The
Edinburgh International Film Festival starts tonight with writer-director
David Mackenzie's
Hallam Foe. The movie is a natural choice for the opening slot as Mackenzie is one of the most prominent Scottish directors around and the film is not only set in Edinburgh, but captures the beauty of the Scottish capital with reverent affection. Audiences' appreciation of the film, however, will primarily rest on their response to the eponymous character, a goodhearted pervert played with gusto by
Jamie Bell, and their ability to buy into the moments where plausibility is tested.
The action starts in the Scottish countryside where we find wild boy Hallam spying on fornicating teenagers from the treehouse he has retreated to since his mother's death a few years previously. He is the quintessential lovable fuck-up: he wears a badger's head hat, spies on all the neighbors with binoculars, picks locks and clambers over rooftops. He also hates his stepmother, Verity (
Claire Forlani), the woman who has replaced his beloved mother in his father's (
Ciarán Hinds) affections, and believes she was the person behind his mother's supposed suicide. Verity, sick of Hallam being around, uses her wiles to force him out of country estate where he has spent all of his life. He flees to Edinburgh, hoping for a new start, but finds himself homeless and penniless, and unable to put his voyeuristic habits behind him. He wanders around the city's historic city center, where he spots Kate, a woman (
Sophia Myles) who is the spitting image of his mother. He compulsively stalks her, then gets a job working with her, and it's not long before the two are engaged in an impossibly complicated romantic entanglement.
Whatever reservations one has about
Hallam Foe — and some people may have many — it has a quirky charm, stemming primarily from Bell's spirited performance, and is well-directed by Mackenzie. Myles continues to suggest she has genuine star quality, there are likeable supporting turns from Scots
Ewen Bremner and
Maurice Roëves, and the strong indie-alternative soundtrack solidifies the film's offbeat feel. However, the characters' actions too often seem implausible when, one suspects, they made more sense in the novel by
Peter Jinks that the film is based upon. Rather like Mackenzie's debut,
The Last Great Wilderness (which is also about the intersection between Scotland's primal connection with nature and unorthodox sexual proclivities),
Hallam Foe is fascinating and fun despite its flaws and continues to show signs of Mackenzie's potential to be a genuinely important director.
In Search of a Midnight Kiss, the third feature from American writer-director
Alex Holdridge (who is currently one of our
25 New Faces), has interesting parallels with indie classic
Swingers. In 1996,
Jon Favreau and
Doug Liman's crossover hit told the story of a young man who, after his girlfriend has broken up with him, relocates to Los Angeles in the hope of making it in comedy, but instead ends up struggling to get any work and mired in his own heartbroken depression. Just over a decade on, Holdridge's movie takes the exact same central idea, but takes it in a new direction.
While
Swingers focused on the protagonist's slow withdrawal from his introspective fug, with his “money" friends helping him get to a place where he might find love again, in
In Search of a Midnight Kiss Holdridge instead puts his downtrodden hero, Wilson (
Scoot McNairy), on a recovery crash course as he tries to find a last-minute date so that he can have someone to kiss as the New Year bells chime. The answer, of course, is to get on the internet and, more specifically, Craigslist. He chooses to meet up with the first girl who responds to his ad, Vivian (
Sara Simmonds), but the signs aren't good at all. She chainsmokes, slugs vodka from the bottle, is belligerent and brutally callous, treats men with disdain and seems out to manipulate everyone and everything as much as she can. It seems impossible that she will tolerate Wilson's company for literally five minutes, let alone be his midnight kiss, yet slowly her layers of aggression and resistance begin falling away and we see her cautiously begin to open herself up to the possibility of romance.
If
Swingers is an inspiration to Holdridge, both in his appropriation of its plot and a similar attempt to capture the current state of relationships, then so also is
Woody Allen. Breathtakingly shot in crisp black-and-white photography that recalls Allen's
Manhattan, Holdridge treats L.A.'s Downtown area as if it were a miniature New York, as his unlikely couple wander the streets, take the subway, and stumble across beautiful old buildings — all of which are antithetical to L.A. life — and uses them to capture the moments that bring Wilson and Vivian closer together.
In Search of a Midnight Kiss is due for release in the U.S. next year, and it is so well-written, charming and beautifully photographed that it is inconceivable to think of audiences not falling in love with this little gem.
# posted by Nick Dawson @ 8/15/2007 02:48:00 PM
Comments (0)
