seemed like drunk attention-seekers trying to spoil the positive mood of the couple of thousand people around them. To Brown's credit, he handled it very well and got on with what he had to say, but it was a completely unnecessary annoyance for everyone.
I had little idea what The Lobster was about, which is my favourite way to go into a film. I knew it was from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, the man behind an incredible film called Dogtooth that blew me away at the 2009 festival, and that's it.
NZFF director Bill Gosden gave a little more information in the form of warning in his speech, basically assuring us no animal or child was actually hurt in making of it, despite what it depicts. Alarm bells started ringing.
They needn't have. While there is undoubtedly some disturbing content within the film and a fairly unsettling overall tone, it worked as a wonderfully dark satire that was wickedly amusing for almost its entire running time.
It's the sort of film where the less you know going in the better, and coming out many will want to dissect the various meanings they find in it.
What's it about? A man's journey through a dystopian near-future ruled by a hostile elite that brutally enforces coupledom, and a sub-society of rebels that brutally enforces singledom.
The film stars some big names including Colin Farrell with my favourite performance of his yet, Rachel Weisz, John C Reilly, Ben Whishaw and Léa Seydoux. Cult British TV fans will enjoy spotting Tyres from Spaced and Keith from The Office as well.
The Lobster is a rule-breaking, provocative tale of love and bleak surrealism, absurd but certainly not just for absurdity's sake. It's not an absolute home-run and isn't quite as effective as Dogtooth, but it is a wild, unique and memorable film.
It's also quite a ballsy choice for the opening film, and the fact our national festival's curators decided on it endears them to me a great deal.
Seeing it with such a large, pumped up crowd in such a magnificent cinema was a wonderful winter treat and just the start of a schedule dozens of amazing films on offer over the next few weeks.
Four stars.
3 News