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EIFF 2006

By Josie Inwood
Contact the author by e-mail at christopher.johnstone@ntlworld.com

Being in Edinburgh at Festival time is always bewildering. There are so many decisions to make. Inevitably, you will occasionally make a bad decision. The mood you are in when you make those decisions plays a key role in their success.

In his introduction to the festival, the outgoing artistic director Shane Danielson is pessimistic about the state of the planet, wondering gloomily what the future holds apart from war, religious fundamentalism and catastrophic climate change. I wonder if that sense of doom is reflected in the films selected for this year's festival.

This year's film festival came for me at the end of a long difficult summer in which I had struggled with injury and bereavement. To be honest I almost did not attend at all. But how could I waste the opportunity to see so much cutting edge cinema? Off I went, press pass dangling, to see as many films as I could in the short time available to me.

Whether there were more gloomy films to choose from or I just homed in on them because I was feeling down I do not know. The likelihood is that the films on offer were no worse than they have been in any previous year - but if you choose them and watch them in a low spirits, it is hard to see them as in a good light. And so dear reader, I cannot say that this year's festival of films was a triumph - not for me at least.

Some of the stuff I saw this year moved me so little that it is hard to find anything positive to write about them. Holly is a film made as part of "The K11 Project" - an organisation set up to raise awareness through film of child trafficking and under-age prostitution. The child sex-slave industry in Cambodia is abhorrent but when aid agencies declare that they can never stop it - all they can do is offer support to the kids involved - you leave the cinema with a sense of defeat and disgust. With so much going on in the world around us how can you appreciate a film like Apart From That, that tracks 24 hours in the lives of six nonentities, filmed in edgy hand-held video, where even the protagonists seem uncomfortable about having us watch their day, in which absolutely nothing of any consequence actually happens. By the time I'd watched Madeinusa, I was losing the will to live. Set in the Peruvian mountains, it's a depressing insight into the lives of mountain peasants whose religious beliefs and ritual rule their lives. The film is set in a remote mountain village during a religious festival that seems to be loosely based around the Easter story. A clever convention is that no sin can be committed during the holy time between the crucifixion of Christ and his resurrection. So off you go and have sex with your 14 year old daughter - it can't be a sin because God is not looking, even if your 12 year old daughter is.

These were the first three films I saw. Could it get any worse? Fortunately, things began to pick up; the rest of my choices have some chance of achieving a distribution deal. And so, coming soon to a cinema near you.

This year's opening film was a surprisingly low-key Scottish film from Douglas Mackinnon, The Flying Scotsman. A real-life tale of derring do - Graeme Obree against the rest of the world. Well, that's what it must have seemed like to this remarkable guy who climbed to the top of his sport with a bike he made out of scrap metal and bits of a washing machine.

It seems to be compulsory at this point to mention that the guy came from nowhere - well Prestwick - to take the cycling world by storm. But the most amazing thing about his story is not that he grew up in a seaside town in the west of Scotland but the attitude of his sport's governing body to his success. The better he did the less they liked it. Big money sponsors of the sport did not like it when their cutting edge, state of the art superbikes were beaten by Obree's home-made "Old Faithful". At every turn they block him, outlawing his unconventional riding position, rewriting the rules about chassis size, saddle length and anything else about his approach they could pick on. It must have seemed at the time that they just wanted to stop him competing. But he jumped each hurdle placed in front of him and still conquered the world.

And during all of this battle he was fighting his own private demons, severe depression and feelings of inadequacy that had been with him since childhood.

Selected specially for our esteemed editor, Art School Confidential is the latest offering from the film director Terry Zwigoff and comic writer Daniel Clowes. Another misanthropic view of life in all its uncomfortable and cynical detail. Their first collaboration, Ghostworld, introduced the themes of loneliness, the cloying boredom of suburban life, the rejection of the values of a consumer led society. Well, there all here again, but this time set in the art world. Clearly the message of this film is that the art world is full of crap and people talking crap. If a murder hunt can be made comical, then this story does it.

The Oh in Ohio, described as romantic comedy, tackles the subject of female orgasm. Parker Posey, she of the rather unlikely name, plays a woman whose marriage is failing because of her inability to achieve orgasm. Her husband, Paul Rudd, is a wreck because his sexual prowess cannot overcome this problem in an otherwise perfect relationship. In an attempt to save her marriage, she buys herself a vibrator and it does the job, in a manner of speaking. Husband is so offended at the success of the "thing" that he moves in to the garage and then into his own apartment, comforting himself in the arms of one of his students. Meanwhile the wife becomes addicted to mechanical stimulation, or "diddling her mimsy" as the film notes put it. Yes indeed, an every day tale of sex in the suburbs.

The film of the festival for me was Snow Cake, starring Alan Rickman in a role apparently written with him in mind. Although he makes a brilliant baddie, Rickman is utterly convincing as a great big softie. Remember Truly, Madly, Deeply? Well in Snow Cake his character Alex is more softie with an air of mystery than slave to the Dark Lord. Professor Snape is nowhere to be seen, but you never quite forget that he could turn nasty. A morose, silent man is driving across Canada. Against his better judgement he picks up a goofy hitchhiker - the wide-eyed and lovely Vivienne, played by Emily Hampshire - who won't stop talking. Telling you what happens next would certainly spoil the impact, but the film handles the drama of the unfolding events with delicacy and a lightness of touch. Sigourney Weaver is magnificent as Vivienne's mother Linda, a high functioning autistic woman who lives alone in a house of rigorous order. She understands everything that is going on around her but is incapable of expressing any emotion. She vacillates between a childlike, distracted state and sudden rage. Alex is drawn into her life and for a short time they tolerate each other in a strangely comforting way. Small town comedy is provided by the interfering neighbour who knows all about autism because she has seen Rain Man. Carrie-Anne Moss is Maggie, the glamorous neighbour described by Linda as a prostitute, presumably since she entertains gentlemen callers in her home. It is in befriending Maggie that Alex is able to come to terms with the tragedies in his past and present and to move on.

When you are watching Driving Lessons, try to put Ron Weasley out of your head. Rupert Grint plays Ben, an awkward 17 year old who is regularly mortified by his embarrassing mother and weak ineffectual father. Just like most 17 year old boys then. He takes a summer job working as an assistant to Dame Evie Walton, a boozy and foul-mouthed retired actress, played to perfection by Ron's mum, Julie Walters. I notice from the advance publicity that it is heading for the autumn season on ITV2 but if you get a chance, see it on the big screen. He's used to being embarrassed by the adults in his life so it's not hard for him to cope with her profanity, shoplifting and top of the bus pronouncements about gay/foreign/lower class people and the two rub along together well. Dame Evie demands that he deliver her to Edinburgh where she has been invited to attend "a literary festival". The fact that he has no car and only a provisional licence is a mere trifle. Off they go, the old lady and the boy on a road trip that will change his life, as road trips so often do. I suppose it is just about possible, though a little unlikely that if you were to drive from Hampstead to Edinburgh you might just come off the A1 and head through Holyrood Park, around Arthur's Seat before crossing North Bridge towards Princes Street. Clearly up to date with the new traffic restrictions in Princes Street preventing westbound cars, we then do pretty impressive tour of Edinburgh's lovely city streets before arriving, in style, at The Caledonian.

Like all good road trips, they both learn from their experience and this rather sentimental journey makes a charming film.

Other hoolet online articles by Josie Inwood can be found at:
hoolet edition 50 - EIFF 2006
hoolet edition 46 - EIFF 2005
hoolet edition 42 - EIFF 2004
hoolet edition 38 - EIFF 2003

hoolet is the magazine of RCGP Scotland. It is supported intellectually, financially and emotionally by RCGP Scotland.

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.