At the Venice Film Festival, this year, I ran into Peter Bradshaw, chief film critic at The Guardian. We were in line for a press screening, and we were generally chatting about the films we liked and disliked. The topic shifted to the nature of film festivals, and he said, “It used to be a gentlemanly thing. You saw a lot of films. At the end, you wrote a couple of impressionistic pieces. Now, it’s so different. Every film you watch, you have to write a full-fledged review at once. It’s about star ratings and clicks…” It wasn’t a complaint so much as an observation. He laughed that there was no point whingeing about it, for this – being a film critic, covering a major international film festival – is a job profile many people would give a vital body organ for. And yet...