A week before the 20th edition International Film Festival of Kerala was to begin, festival advisory committee chairman Shaji N. Karun said, ‘Everyone wants love’, while speaking about the films to watch out for at the festival.
He was referring to Gaspar Noe’s latest film Love , which had already become a talking point at previous festivals, from Cannes to the International Film Festival of India in Goa.
His words rang true on Wednesday night, when a majority of delegates seemed to want their piece of ‘love’. The closed temporary auditorium at Nishagandhi, with a seating capacity of around 1,000, has rarely filled up during this year’s IFFK. But at 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday, when Love was scheduled to start, there were at least twice that number of people standing outside, after the auditorium filled up.
Hype works in strange ways. In the past editions of the festival also, there have been much hype around one or two films, for which all delegates queue up in anticipation. Lost in this hype are the smaller, and sometimes better, films.
On Wednesday, when the clamour for Love was happening, Italian film My Mother was playing at Tagore Theatre. It ran half-empty. That film brilliantly brought out the inner turmoil that a film-maker goes through as her mother lay dying in a hospital, while she is desperate to finish her latest film.
Brilliant films like My Mother drowned in the brouhaha over globally acclaimed ones like Love.
