Facing the Night

I guess the human brain is predisposed to seeing other faces, hence the number of pictures of famous faces appearing in toast, tortillas and all manner of other places that are simply patterns and shapes that our brains read as facial features.
This was a shot on the way back in the front door having been to see another film at the Film Festival. On our way in there were photographs being taken outside the Filmhouse in front of the festival banner - presumably important people we thought although we didn't recognise them, and sure enough the directors and lead actor were introduced to us before the film started. It was the premiere of Mister John but sadly I wasn't very impressed. I can only assume the directors are big fans of Bergman, but this was another film that for me didn't have enough depth for a full-length film. Do I expect too much? I just didn't care about the main character's story. Lots of slow, lingering shots that just seemed self-indulgent and the whole thing seemed far too pleased with itself when to me it was a big budget wasted. The frequent use of shallow depth of field, leaving much of the screen out of focus, presumably to symbolise the main character's fuzzy state of mind, was just irritating. As was the lack of explanation for the detail of the back story and the relationship he had left behind in the UK. Okay, there were hints that things were not all well, but the vagueness of it all ultimately left me uninterested in his decisions. Interesting that a couple of fictional films have failed to grab me, whereas the factual ones have been much better at story telling.