EIFF '26 Days 1 - 3
Summer's rolled 'round again and we're back at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Bunny and myself were on top of things just as the programme went live (though I was also travelling up North at the time). We booked ourselves a wide selection of films across five days of the festival, screening at the three main venues of the Filmhouse, Cameo and Cineworld (all easily accessible on our side of the city too). After a heckin' good time at her first Film Fest experience at GFF in Spring, my pal came to stay with us at the flat, cuddle Noodle who she hasn't seen in a while, and indulge in some more indy flicks!
Things were a bit hectic in the lead-up, but Bunny joined me Day 2. At the Filmhouse, we encountered our first tiny duck. It was small and yellow like a squeaky bath ducky, and had been placed to hold shut the metal latch of a storage closet. It thrilled us to hear from one of the ushers that this was not the only secret duck at the Filmhouse. So began our quest; finding a total of 20ish well-hidden yellow duckies and a few rare glitter-type oddities hidden throughout the old building's hallways, café and reception. At reception they were amused by our Duck Hunt antics and gifted us a couple of spares to hide for ourselves. Mine found its way securely into a stealthy doorframe niche, sitting above some wiring; whilst Bunny's placement was the most audacious - atop the Sean Connery Award case (see the right hand pics below). It probably will only last until the end of the Festival when the award gets handed out... but we hope its sassy duckishness brought other cinema-goers joy as well.
Now for the plethora of wild experiences we had with the movies on our first three days...
I admit, I was not expecting a ballet rendition of Romeo & Juliet, the tragic Shakespearean heterosexual romance to be so VERY GENDER! Told from the perspective of a decisively non-binary Juliet, the romance arc becomes more of a deep longing to break free from the rigors of her family's traditionalist expectations; whether familial obedience, gendered etiquette or marriage to Tybalt. Juliet sees the homoromanticism within Romeo's crew: the male comradery elevated to explicit flirtation from Mercutio and Benvolio, and clearly wishes to attain the same ease of movement within the confines of their own household.
The party where the young lovers fall for each other is a glorious runway of holy drag led by the Priest and Jesus-like Apothecarist. This production is certainly not afraid to wear its queer colours on its sleeve; breaching taboos of perversity and euphoria through drug use and dance music. Everything is choreographed incredibly intimately, mixing modern expressive dance with evocative music, drawn from a number of individual choreographers in charge of each scene. There's no dialog, only key quotes from the Shakespearean text spoken between scenes. The narrative itself is shortened slightly with no duel between Tybalt & Mercutio, though Benvolio gets beaten badly by Paris before Romeo steps in and causes Paris's accidental death. This shortening does in a way take away the double blow of Romeo losing his best friend before getting news that his love has apparently killed theirself. Whilst this weakens the bonds between Romeo & Mercutio slightly, it is not so important when the story is told primarily from Juliet's perspective. It also avoids really weighing in on the "bury your gays" aspect of the original tragedy, which honestly suits the messaging in this production better.
I admit that I had a bit of trepidation going in, as it has been so very long since I've seen any ballet... in fact, the last time I watched ballet may have been around the same time I stopped performing in ballet as a young kid. I didn't know how well I would connect with the piece, being that I'm both distanced from the art form and not the biggest fan of the source material (feeling it's one of Shakespeare's weaker, more overwrought pieces usually). But this production proved me wrong. Its intimate modern dance pieces and heart-rending score hit me really hard. Personally it leaves all previous film versions in the dust. 5⭐
Another absolute blinder of a movie about sibling relationships and mental health. With 'The Last Viking' earlier this year, and 'Best Boy' last, this does seem to be a strong theme over the last two years! A brother and sister live alone on a remote Scottish Island, protecting it from the feared "Incomers" from the mainland. They tell each other stories, eat seabirds, fight and behave like feral gulls adhering to the old ways. Their mother died of ill health and their father eventually "gave himself to the Finmen" to allow the siblings to remain on the island. But within their little world, they feel perfectly well-adjusted and normal.
Things change when an awkward council worker is sent to evict them from the island. Already an outsider in his regular life, he eventually gains their trust and becomes initiated to their wonderfully feral family unit. But corrupt forces from the council are determined to remove the family to make quotas and climb the job ladder. Inevitably more folk start arriving at the island with divisive aims and it looks likely that the siblings way of life will no longer be sustainable.
I am an absolute sucker for this movie's quirkiness. It is wild and lewd and queer in parts. The characters are all delightful outcasts, including the mainlander Daniel, who is a D&D nerd and writer of LOTR/Predator fanfic. My people? Why yes, clearly! Definitely worth checking out if you enjoy wonderfully absurd stories of wild landscapes and people even wilder in spirit. 5⭐
Really fuckin' heavy stuff. The tale of two young aspiring actresses travelling to make their names in L.A. and falling into prostitution on the way. It is wonderfully acted, incredibly gripping and realistic, but ooft folks... it is a slog of heartache.
Marie has grown up with a born-again Christian mother who restricted her media access, so the only films she got to watch were black and white classics. She is in love with the idea of the starlet and the silver screen and has it in mind to study at Cal Arts and become an actress. However, her university application is rejected and her tearaway friend has mentioned running away to Hollywood. Getting high to drown her sadness, her best friend Luna's junkie lover takes advantage of her which is the breaking point that drives both girls to become runaways.
They pick up two prostitutes who's car has broken down and inevitably are drawn into their world to fund starting out in Hollywood. After all, some of the screen greats had to turn tricks before they were picked up by the studios, didn't they? Distancing their manipulative sex experiences from their own dreams and aspirations, the four girls work the truck stops and motels along the highways moving ever closer to their goal of L.A.
Though there are redemptive moments on the road where humanity shines through the cracks in the endless stream of johns or the ending of an abusive relationship; the ongoing suffering is very gritty fare. Most of the characters are distinctly unlikeable on multiple occasions. Betrayals happen often and only rarely get comeuppance for the abuser. Friendship frays and ultimately their schoolgirl dreams are crushed in the face of harsh realities. 3⭐
This is a movie about learning to cope with the death of a child through adopting a replicated AI version of their memories in the body of a robot. It immediately raises some rather thorny ethical issues, but doesn't ever fully confront their implications. It is very slow burn at the start, as we get to know the parents of the child who has passed. I was a little worried that the story was going to be strongly pro Generative AI, but the framing does eventually highlight how trying to cling to the memories of the dead is unhealthy. It is also very insistent on showing how the manufacture of these new beings is creating a problem when the family have overcome the immediate loss and end up abandoning the robot replicants. It sits a bit uncomfortably on the fence about whether the robots are mere algorithms of memories or whether they are autonomous entities in their own right.
There is a surprisingly Solarpunk ending where the discarded robots form their own ecologically living treehouse commune out in nature, aided by the family. It is nice that we imagine artificial life as being more in touch with trees and nature than we are, despite all current AI being based solely on the human concept of intelligence. Yet again, despite its tech hopefulness, the story is a little wishy-washy when it comes to drawing any conclusions. 3⭐
A tale of UFOs encounters above a small town in Dyfed in the 90s which turns out to be both a funny and heart wrenching teenage tale of dealing with grief over the loss of a father.
A vivid cast of characters come alive in this quirky story set just prior to the millennium. Our two protagonists have just finished high school, but their outlooks couldn't be more different. Maz doesn't have a lot of hope for her own future. She lost her father to what was described as an industrial accident at a military base 5 years ago and has recently remembered that the Caradoc Thing, a local orange-lit UFO, definitely had something to do with it. Elis is her best friend and really wants to support her in the quest to unveil the truth, though he will be leaving for university in London after the summer. When UFO hunter and tearaway delinquent dad Bryn features on the local news, the two teens seek his help in discovering more about the Caradoc Thing. Maz also seeks a regressive trance from the psychedelic owner of the local headshop, Shifty Gruff (played by a truly effervescent Michael Sheen) to see if she can remember the UFO that she witnessed as a child.
With these comrades and unlikely support from a local troupe of delinquent pre-teens, the UFO hunters plan to break onto the not-so-defunct military base to acquire equipment they are sure can contact extra-terrestrial life. Small-town chaos ensues, and everyone is forced to face whether unveiling the truth is worth losing friendships and endangering family over. This story humorously delights and causes deep heartache in equal measure. Honestly folks, it's flippin' stunning! 5⭐
Welp. That was... an E.X.P.E.R.I.E.N.C.E., which pretty much left the whole audience questioning "What the FUCK did I just watch!"
An early experimental film by Takashi Miike, director of 'Audition', 'Ichi The Killer' & 'The Happiness of the Katakuris'. A truly absurd ride through increasingly perverse levels of depravity, it really is a movie at the peak of sensationalist shock cinema. The problem is, of course, it's impossible to call this movie "good" in any shape or form. I am literally only going to give the vaguest summary of narrative, which is: an agent of pure chaos arrives as a visitor at the house of the most dysfunctional and abusive family in Japan, to try and psychologically break them for the betterment of family unity and at the extreme expense of everyone around them. Trigger warnings off the bat for incest, rape, casual violence & battery, drug abuse, excessive bodily fluids & solids of every damn type, extreme gore, and necrophilia.
Like, I legitimately do not know how this movie got made, and cannot in all honesty recommend anyone watch it. However, having seen other traumatising video nasties made purely for shock value... weirdly, I do understand why it exists. You could argue this is an incredibly wry tongue-in-cheek psychological analysis of Japanese society at the turn of the 21st century, but honestly it revels in its own degradation too much to support that assumption. It does its job in thoroughly unsettling the audience to the extent where you MUST morbidly laugh else you start maniacally sobbing! Thorough filth that I've no wish to ever see again, but can weirdly respect the actors who somehow managed to make the dang thing whilst also remaining sane. 2⭐
A woman goes to "The Clinic" to fix what she finds wrong with her face and hopefully find fulfilment in realising her inner beauty. There was a fairly solid core story here of realising an internal identity through transforming one's body. Only this wasn't explored to its full potential as it could have been. Perhaps a stronger angle through a Trans lens might have suited it? There were fascinating things that could have been done about revealing the monstrous inside as provocative deconstruction of traditionalism (and the associated psycho-sexual drive behind plastic surgery as social transgression). Sadly, the script swings between convolutedly poetic and startlingly basic cliche, and has increasing trouble climbing out of the surreal pits it digs for itself.
Sadly, the main story also keeps getting side-tracked by an oddly dull and hypocritical male lead whose story veers into lunacy with a climate change B-plot full of holes and a mysterious horse-as-father metaphor. In an attempt to be non-judgemental of people's personal aesthetic choices whilst also being critical of modern corporatized beauty standards, the script honestly doesn't know where to go or what conclusions to draw. It's a shame, as I feel this would have been a blinder of a story with a tad bit more focus on a key arc & theme.
I don't feel this film went down very well with the audience we were with, as they almost all abandoned us before the Q&A session. I've no ill will towards the film, which I feel did attempt to explore some very interesting core concepts... it just failed in successfully stringing these themes together into a cohesive narrative. As it was, I didn't dislike the watching experience, but honestly this movie was a mess. 3⭐
[COLLECTED SHORTS] "Animation Shorts"
A wonderful mixed-bag of animations covering the scope of slice-of-life, through surrealism and comedy, to full-fledged repulsive horror. The ones that stuck with me most were:
"PLEASE", a stop-motion felt doll short about loneliness and the absurdity of modern love was genuinely touching and hilarious.
"Paradaïz", a short about a woman's return to her flat in Sarajevo after fleeing the country during the Bosnian War. The sentiment about mending the bullet holes of your past and forgiving your traumatised inner child legit had me in tears.
"Merrimundi" was a thoroughly haunting stop motion using clay, puppetry, baby doll heads, papier-maché, glitch-art, religious iconography and a narration/soundtrack in multiple world languages. To me the short felt like an allegory for the devolution of humanity as result of the rise of Generative AI - naturally created fully in the most visceral of physical mediums. It's horror that is disturbing and repulsive, but also full of hideous beauty.
And finally "HAG" was a truly sassy short in a vivid neon and black palette which spoke of the difficulties of loving yourself when the world holds such specific demands for young women. The fear of choosing the wrong life direction and turning into a lonely old hag hangs constantly over the protagonist, and it is only through the support of her wild friends and her wise Gorgon snake hair that she will figure out the truth to set herself free. I loved the story craft and honesty of this one.
These shorts were quite a rollercoaster of experiences, but I found all incredibly fun! 4⭐
Well I suppose there has to be one movie per festival that absolutely wipes ya out emotionally. As this is the story of a tearaway young man busting his best friend out of hospice care for one last night on the town, we were already prepared for something quite dark. But fuck, this movie absolutely floored us with a dual one-two punch of youthful humour and utter soul-scouring heartbreak.
It's an incredible study of the mental pressure on young men to bottle up their honest feelings and deal with trauma. Frankie is a disaster lad who lost both his parents at a young age and is quickly spinning off into self-destruction after his best friend Taylor is taken into hospice with terminal bone cancer. Taylor is clearly a cheeky, sensitive lad who's been swept along with the exuberance of his mate but still dotes on him greatly. There is a love, loyalty and comradery here that is non-sexual but clearly homoromantic in nature. Of course worldly expectation of stoic platonic ideals have forced both lads to bury their feelings under shrugged-off jokes or enforced silences. After their final night out spirals into hopeless sadness and frustration, Frankie has to confront what a future without his best friend means.
Exhilarating and brutally honest, this film endears you to both boys (troublemaking little shits that they are) and all the folks surrounding them. It will thoroughly stamp all over your feelings in the best of ways. It will mess up your heart and tearstain your face. Me and Bunny were absolute wrecks after watching. Pure bawlin'! Go see it. It's my personal highlight of this year's festival and will be going on my Top 4 for this year. 5⭐
[SHORT] "Skinned"
Snappy little horror piece about a man being a piece of shit to his partner by purposefully removing a condom during sex without consent. The imagery keeps returning to the pathetic discarded rubber on the floor. Justice is finally served in a Hellraiser-esque story twist. A nice little pent-up emotional catharsis piece overall, and very, very short. 4⭐
Overall a solid horror movie that admittedly veers strongly into cheesy tropes by the end, but also does a blinding job with cinematography to create a terrifying encroachment into liminal space. This is the tale of two urban explorers with a YouTube series going to investigate an abandoned medical facility in the North of England. Of course, the place does not turn out to be as abandoned as expected. The build-up of tension through multiple-viewpoint cameras, hand-held found-footage, half-seen shadows and figures just out of line-of-sight is masterful.
I do have a bit of a gripe about how the two leads are meant to be friends who started this Urb-Ex project together. Honestly, Adam is a massive wankstain of a whiny manchild and should have been ditched by Jess ages before their working relationship got this bad. She is just about to set off on her own endeavours after they film the last episode. All her instincts are telling her get out of there, and Adam is being petulant and actively sabotaging both their survival. Even before the shit really hits the fan (or should that be "bile hits the bathtub"), he's constantly being casually cruel and gaslighty, so it is kind've hard to understand how they were ever friends; even despite the teasing back-and-forth? However, potential supernatural interference and corrupt conspiracy are working against them both, so I'll let a lot of the horror protagonist stupidity slide. I'm also a bit disappointed in the cheap jumpscares, under-distressed set dressing and heavily gamified story beats towards the end, but these things are sort've expected in low budget horror. Really don't hate it, just wish it was a tad more subtle maybe? Perhaps we could have had a bit more character growth in Jess over the story arc, as the terrors started becoming more corporeal?
I'm probably just being nit-picky. No matter, I was fully in it for the run-down abandoned setting and eerie liminality. Those were bang-on! 4⭐
So that's the first batch of film reviews from the festival. A hectic mix of true masterpieces and atrocious video nasties already! Contenders for personal favourites have been pinpointed... shall we get some more legendary screenings in the second half? I've got those reviews standing by and the next blog shall be up in a couple days time...
