Wallace Claymore sends us the following from the Edinburgh Film Festival. He highlights three films shown on the highland's screen last week. These little flicks may zip in and out of your local art house cinema so keep your eyes peeled for them.
BEDROOMS & HALLWAYS
Bedrooms & Hallways is a 300% improvement on Rose Troche's previous film, Go Fish. The two films are utterly dissimilar in style and quality. While Robert Farrar's clever, fresh and funny screenplay deserves some of the credit Troche's direction is equally witty and enjoyable. She must have been practicing. The film tells the story of Leo - a gay man who has been confident of his homosexuality since his school days. Brendan, who's been in a relationship with Sally, Leo's ex-girlfriend, for the past seven years, knows that he is straight. When the three of them get together, however, they realize that sexual identity is not as absolute as they had previously believed.
Bedrooms & Hallways is a thoroughly entertaining film. It contains fun, vivid characters brought to life through sparkling dialogue and all around energetic and engaging performances. Kevin McKidd ("Trainspotting"), as Leo, is an accessible and sympathetic leading man while Tom Hollander ("Martha Meet Frank, Daniel and Lawrence") steals the show as Leo's theatrical, sexually adventurous friend and flatmate. While filmmakers must be credited with having the bravery to confront certain previously taboo areas of gay cinema the film ultimately does present a somewhat glib, Disneylandish attitude towards relationships. It also contains one two many suspensions-of-disbelief straining co-incidences. Overall, however, the film is funny, intelligent and consistently entertaining with slick production values and a fast paced story.
GET REAL
Despite the clich̩ ridden plot Get Real, Simon Shore's first feature film, manages to tell sweet, moving story about the difficulties involved in being young and in the closet in suburban Britain. Steve Carter, a 16 year-old sixth form student, has been aware of and comfortable with his homosexuality since the age of eleven. His plump, strong willed best friend, Linda, is the only person who knows his secret. When Steve falls in love with John "sex-on-legs" Dixon Рthe repressed school athletic hero Рhe's forced to face his fears regarding telling his peers and parents about his true self.
The rather unoriginal script, co-written by Shore and Patrick Wilde (who wrote the stage play upon which the film is based), has roughly an equal number of clever lines and embarrassing clunkers. It tells a simple and facilely inspiring story about bravery and being true to oneself. Simon Shore's direction is energetic and colorful, but it's the actors who keep the film entertaining and raise it to a level beyond an after school special. Ben Silverstone, who played the young Humbert in Adrian Lyne's Lolita, gives a thoroughly engaging and believable performance as Steve. He draws one directly into his character's mind while managing to make Steve's thoughts and emotions radiate out through his skin and eyes. The rest of the universally pretty cast of unknowns are equally watchable. Additionally, one can somewhat forgive the film's lack of originality by taking into account the fact that it is obviously targeted at teenagers.
THE TICHBORNE CLAIMANT
A well shot and directed, pleasantly entertaining first feature directed by David Yates and scripted by Joe Fisher. The Tichborne Claimant tells the true story of Andrew Bogle, the African manservant of the Tichborne family, who is abandoned when his charge, Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne, is lost at sea. Ten years later Bogle conducts a search for the missing heir and comes up with a drunken butcher living in Australia who somewhat fits the bill. Bogle gives his chosen claimant a Pygmalion like training in the art of behaving like an English gentleman. Upon arrival back in England, however, the Tichborne family refuses to accept Bogle's claimant as the rightful heir to their estate and a well-publicized lawsuit ensues. Robert Pugh gives a strong, comical performance as the claimant while John Kani is sober yet affecting as Bogle. It's an amusing, well-structured story told in an attractive and commercial style with the requisite number of laughs and a sufficiently moving and sentimental ending. Rather than groundbreaking cinema, this is a well-made, professional film that will charm mainstream audiences if they are willing to overlook the lack of box office names.
