An advantage of the Film Festival is that you don't have to sit through 20 minutes of ads before the feature starts.  But sometimes the film is worse than the ads would have been and that was the case with one I was led to believe was an artistic work of sociological importance that turned out to be thinly disguised porn.

It just shows you can't believe everything you read (even if it's written here) and you certainly can't believe everything you see on the screen where lots of things are heavily disguised.  But Day of the Flowers is undisguised in its intentions to entertain.  Maybe its Scottish/Cuban story made me feel warmer towards it than either The List or The Hollywood Reporter but I was able to suspend my disbelief throughout and to enjoy the action, the characterisations, the photography and the happy ending.

The Hollywood Reporter wasn't overwhelmed by the other Cuban oriented film presented in the festival either.  I have to agree with them that 7 Days in Havana was a bit of a hotch-potch and I enjoyed it more for its locations than its contents though both the Tatiesque section and the altar building sequence appealed to me.

Feel My Pulse has a character named Thirsty McGulp in the credits indicating that it's not perhaps the most serious film to have been made in the 20s.  Indeed it's a madcap slapstick comedy in the Buster Keaton mode that I rather enjoyed.  I found the live piano accompaniment a little too loud but that together with the occasional whizz and blackout as the film slipped on the sprockets added to the jolly feeling of travelling back in cinematic time.

On the other hand you couldn't get much more bang up to date in cinematic time than God Bless America which the director (present with the lead actor at Cineworld on Friday night for the European premiere) described as a very violent film about kindness.  In fact its tomato sauce bloody blowing people's heads off is no more than the technological extension of the biffs with assorted implements and chloroform assault that featured in Feel My Pulse.

But it does have a more sophisticated edge to it.  It's a very clever, amusing and insightful satire on the consumption and celebrity infested society that isn't limited geographically to America.

My final festival excursion is this afternoon to what I understand is another satire, this time Japanese, called Sailor Suit and Machine Gun  in which a teenage girl inherits the leadership of her late father's yakuza organisation. Death by chopsticks in this one perhaps.