Apologies to anyone who’s been frothing at the mouth with anticipation for my promised daily pearls of wisdom from the EIFF but I have a small confession to make. I have a job. Another job.
It wasn’t meant to overlap with the film festival, but now it has and it’s compromised my intent to be your roving eyes and ears 24/7. Of course, it's not as if there’s anyone else reviewing the film festival for any other sites, magazines, radio, print or tv. Unless... is there?
So this has how it's been at my other job - you know, like a proper job, not one where you get to sit in the dark and watch great movies and then natter about it to your mates over a coffee and later get stretchered into an ambulance once the after party concludes.
No, I’m talking semi-sober 9-to-5 stuff here. My boss is a reasonable man. He’s noted that I take ‘lunch’ at varying times of the day… say 9am till 10.30a.m, or 11.15a.m to 1.15pm or perhaps 4.45pm to 6.30pm. These variable lunch breaks are strangely about the
same length as a film and these times oddly coincide with press screenings.
Bizarre isn’t it? He also notes that when I come back from my long lunchbreak that ‘I’ve been running’ and ‘look as if I’m still hungry...almost as if I’ve not had lunch’. Weird, eh?
Luckily the opening gala and party last Wednesday didn’t coincide with all that hoo ha so I got to participate in the colourful annual shindig of the beautiful people.
Held at Edinburgh University’s Teviot Union, it's amazing how a few coloured gels over lights can transform a labyrinth designed to confuse the already well-confused students traipsing its corridors as they look for the video games room and people to flirt with. I mean a quiet place to study. But what’s this? No Dylan Moran holding court on the rooftop terrace looking dishevelled and annoyed that he exists? Nope. No Maggie
Gyllenhaal as promised either, neither glowing nor sashaying with her effortless grace and natural beauty through what was once my grotty student canteen hall? ‘’Dya want mair chips wi yer beans pal?’. Ah, that takes me back.
Now its more ‘I was saying to my buddy Lars Von Trier the other day, Lars mate, you’ve just gone too far this time. You really have. I love you man, but seriously what on earth were you thinking?’ Quite.
No the task of sashaying with elegance was left to Alan Cumming who I saw kindly assisting another chap to carry a rather worse-for-wear young lady to what I assume would be a glass of water, a comfortable chair and a mild reprimand.
He really did seem to glide during the task as I imagined Maggie would have. I think they all get it from the nun in The Blues Brothers….you know the one who says ‘and don’t come back till you’ve redeemed yourselves’ as she floats across the room on a cushion of air. Or maybe it was the alcohol altering my senses. There was enough free alcohol to kill not only a horse but a whole stable, the cost of which might have funded a decent low budget film. Ok, to be honest probably not and where would we be without the parties. I mean the whole point of making a film is to have a party later on. Isnt it?
Speaking of films, I nearly forgot to mention there was one involved – the opening gala film Away We Go, a slow, gentle and rather underwhelming affair directed by the now slightly greying and bearded Sam Mendes whose finest work to date is still his brilliant and precocious debut American Beauty.
I have to admit Away We Go didn’t feel like an opening gala. It felt like a TV film or DVD that you watch with a mild hangover laid out on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon with your head tilted slightly seeing it off axis.
You’re watching it because you’re
too tired to reach for the remote and switch channels and it’s just what happens to be on and you kind of get into it. No, I always feel opening and closing films should be dumb but fun blockbusters.
A great Pixar animation or something flamboyant like Priscilla Queen of the Desert.
Something to get everyone entertained and fired up for a party. Then and only then you have a week and half of gritty bleak arthouse cinema from Turkmenistan. Films so damn good that the director’s probably had to go into hiding and you know that you’ll never see it again and the only way to deal with having seen it is to go
and lie down for a bit.
Away we Go had its merits. A notable and subtle performance from its male lead John Krasinski as a young father-to-be, trying along with his wife to enlighten himself about what the future holds as a parent.
Unfortunately, nothing really happens in this picture.
It’s essentially a very wordy and exposition-heavy road movie without the road as Krasinski’s character Burt Farlander and his preganant partner Maya (Verona De
Tessant) travel around America looking for somewhere to root themselves and get advice from their various friends and relatives who already have children.
The film’s weakness is that its script is painfully didactic in its presentation of its ideas of good parenting and moral behaviour without any real understanding
of why people might be otherwise.
There’s a good deal of schmaltz and sentimentality, but despite all this I actually quite liked it. The main couple gradually win you over and the film kind of washes over you gently like a warm inoffensive breeze on a summer evening. Maggie Gyllenhaal steals the film in her cameo as a spaced out hippy living within her own rules of motherhood in the films one genuinely very funny sequence and there is a rather moving pole-dancing scene which brought a tear to my eye although most people I met afterwards felt they were going to be sick at that precise moment. But hey it worked for me.
It was clear at the party that everyone I spoke to who’d seen the film felt split down the middle. It was liked and disliked in equal measure.
Sam Mendes introduced the band to kick proceedings off and then as far as I could tell hid in the VIP lounge – perhaps from the film’s reception. I overheard one lady in passing say’ I’m really disappointed Kate Winslet isn’t here’. I guess she was busy that night. Perhaps she was with Maggie Gyllenhaal and they’re both wondering ‘Aren’t we supposed to be somewhere tonight?’
I did manage a lovely chat with Ian Hart, an actor I greatly admire who’s in town for his new film A Boy called Dad (showing 20 June 8.30pm at Cineworld). He was greatly taken by the beauty of our city and we had a good bitch about corrupt councils that tear down the heritage of our country and replace it with yet more hotels, offices and ugly steel boxes.
He also turned out to be a bit of a fan of Terence Davies who made the incredible and moving documentary Of Time and the City last year about growing up in his
native Liverpool, which of course is where Hart hails from too.
All in all it was a fun energetic and friendly event and although the film may have disappointed a tad, I’m looking forward to the next week. It’s a stronger programme I feel than last year and already the few other films I’ve managed to catch on my now legendary lunchbreaks were terrific. Van Diemens Land, Moon and The Hurt Locker have all impressed. More on them later.
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