PS : Monday 1245pm : IFC Daily 'Wrapping Edinburgh 09'

Dispatch #12 : Sunday, 4.45-5.15pm.
So, as already mentioned on this page, the prizes have been awarded. Full details here - including, as predicted, the very fine Easier With Practice winning the Best International Feature section. I didn't attend the ceremony myself, having left Edinburgh at 9am yesterday morning due to a commitment which meant that I had to be at a certain north-Newcastle location by noon. All very Get Carter - well, one specific scene, at least ("Don't miss the start on my account."
   The success of Moon in the main festival competition - the Michael Powell Award - was something of a surprise, as the steady consensus was that Fish Tank was pretty much a slam-dunk. I suspect that the final voting boiled down to the two films, and the fact that Fish Tank's Katie Jarvis was so eminently eligible for the 'Best Performance' gong might well have tipped the balance in Moon's direction. In my experience juries do tend to like to "share the love."
   Personally, I'm actually quite pleased - partly because Moon is the kind of picture which tends not to win prestigious big film-festival awards (Fish Tank seemed to tick all the right boxes). And if I'd been on the jury, I probably would have come down in favour of Duncan Jones' niftily existential/philosophical debut (one which, as I've already mentioned, Stanislaw Lem and Philip K Dick would most likely have applauded.)
   The big "loser" of the afternoon, however, is surely Justin Molotnikov's Crying With Laughter, whose star Stephen McCole would emphatically have been my pick for the acting prize. It just got edged out for the Audience Award by Irish kiddies' animation The Secret of Kells, and with Humpday winning the Rotten Tomatoes Critical Consensus prize, goes home empty handed. This is most unfortunate, as at present the picture doesn't have UK distribution and winning any award at the ceremony would have given it that extra nudge that could well have seen it get picked up by an enterprising company.
   My commentary on Crying With Laughter is somewhat overdue, as I saw it on Thursday night (seems rather longer than just three days ago). I'll be reviewing it at length for The Hollywood Reporter, but in a nutshell this is a most entertaining, engaging, likeably confident affair that's a cut above the vast majority of UK films here at what is the biggest annual showcase of British cinema.
   And whereas so many British films founder on grounds of unneccessary melodrama, contrivance, implausibility and coincidence on the script front, Crying With Laughter actually manages to turn those elements to its advantage. That's because the whole film is, in effect, the illustration of a stand-up "routine" by its protagonist Joey Frisk, an Edinburgh comedian on the brink of breaking into the big time. But while he's successful and confident on stage, away from the spotlight it's a whole other matter -  and when he makes an ill-judged crack about a former schoolfriend, he ends up in a whole stew of blood-spattered trouble.
   A synopsis of Crying With Laughter's plot developments would make it sound like a typically convoluted, over-dramatic Brit-pic. But by putting all of this in the context of Joey's act, barrelling the story along with frenetic gusto, and building the whole thing around McCole's terrific performance (yes, he really is The New Brian Cox - spooky that they shared scenes in, of all things, Rushmore), Molotnikov more than gets away with it. Why is McCole so outstanding here? Well, it's partly because he's so utterly convincing as a stand-up (to the extent that I'm seriously considering going back up to Edinburgh to see him take the stage, in character, during the Fringe in August), and partly because of how he socks over Joey's charisma, vulnerability and cockiness, so that his (hackneyed-on-paper) progress from obnoxious, solipsistic schmuck to something resembling decent-bloke normality keeps us watching every step of the way. 
   This really is the festival of the 'Stephen Mc': just like Stephen McHattie in Pontypool, McCole in Crying With Laughter (he's interviewed here) sees an actor previously largely  confined to "character" roles seizing a rare lead part and running with that ball as fast and hard as he can go. The difference is that McCole is still relatively young - 37 or so - and while he's not obvious matinee-idol material (Joey Frisk is at one point accurately summed up as "a fat suit and a shite beard") it'll be a profligate waste of resources if British cinema doesn't employ him to best advantage from now on. The Stateside comparison is Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker - and in terms of cheeky, implausibility-circumventing narrative structure, Crying With Laughter's closest comparison is, outlandish as it may seem, Zack Snyder's Thermopylae-on-steroids extravaganza 300 (no, nothing to do with Gerald Butler's Caledonian roots.)
   I've burbled on much too much about Crying With Laughter, but I am enthusiastic about it and very much hope that UK cinemagoers will get the chance to check it out for themselves. If nothing else, it would surely make a wad of cash "north of the border", where McCole is fairly well-known thanks to TV sitcom High Times.
   But while a straight-to-DVD fate would be cruel for Crying With Laughter, it would be even more of an injustice for the picture I saw immediately before it - and which, at pretty much the eleventh hour, was my one shining discovery of the whole festival. I refer to Sylvie Verheyde's utterly delightful Stella, an affectionate but clear-eyed cine-memoir of growing up in the Paris of 1976-77. 
   A precocious but not very academic 11-12 year-old, little Stella Vlaminck (note those initials) is much more worldly-wise than her fellow pupils at her fairly posh school - how she ends up at such an establishment in the first place is never explained. Her street-savvy is due to the fact that she lives in and above the exceedingly rough-and-tumble bar run by her ever-feuding parents - a raucous but enticing establishment which is recreated with pitch-perfect attention to atmosphere, decor, music and detail. Indeed, the whole movie is just a degree or two away from being a virtual documentary of the era, while there's just enough of a narrative thread to ensure that the picture isn't just a wry stroll down memory lane.
   Young Leora Barbara is rather marvellous in the central role - a textbook case of less-is-more underplaying - though for me the most breathtaking bit of acting came from Laëtitia Guerard as Genevieve, the friend she hangs out with whenever visiting her grandmother way up north in chti country. Just watch the reactions (surprise, delight, impatience, and about half a dozen more) that flit across Guerard's features when she sees Stella for the first time in ages - and wonder how Verheyde, or anyone else, could possibly have elicited such utterly natural, convincing and expressive "acting." Stella is chock-full of such wonderful touches - and of the 29 movies I saw at Edinburgh 2009, I have absolutely no hesitation in naming it the best. Catch it when, or if, you can.
  
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Sunday 3pm
Breaking news ----- award winners announced
Michael Powell : Moon
Performance : Katie Jarvis, Fish Tank
International : Easier with Practice
Documentary : Boris Ryzhy

Saturday 2.30pm : 
Latest Michael Powell Award odds
   4-6 Fish Tank
   9-2 Moon
   17-2 Crying With Laughter
   12-1 Unmade Beds
   20-1 Mad Sad & Bad    
   25-1 Kicks 
   28-1 A Boy Called Dad   
   33-1 My Last Five Girlfriends
   35-1 Boogie Woogie
   40-1 The Calling
   50-1 Running In Traffic

commentary on Crying With Laughter and Stella upcoming

Awards Predictions
Michael Powell Award : Fish Tank
   (danger : Moon)
PPG Award - Best Performance in a British Film : Stephen McCole, Crying With Laughter
   (dangers : Katie Jarvis, Fish Tank; Sam Rockwell, Moon)
Best New International Feature : Easier With Practice 
   (dangers : The Athlete; Baraboo; My Year Without Sex; Van Diemen's Land)
Best documentary : On the Way to School
   (dangers : Big River Man; King of India; Only When I Dance)



Neil Young

Jigsaw Lounge Edinburgh 2009 index page

CRYING WITH LAUGHTER : [7/10] : UK 2009 : Justin MOLOTNIKOV : 93m : Filmhouse (public - complimentary)
STELLA : [8/10] : France 2008 : Sylvie VERHEYDE : 100m approx (house lights came on before end of credits) : Filmhouse (public - complimentary)