Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 253: Mon Sep 10

The Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991): Everyman Cinema, Hampstead, 7.40pm

Everyone knows about this film. What makes this event so beguiling is that it's an Everyman supper club event and just look at the menu included in the cinema's introduction:

After the sold-out success of our wine-tasting, cheese-board and SIDEWAYS evening, Everyman Supper Club invites you to yet another cinematic and gastronomic experience not to be missed...SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, served on a silver platter.

THE TASTING MENU

Appetiser:
Buffalo Bill’s crispy potato skins with a glass of prosecco.

Entrée:
Dr. Lecter’s chicken liver pâté with fava beans and a nice chianti.

Main:
Clarice Starling’s slaughtered lamb pizza with freshly torn rocket and drizzled in a tangy herbed salsa.

Dessert:
A special screening of the five-time Academy Award-winning film, The Silence of the Lambs.

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Time out review: 'In its own old-fashioned way, this is as satisfying as that other, more modernist Thomas Harris adaptation,Manhunter. When FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is sent to conduct an interview with serial killer shrink Dr Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins) in his high-security cell, she little knows what she is in for. The Feds want Lecter to help them in their search for homicidal maniac 'Buffalo Bill'; but in exchange for clues about Bill's behaviour, Lecter demands that Clarice answer questions about herself, so that he can penetrate the darkest recesses of her mind. It's in their confrontations that both film and heroine come electrically alive. Although Demme does reveal the results of the killer's violence, he for the most part refrains from showing the acts themselves; the film could never be accused of pandering to voyeuristic impulses. Understandably, much has been made of Hopkins' hypnotic Lecter, but the laurels must go to Levine's killer, admirably devoid of camp overstatement, and to Foster, who evokes a vulnerable but pragmatic intelligence bent on achieving independence through sheer strength of will.' Geoff Andrew

Here is the trailer.