Don't Believe the Hype

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

London River is a quietly powerful and thought-provoking drama surrounding the aftermath of the London 7-7-2005 bombings.Brenda Blethyn, ever-watchable, is entirely believable as the distraught mother who cannot trace her daughter, when she sees news footage of the devastation, from her Guernsey home. On the other side of the coin is elderly, black and dread-locked Sotigui Kouyate, trying to contact his son, whom he walked out on when the boy was six, then having been working in France since.Both end up searching in London, Blethyn doing the rounds of missing person posters and showing photos to everybody she can, in the hope of any piece of news. The paths of these two unlikely kindred spirits cross when it transpires that their two children may have been living together and taking Arabic classes, through their local mosque.As you can imagine, there's quite a lot of cross-cultural clashes here, not just the black boy, white girl aspect, but also the Muslim element and the thorny issue, particularly at the time when the film is set; terrorism. Could they have been involved, too? The mother knows her daughter and knows she couldn't have been, but the same could not be said about the father...more food for thought.There's good solid acting from both - Blethyn typically more blubbery and emotional whilst Kouyate, as the sort of wise old sage, takes things more pragmatically and thoughtfully. It's a strange mix if you were to walk in on the film half-way through; follow it from the start and it seems quite natural.There's been comment that it's contrived in that Blethyn is suddenly able to speak the native French of Kouyate - I don't find that hard to believe at all, not only is she citizen of Guernsey, where French is their official other language but is also physically much closer to France than the U.K. Also, in the day that a woman of her age was educated, she (& myself) learnt a type of 'schoolboy' French - I could understand much of what was being said from my failed 'O' Level, back 30 years ago.So, a good drama, for what it is. It certainly won't appeal to all, both in subject matter, nor in its slow-ish, measured pace. But for those who enjoy something a bit different, something that shines a new light, perhaps, on a recent piece of our history, plus the acting, then London River has a lot going for it. I viewed it on BBC1.

London July 7 2005. Elisabeth, a good woman. a humble churchgoer, respecting the law. Racist? No! Not before 7/7! Alarmed by the reporting on her secure Guernsey and that her daughter does not answer her phone, Elisabeth leaves for the city if everything is well. It is not. She visits her daughter the first time, wondering: "Is this the right address?" - surrounded by Islamic foreign strangers. Her daughters landlord, gives her the key for her daughters flat. During her search she encounters the black African, french speaking Monsieur Ousmane: searching his son Ali. They have to discover that their children, her daughter Jane and his son Ali have an affair, the fathers son living with the mothers daughter in her flat. And her daughter learns Arabic: "Who speaks Arabic?" ask the very British Christian mother: hardly looking at the searching father, and if: 'von oben'. But has eventually to accept the unacceptable, secure at home on her British Island where the different otherness is never an issue; human as she herself: "Our lives aren't that different", she discovers. And that her British daughter, visiting her on her save island last Christmas; she never told: why? The searching mother and the searching father, guided by their children's spirit are searching the other to find themselves otherness. The director: "Most important was the central encounter." Fot the sake when truth is revealed: the mothers heartbreaking break-down and beside her the fate accepting father. Mutual respect and in need for each other when the truth of sorrow has to be shared. No body for the grave. So different their first and last encounter. Passing him, without a single look, leave alone seeing him. A nobody. An then: her embrace. Both return to their duty, the farm and the forest. Not the same: different. Against the backdrop of not only Oslo and Breivik: also the own family's racism ('What would I be on Titanic and as she sank, what would I do?', the closing words of the documentary Titanic & me). Behind color, behind believe, behind we are educated for: never for the encounter in the aftermath of 7/7. Why the London-Oslo-family and other disastrous front mirrors without the back mirror? 'This quest to find their children alive forces them to unite', signals the director Rachid Bouchareb: discovering themselves behind the mask.

We enjoyed this touching film immensely. It was well written, well acted and well directed with a humanist representation of parental love, multiculturalism and xenophobia in today's London. The multilingual aspect was wonderful, and it is possibly more fun to watch it without subtitles so that just like in real life you cannot understand what is being said in languages that you don't speak. Both Brenda Blethyn and Sotigui Kouyaté were excellent with their understated portrayals of parents from very different backgrounds who meet on common ground. The underlying tensions of the plot is developed through the film, which remained believable throughout. Highly recommended.

By coincidence I got to see this film on a 9/11. I have not seen any of the previous films of Rachid Bouchareb, but I heard a lot about 'Indigenes' and I liked 'Flanders' that he produced. This film is quite low tone, but emotional and direct. In the aftermath of the terror attacks in London two parents look for their children. She is an English farmer widower from a remote island, he is from Africa, a Muslim and guest worker in France. Everything separates the two at first sight - religion, language, race and especially prejudice. They will get together because of the shared fate of their children, and they will go together through the painful phases of inquietude, fear, hope, and despair. They get to know each other, but this does not prevent destiny to hit them. I liked the fact that the film does not try to soften in anyway their paths, and avoided some of the traps that other types of endings or intrigues place in similar movies. Multicultural London filmed in a neutral and yet familiar way is the perfect background of the story that includes some racial tensions elements without insisting too much on them. Without avoiding completely simplification and a feeling of expected this direct approach plays quite well, and is immensely helped by the great acting of the two lead characters, especially Sotigui Kouyaté. This is not the ultimate film about the events that shattered London in July 2005, but rather a simple story about how usual people get are impacted by such events, an efficient and direct movie even if not great cinema.