59th BFI London Film Festival | Sunday 11th October: Pick of the Day - Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) |

A band of bored and restless teenagers in a well-heeled Biarritz suburb start their own private orgy society one summer, but their freewheeling sexual experiments prove less than liberating in this bold debut film from French director Eva Husson, Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story). Indeed, no sooner has the uninhibited George (Marilyn Lima) suggested a game of ‘Truth or Dare with only dares’, than sexual jealousy, insecurity and spite rear up to complicate the pleasures of total hedonism. Yet the emotional journeys of the film’s leading characters, including George, her hitherto virginal best friend Laetitia (Daisy Broom), swaggering boyfriend Alex (Finnegan Oldfield) and diffident outsider Gabriel (Lorenzo Lefèbvre), don’t take them to the places you would necessarily expect. Naturally, there is copious naked flesh on display here, and some challenging ideas floating around as well.

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) screens at the Hackney Picturehouse at 8.45pm tonight. 

Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.