John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (2025)

Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens' documentary John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, which was selected for this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam, continues its run on the fest circuit with screenings at the BFI London Film Festival, where it plays today and tomorrow as part of the Debate strand.  It's now been more than 30 years since David Lynch stepped in to save the production of Almereyda's black-and-white vampire flick Nadja—Lynch funded the entire film after the initial financing fell through—a witty, highly stylised work that brought its director into the arthouse spotlight.

Since then, Almereyda has continued making narrative features, several of which—including his most recent effort, the biopic Tesla—have starred Ethan Hawke, but he's also no stranger to documentary, having directed the likes of This So-Called Disaster, William Eggleston in the Real World and Escapes.  John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, co-directed with Courtney Stephens (Invention, The American Sector), sees Almereyda once again embrace non-fiction as he and Stephens essay the strange tale of the dolphin-bothering neuroscientist of the title, whose work inspired a classic video game.

Lilly is best remembered for both his invention of the isolation tank and his attempts at establishing communication between humans and dolphins.  It is hard to say which of these projects was the more outlandish: the former has endured as a means for those seeking sensory deprivation, while the latter gained a lot of publicity yet yielded no notable legacy.  The received wisdom about dolphins is that they are highly intelligent mammals that possess advanced cognitive skills, but Lilly believed they were also capable of language acquisition, and conducted countless cruel experiments on these fine marine animals.

If floatation tanks and talking dolphins aren't sufficiently outré, also consider Lilly's LSD and ketamine-fuelled insistence that there was a cosmic entity—the Earth Coincidence Control Office, or ECCO, of the title—managing earth's inhabitants.  Lilly coasted through his life and career on the back of a seemingly bottomless trust fund, and died in 2001 at the age of 86.  What, if any, value can be placed on his crackpot theories is something Almereyda and Stephens appear to be on the fence about, yet this doesn't prevent John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office from being a hugely entertaining and engrossing 90 minutes.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope

Fwends (Sophie Somerville, 2025)

Fwends, the debut feature from Australian filmmaker Sophie Somerville, follows twentysomething friends Em (Emmanuelle Mattana) and Jessie (Melissa Gan), who embark on an often surreal odyssey through Melbourne as they attempt to reconnect with each other over the course of a weekend.  Somerville's film—which screens tomorrow and Friday at the BFI London Film Festival as part of the Laugh strand—taps into the same vein as Mike Leigh's somewhat overlooked 1997 film Career Girls, a deeply profound exploration of two old college flatmates reuniting after six years of adult life has put their friendship on hold.

As with Leigh's a deceptively slight film—which also unfolds during a single weekend—Fwends, at least in its early stages, uses humour to mask the pathos.  The story begins with Jessie and Em searching for each other in a Melbourne Metro station; Em is visiting from Sydney, where she has a demanding job at a law firm, and Melburnian Jessie, who has spent several years travelling the world, is dealing with a difficult breakup from her boyfriend.  It soon transpires that Em has been experiencing sexual harassment at work, and she's unsure what—if anything—she should do about it, lest it derail the career she's built for herself.

Both women, it seems, could really use this break from their respective worries—although it's not clear what they'll do, as Jessie has not made any plans for the weekend, nor has she gone to the trouble of organising suitable bedding for her houseguest.  But the situation regarding the sleeping arrangements becomes moot once the pair, upon returning from dinner, find they are locked out of Jessie's apartment; Jessie thinks she's left her keys in the restaurant, which has now closed for the day, and while her ex still has a key to the flat, he's since relocated to Brisbane.  Cue an After Hours-style schlep around nocturnal Melbourne.

Gan and Mattana—both of whom are terrific in what is essentially a two-hander—are given writing credits alongside Somerville, and this alludes to the Leigh-like improvisational nature of the project.  But Fwends is no pale imitation; rather, Somerville's own cinematic voice is present here, and she's expertly captured the awkwardness that comes with seeing an old friend for the first time in years.  Somerville highlights both the silent gap that lies between these women and the painful inevitability of this time-induced schism, and her film is infused with a melancholy that makes the final shot almost unbearably poignant.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Sebastian (Mikko Mäkelä, 2024)

Directed by the Finnish-British filmmaker Mikko Mäkelä (A Moment in the Reeds), this uneven Belgian co-production depicts a budding novelist's often perilous journey through the underbelly of London, in the hope that he'll find both himself and the inspiration for his first book.  Set against the backdrop of the English capital's bustling streets, Sebastian follows the life of Max, impressively played by the Scots actor Ruaridh Mollica.  Max is a twentysomething magazine staff writer originally from Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh, to where he briefly returns in what might be viewed as one of the film's more poignant scenes.

Not that there are many such moments in Sebastian.  To describe Mäkelä's film as pitiless is perhaps something of a stretch, yet there's a cold, clinical feel to much of the movie, which is maybe understandable given the transactional nature of Max's double life as a sex worker.  This decision is driven not so much by his financial situation, but is rather rooted in the quest for authenticity in his writing.  For this research, Max uses the alias Sebastian, as per the title, and although he knows exactly where the line of demarcation is, he's still playing a dangerous game, one that could go very wrong should any of his clients discover the truth.

Max's approach is marked by both sensitivity and resolve, and the film offers a narrative that confronts the audience's views on morality and inspiration: who, if anyone, is doing the using?  There are no clear or easy answers to be had as we're presented with the uneasy sight of Max feverishly jotting down details of his encounters, sometimes just after they've happened.  Any given person's feelings about Max's practices are quite likely to line up with their opinion of Brooke Magnanti's blog-turned-book The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl—a work that, at least on a superficial level, has much in common with Sebastian.

The film's portrayal of sexuality is reasonably ambitious, offering a fresh perspective when it could very easily have been content to deal in familiar tropes.  Among Max's roster of almost invariably seedy clients is the gentle Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde), an educated, older man more in need of companionship and intelligent conversation than the services Max typically provides.  Hyde is wonderfully sympathetic in this role, and it is through his scenes with Mollica that the mostly unpleasant Sebastian achieves some rare (and much-needed) moments of tenderness, which feel all the sweeter given the morass that surrounds them.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI