Edinburgh International Film Festival: Part 1

copyright Hannah Houston @ EIFF

This is my first year at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and all the more exciting for it. Sifting through the catalogue, it quickly becomes difficult to decide what to see as each description is awash with enticing and honeyed words of glorious cinematic promise. But then that’s all part of the experience. I’m a horror fan so the ‘Late Night Movies’ selection seems like a good place to start.

David Bruckner’s V/H/S follows a group of testosterone-driven thugs as they break into a house seeking a video cassette that will, apparently, make them a fortune. The house has hundreds of videos as well as a corpse seated in front of numerous television screens stuck on static. Of course, the videos are duly inserted and played to reveal a grim anthology of horrific tales.



There’s an edginess to V/H/S which is pleasantly uncomfortable. The constant hand-held camera narrative (both within the videos and the group themselves who film their exploits) is relentless and given what the film is trying to do, it works well enough.

V/H/S

While the found-footage genre has proven to be effective as a horror tool, V/H/S manages to create another tension. Instead it shows what we ought not to do and the dramatic consequences of doing so. The movie opens with the youths guffawing as they film their deviant behaviour; grabbing a woman in a car park, lifting up her top as she screams and clutches onto her exposed breasts. The video periodically cuts to one of the boys clandestinely filming himself as he is about to have sex There’s an immediate establishment of the forbidden being caught on camera and it seems we ought not to be watching such things.


It’s a nice idea and more importantly, a relatively interesting one. Sadly the film quickly becomes cluttered and muddled betwixt stories of horror in the woods, vampiric creatures, haunted houses, sacrifices and even a Skype call with a lurking demon. The final one is, admittedly, a refreshingly good watch.

Visually the story works but each video seems just long enough to arouse interest before abruptly ending and too many questions are left unanswered. Perhaps this is its aim but audiences are, I think, looking for more. At nearly two hours, the film is drastically over-long and it’s a big ask to expect the audience to stay tuned. Like most horrors of late, V/H/S ushers its viewer through each tale of the unexplained but lacks any broader coherent story, relying heavily on tired shockers.

Henrik Mestad in Jackpot

Norwegian comedy horror Jackpot (Arme Riddere), on the other hand, grabs you from the off and keeps you guessing throughout. Adapted from the Jo Nesbo book and directed by Magnus Martens, this is an interesting tale of absurdity and greed.

At a plastic Christmas tree factory in Norway, three ex-cons and their supervisor have just won the football pools. However relationships quickly fall apart with disastrously gory and vulgar results.

With a distinctive and strong cast, the apparent mystery is played out with intrigue and comic timing, particularly visible on the faces of cop Solor (Henrik Mestad) and our unlucky suspect, Oscar (Kyrre Hellum). Close shots of their bright faces and emotionless expressions are startlingly dark and funny when spliced with the inept dismembering of bodies.

There are a couple of scenes where the gallows humour feels laboured and the slickness ebbs away as our writer seems to try a little too hard to make us laugh. However, the film sculpts humour into every scene, the majority of which are bang on. The Christmas tree factory is a wonderful setting as the overweight and grubby ex-cons smoke and hurl insults at one another while they check each miniature white tree for quality control.

Slickly cut, well-paced and directed and accompanied by a solid musical score, Jackpot delivers a tight and funny black comedy. It’s not difficult to find elements of the Coen brothers in the twisting and turning plot and Tarantino in the splattering of limbs but the film finds a voice of its own in its unique sense of humour and setting.

John C. Reilly in Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie

It’s difficult to like any of the characters in the film but it’s easy to root for them. Jackpot has its let-downs but they are minimal and happily, not enough to detract from an individual and taut black comedy. The film doesn’t linger in your mind too long afterwards but it does entertain and whisk you along with it as it goes.

From horror to comedy, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie seems promising in cast alone; Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Jeff Goldblum, Robert Loggia and – astonishingly – a cameo from Steven Spielberg. Sadly, and I hate to write this, I despaired over what I saw. Writer and directors, Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker play themselves making a movie with a large budget (see title). When they blow all the cash they try to make the money back by revitalising a failing shopping mall.

The film strikes me as a desperate post-modernist tale as we see the movie-within-a-movie and the movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie. This, however, isn’t the problem. Minutes in, I found myself squirming in my seat at the relentlessly bad jokes, the wooden acting and an increasingly absurd ‘plot’ unsupported by any clear comedy, characterisation or narrative. Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie creates its own reality with zany events and caricatures. Sadly it refuses to operate within the framework it creates and things become very boring very quickly.

Tim and Eric have garnered a loyal following and achieved success in DVD releases and online sketches and perhaps this transition to film is merely a mis-step. As I type, I feel compelled to acknowledge my difficulty with absurdist humour and as much as I try to understand it, I find it consistently irksome. Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie reminded me of that today.

Still, if I could direct you back to my initial excitement as I read the energetic blurbs for each film and even throw in a platitude of my own as I point out there are plenty more fish in the sea. Rent-A-Cat (yes, a film about renting our cats) is a top priority over the next few days and with Pixar’s Brave closing the festival, it only seems fitting that I take in some of the many animations making their debut.

copyright Hannah Houston @ EIFF

For more of my film and theatre reviews visit www.acrossthearts.co.uk

Film Review: Beauty (Skoonheid)

@ The Filmhouse

It’s difficult to know what to make of this film. It dips between mildly engaging, melancholic and shockingly brutal and left me pondering gay cinema and what it’s really about.

Francois is a middle-aged husband running a relatively successful timber business in South Africa. He is tormented with his sexuality as he drunkenly stumbles through sordid and debauched private outings which he later fervently laments. The film opens with him having married off one of his daughters. The panoramic, voyeuristic direction immediately establishes his fascination with his stunningly beautiful ‘nephew’ Christian as he intently gazes upon him from across the room at the reception.

Much of the film is shot this way, silently or accompanied by ominous muted tones as our protagonist struggles with his alienation from the lives of those around him. He stands still and alone, his glassy stare devouring his seemingly happy surroundings. Christian, on the other hand, is animated, sexy and effortlessly charming to all he meets. It’s not difficult to see how Francois can never be part of Christian’s world but Beauty follows his attempts to do so.

As a result, there’s a cumulative intensity to the events. Characters’ faces are depicted closely, through unchanging angles that linger longer than feels comfortable. As such, the tension becomes, at times, unbearable.

Despite this, the pace of the film feels too slow and when we finally arrive at the truly shocking and brutal climax, it is terrifying to watch. I’m loathed to go too much into the scene itself but our reaction (certainly mine) is that of severe discomfort at the visceral callousness of the violence that suddenly fills the screen. This would be fine if the story had engaged or aroused any strong empathy but up to this point, it has not yet managed to do so. Characters are fundamentally uninteresting and unexplained so there’s little sense of understanding at this sudden plot twist.

For me, Beauty fails because it paints a formulaic portrait of the gay man struggling to come to terms with his sexuality and offers nothing more. It seems the director deems the struggle interesting enough without going to any lengths to colour his characters. For this reason the story has become boring, which is a shame. Surely there are countless aspects of homosexuality which are just waiting to be explored. Are we not tired of this particular journey of repressed sexuality? Personally, I’m ready for something a little more meaty and I would suggest gay audiences may feel the same.

What’s worse, following the climax, the plot releases its grip on the viewer and becomes stale. The event in question is glossed over, nothing is explained, there is no transformation and in fact, Christian disappears entirely. Beauty fails to offer any explanation or understanding of the characters’ behaviour that it has so eagerly followed.

Watching Beauty, I am unsatisfied. I wonder that maybe I find the plot boring where others will be fascinated. I yearn for more complexity, more understanding and more thoughtfulness about homosexuality in cinema. One need only watch the emotionally charged and socially relevant Milk to see that homosexuality is capable of being part of powerful and relevant cinema.

Film Review: Monsieur Lazhar

Monsieur Lazhar @ The Filmhouse

A young schoolboy arrives early for class one morning to find his teacher has hanged herself. As the pupils struggle to come to terms with the horror of what has taken place in their classroom, a new teacher arrives who seems determined to help them cope. As the plot slowly unravels, we discover Monsieur Lazhar is also trying to come to terms with similar events in his own life.

Often quiet and subdued, Monsieur Lazhar only shows fleeting moments of emotion and deep connection to his pupils. Refreshingly, the film refuses to dote on the tired teacher-meets-pupil-and-rediscovers-life scenario but rather finds more power in exploring the anger of tragedy and how those left behind must try to comprehend it. The two are often incongruous and that’s fine.

At times there is a coldness about the way Monsieur Lazhar behaves towards his class. In turn, the children display arrogance, immaturity and even callousness towards one another as well as their mysterious new teacher. The film understands character flaws and makes no attempt to hide them. Again, audience’s notions of the teacher and pupil are subverted and the result is a believable story.

In one scene, Sophie, a young pupil, reads aloud a poem of shocking honesty about the events to befall the school. While this is hushed up by teachers and feared by pupils, Monsieur Lazhar encourages her to make sense of what she is going through. There are a number of brief but tender exchanges between the two which go some way to helping them out of their loneliness and these moments envelop the audience.

This is a curious film and all the more watchable for it. Death is not merely tragic and sad but it can be selfish and devastating. As adults, we like to think we have the mechanisms to cope and accept but Monsieur Lazhar dares to suggest there’s far more to it than that.