London Film Festival 2015: Anomalisa

Standing in the queue for the London Film Festival’s mysterious secret screening, all the talk was unsurprisingly concerned with what lay ahead on the mammoth screen at the Odeon in Leicester Square. Packed together like cattle, there were murmurs of The Hateful Eight or, perhaps most widely suspected,The Danish Girl. But of course you can’t second guess the BFI quite that easily and, naturally, we were all completely wrong. In a real surprise turn, Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Duke Johnson’s (Community) stop-motion animation Anomalisa was the BFI’s delicious entrée that night.

Kaufman’s latest project follows famous customer service guru Michael Stone (David Thewlis) on an overnight business trip to Cincinnati. Along with the mundanities of travel, Michael has liaisons with several women from both his past and future. It’s through these interactions that Michael’s hang-ups and growing existential anxieties begin to emerge. It’s a simple plot deftly executed with style and substance.

Anomalisa started out as a humble radio play, and that fact is quickly emphasized in the film’s dialogue-heavy delivery. The script flits between wry satire and impeccable…read the rest of the review at Movie Fail here.