Hannah McGill, the new artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, must be counting her blessings that in her first year the perfect title was available for the opening night of her programme. With Hallam Foe, David Mackenzie returns to the festival that premiered his feature debut The Last Great Wilderness in 2002, and which opened with his 2003 film Young Adam. On top of that, Hallam Foe is largely set in the Scottish capital. It’s rare to find a high-profile film of such quality that also ticks the rare box of civic pride.
Mackenzie’s four-feature career has been a bumpy ride. The Last Great Wilderness, co-written and starring his brother Alastair (star of TV’s Monarch of the Glen), was an appropriately low-budget, lo-fi debut: a mismatched-buddy road movie that took an unexpected swerve when the two male protagonists hole up at a remote Scottish hotel populated by a variety of improbable eccentrics.
Young Adam, starring Ewan McGregor, Emily Mortimer, Tilda Swinton and Peter Mullan, was a notably more polished follow-up. Based on a novel by Alexander Trocchi, its star cast and provocative sexy trappings could not disguise its intrinsically uncommercial essence – audience members looking for points of emotional access had a hard time locating them – and box-office did not quite match the pre-release buzz and critical acclaim.
Then came Asylum, which on paper had all the right elements: Patrick Marber (Closer) adapting Patrick McGrath’s novel; a cast including Natasha Richardson, Hugh Bonneville, Ian McKellen and Marton Csokas; and direction from Mackenzie. The resulting film – whose post-production was reported to have been far from smooth – was a big disappointment.
Hallam Foe’s deep-pocketed UK distributor – the Disney-owned Buena Vista International – believes that finally Mackenzie has made a distinctive work that will also cross over to a wider audience, and it may be right. Donnie Darko could be an apt parallel, with Jamie Bell providing a highly charismatic turn as the troubled titular Hallam. Taking the dysfunctional-teen template into a slightly surreal realm, he begins the film living in a treehouse, spying on neighbours and obsessing over his young step mum (Claire Forlani), who he believes was responsible for his mother’s death. Relocating to Edinburgh, he turns the city’s roofscapes into his own personal playground, and takes a job as a kitchen porter in order to be closer to a woman (Sophia Myles) who reminds him of his dead mother.
With David Shrigley’s cute animated title sequence carried through into the marketing to give Hallam Foe a distinct visual identity, and a soundtrack peppered with songs from the Domino label’s cool roster (Junior Boys and U.N.P.O.C. are highlights), the film is working all the angles for media and youth-audience attention. Mackenzie even throws a bone or two to his own (older) generation with songs by former Scottish wimp rockers Orange Juice and the Pastels.
Of course, none of this would matter if Hallam Foe didn’t actually deliver, which it does. Mackenzie is vastly well-served by Bell, who makes you root for, and care about, a highly unconventional character that in other actors’ hands might have been capsized by an excess of quirk. And the story becomes truly compelling as Hallam’s relationship with Myles’ mother-lookalike becomes both sexual and complexly emotional. Hallam Foe may at times be an unlikely tale, but it’s affecting, compelling and never less than entertaining.
Hallam Foe is out in UK cinemas on 31 August.
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