The final film I saw at the 2012 London Film Festival contained, in its first hour alone, a suicide by drowning, the deaths of two children in a coach crash, and a young man being beaten to death on a train. Its singularly-inappropriate title? 'Living'. Still, it is a Russian film... actually it isn't bad, and doesn't try to twang the heartstrings despite its sombre subject matter: one particularly stand-out scene has a mother, awaiting the return of her children, having to chase along the street the official who has to break the news of those children's deaths because the woman is too scared to tell her. Containing a certain amount of arty-fartyness, this is the kind of film you appreciate more once it's finished and you've had time to work out what was going on!
