| Red Road, Citizen Kane, Reservoir Dogs… some debut features feel like anything but The start of a new year always makes one feel inclined to do something new, whether it’s taking up knitting, committing to a workout regime or, for the more ambitious among us, making a film. In a suitable spirit of beginnings, Mubi annually serves this impulse with its First Films First series of essential debut features by major film-makers – though most of them, admittedly, don’t inspire a surge of hopeful “I could do that” confidence. Mubi’s debut selections this year are a formidable bunch, beginning with their admittedly pretty downbeat New Year’s Day pick, Andrea Arnold’s sharp, lean, unshakable revenge drama Red Road (2006), which set the tone for one of the great sensory film-making careers in British cinema. That’s followed up with Roy Andersson’s A Swedish Love Story, a gentle, tender coming-of-age romance from 1970, drawing inspiration from the likes of Miloš Forman, that you’d scarcely recognise as the work of the man latterly known for his arch absurdist formalism. Continue reading... |
