I don’t have a copy of the Guinness Book of Records to hand, so I’m not sure what the record is for most films watched in one day. Edinburgh Film Festival has a plethora of interesting looking films on today and if all goes well I will have seen seven full-length feature films before the clock ticks over into tomorrow. I am aware it is not on a par with discovering penicillin or inventing X Factor, but it is still quite a feat. Whether Noris McWhirter will be interested I am not sure, but it will at least be a personal best. I’ve not got past five films in a day before so I went to bed early, got up with plenty of time to spare and missed the bus with aplomb.
It was more of a rush than I had intended, but I was at the Edinburgh Cineworld before the start of the first film in this movie marathon. Comrade Kim goes Flying started at 9.20am and I was ready a minute early. From the uniformed girl in the advertisments I had assumed this was a heart-warming tale of how one woman takes on the might of the North Korean airline union to become the first woman pilot. How wrong I was. The uniform is just the standard everyday kit for a North Korean coal-miner. It is supposed to be a heart-warming tale though, of a coal-miner called Yong Mi who becomes a trapeze artist. It’s the first Western financed film to come from North Korea, and gives a glimpse of the formula used to make North Korean films. You can almost hear the director shouting Everyone smile and action… Presumably the Western producers have toned down some of the Up the workers references, but to be honest you’d never know – ‘The working class can do anything if we believe in ourselves,’ is an example of the dialogue. Throughout the film Yong Mi enjoys a number of unlikely coincidences whilst smiling. You know that chap she met on her first day in town? Turns out he’s her new boss. Not only does the national circus troupe need a new trapeze artist, but it has auditions the very day she is in town. Life looks great in North Korea. I don’t know how easy it is to emigrate there but maybe it’s the place for a holiday home.
I had no time to plan my trip to North Korea before I went into another screen to watch Everyone Must Die. Starting a few minutes after the end of Comrade Kim it starred another lost young adult (see Oh Boy, Frances Ha). This time it was Melanie who had moved to the UK from Germany to be with an overbearing boyfriend. She has an unusual romance with – no its not really a romance, more a brief attraction to – a British gangster. Not that he would last long in a Hollywood movie, he can’t even tell when a gun is loaded or not. At one point I thought the film was going to become a delightful farce but instead the moment remained a one off and the film returned to gentle repartee between the two main characters. Melanie seemed to have a too-perfect grasp of English and came out with a few lengthy jokes that weren’t in character. It’s a pity that even in English films a gun needs to appear, but overall Everyone must Die is a low key success and goes straight into my Top Festival Films.
Back to the Filmhouse, centre of operations for the Edinburgh Film Festival, about a 12 minute walk from Cineworld. The next film was Belleville Rendez-vous. No, that was the cycling animation by Sylvain Chomet a few years ago. I can still remember the scene where the grandmother/trainer massages the hero’s tired calf muscles with an egg-whisk. Ouch. No, the film I was watching was Belleville Baby. I made it to the cinema just before the start. It was a smaller screen and the room was busy. I took a seat on the front row and prepared for a French film. Or was it a Swedish film? My vague memory of the programme said it was Swedish but set in Paris.
It turned out to be not really set anywhere. It was in Swedish and French, written, directed, edited and shot by Mia Engberg. Belleville Baby is a film essay, investigating memory and the way that two people can experience the same things and yet have different memories of what happened. I don’t mean in a Rashomon-type way, just that in a relationship one person, let’s call him Person 1 can look back and remember event X whilst the other person (Person 2 seems like a good name) has completely forgotten that event X ever took place and instead remembers event Y. Which Person 1 swears never happened. Memory hey? It’s a funny thing.
Belleville Baby purports to be a phone conversation between a Swedish woman and a Frenchman that she had been involved with a decade before. He had disappeared for ten years – and this is their first interaction since then. The reason is not kept mysterious. Within the first few moments it is revealed he was arrested and has been in prison. Some people might ooh and aah at the slow pacing, the super 8 imagery and the general lack of plot. I’m not one of them. I think it would work better in an art gallery.
Film number four was the Thai movie 36. I have never before been in a screening where more people come in late than are in the screening at the beginning. There were only a few hardy Thai film fans in the room when the film started, but over the next ten minutes more and more people walked in. It was as though they were involved in a Disrupt the Showing happening. One person would come in, decide they want to sit in the middle of a row and lots of excuse me-ing would ensue. The next participant in this performance art had obviously been told to give it a few minutes then make their entrance. Still the film started well. Director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit certainly knows how to frame an image. These are the most interestingly framed shots at the festival. Actors walk in and out of shot, conversations take place with people off-screen, or half off-screen. When actors are in shot don’t assume you’ll be able to see them – they might well be leaning in the shadows of a vending machine. Close-ups are banished. The action follows a movie location scout who suffers one of the modern world’s disasters – one of her hard drives stops working. This wipes out a year of her memories. Structured with inter titles that make cryptic statements the first half was fascinating, but the second fell away.
Old Stock. A Canadian comedy. Something to do with a young man deciding to retire early and live in a retirement home. I’ve heard of someone who did that in real life aged 42. I can see what attracted her, everything is done for you and all your meals are provided. I thought it started at 5.10pm, so I left enough time for a leisurely stroll to Cineworld. Halfway there I checked the ticket and discovered it started at 5.00pm, which meant the leisurely pace had to speed up to something much less enjoyable. Screen 11 again.
Old Stock wasn’t as funny as I expected. A rom-com that reminds you that Western films can be just as formulaic as those of North Korea. (When I write Western I don’t mean Western as in James Stewart and cowboys – just films made in the West). Sometimes the formula works but other times it feels strained. This was one of those times. The falling out with the love interest, the winning her back, they were all done by the book. Where the film differed from most rom-coms was in having a sub-plot based on the injuries of a disabled neighbour. It’s hard to wring comedy from life-changing injuries and Old Stock didn’t manage it.
Part II coming soon
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