The Heiresses (Las Herederas), Odeon, Edinburgh International Film Festival

A couple in their late fifties, Chiquita (Margarita Irun) and Chela (Ana Brun) have been able to live comfortably, and with some social standing, on the wealth inherited from their families.  But now money is getting tight and they are selling off some of the heirlooms.  Chiquita is the driving force, pushing things along, Chela is an artist, quieter, prone to depression.

When Chiquita is imprisoned on fraud charges Chela is forced to emerge from her place in the background and find a way to earn some money.  In doing so she starts to rediscover aspects of her own personality, long submerged within the relationship, and realising that when her partner returns she won't be able to fit back into the same mould, that there must be more to life than what was there before.

A slow burning tale, shot in short scenes and with a lot of close ups.  An almost entirely female cast, the few men in bit parts, with dialogue bouncing along on the surface of the underlying emotions.  And a stunning central performance from Brun who conveys so much while saying little.  A performance of the eyes.

The film is a bold statement coming from a Paraguay that (the director told us after the screening) remains fixated on macho culture, yet is so much driven by the actions of women.  It's a universally applicable study of the power dynamic in relationships, and what people sacrifice, often without realising, to make them work.  A brilliant achievement, and no surprise that it's been winning so many awards at festivals.

The Heiresses gets a UK release in September and is well worth seeking out.

Dallahan, Voodoo Rooms

Opening the gig was local guitarist DaveBeMac.  At times reminiscent of the great Andy McKee in his fingerstyle playing, Dave is fascinating to watch at his craft, playing his own compositions.  Laying the guitar across his lap he plays it like a combination of strings, keyboard and percussion, weaving complex tunes across a rhythmic background.  Held more conventionally he uses sampling to build layers of sound, adding fast fingerpicking to round off the depth of the piece.  There are more influences in there than you could shake a stick at, but you get the sense of a true rocker in the heart of the music.  He's funny too, with a fund of stories about the background to his writing.  A perfect start to the evening.

This is the fifth Dallahan review I've written, so previous readers will be aware that I'm a fully paid up fan.  Tonight's performance only served to confirm that.  The ensemble playing is as tight and imaginative as ever, Jack Badcock's vocals seem to improve year on year, and it was good to hear an even stronger Hungarian influence coming through, courtesy of Jani Lang's fiddling and vocals.  There were several new songs which will be appearing on their long overdue third album, out in October, which promise to make it every bit as satisfying as the previous two.  The merger of Celtic and Eastern European playing styles and influences continues to produce a sound that is unique and enjoyable, and the band has a relaxed and engaging stage presence, much of it from Andrew Waite's interjections and the obvious friendship shared across the quintet.

So it was a shame that some people from a private party in another room made their way into the audience and talked during much of the performance, to the band's clear and justifiable irritation.  Dallahan's music deserves so much more than that.

Calibre, Odeon, Edinburgh International Film Festival

Vaughn (Jack Lowden) will soon be married, there's a baby on the way, and an old pal is dragging him off to the Highlands for a few days of hunting.  Marcus (Martin McCann) is the hunter, a smooth city boy with a bit of a coke habit.  They set off from Glasgow to recapture old times, have a few drinks and maybe bag a deer or two.  What could possibly go wrong?

A night drinking with some of the locals (many of whom show a low level of tolerance towards the incomers) they set off into the forest in search of their quarry.  But when Vaughn accidentally kills a child who's wandered into his line of fire things get out of hand very quickly.  Marcus takes the lead in covering up the events, but in such a small community suspicions are hard to suppress.  Very soon the would be hunters find themselves cast as prey, and Vaughn will be forced into making the hardest decision of his life...

It's a common enough theme - how would we react if we were accidentally responsible for the death of another human being?  While the plot is very much conventional thriller, with (first time) director Matt Palmer (and an excellent editor) steadily raising the tension levels not once, but twice, the psychological elements are played out in the features of McCann and, most impressively, Lowden.  Meanwhile the locals present us with a mix of logic, anger and raw emotion that determine the fate of their big city visitors.  If there's a flaw it's in the suggestion  that a twenty first century Highland community could be a bunch of hicks from Deliverance, but it certainly works in terms of driving a scintillating plot.

The lasting impression is of Lowden in the closing shot, a wordless picture of what one weekend away has done to his psyche.  An excellent and very Scottish movie.

Loveling (Benzinho), Odeon, Edinburgh International Film Festival

Every family is different, every family is the same.  Set in Brazil, this is a story that could take place anywhere.  Told over a period of less than a month, it's a snapshot of all the good and bad and wonderful that makes up family life.

Irene (Karine Teles) lives with husband Klaus and their four sons in a crumbling house with dodgy plumbing and a door that locks fast resulting in the family entering and leaving by a ladder up against the window.  They are joined by Irene's sister, and her young boy, hiding from the fists of her addict husband.  Together they form an unbreakable unit of bickering, loving individuals, with a desire to make life better.

Klaus is a dreamer, full of get rich schemes that never quite work out.  Twelve year old Rodrigo is rarely separated from his tuba, and the young twins just want to have fun.  When the oldest boy, teenager Fernando, is offered a place in a professional handball team in Germany Irene finds herself torn between hanging on and letting go.  A new worry to add to the everyday problems of a mother, wife and sister doing her best for her family.

It's beautifully shot, intimate and warm, and there's a wonderful opening sequence under the titles that encapsulates the togetherness of the group and the humour that comes out of their lives.  Meal times, the children playing in the bath, outings to the beach are noisy, chaotic, very real.  The messiness of life is all there, and Fernando's sudden chance for success is one more issue to be dealt with, which they face together and individually.  It's also very funny at times, unafraid to use moments of slapstick to get the laughs.

Teles (who shares the writing credits) gives us a marvellous central character, so often the dependable one, frequently vulnerable, determined that she will also keep her own identity.  A great performance, nuanced, emotional without ever descending into sentimentality, and a range of facial expressiveness that makes words redundant.  

There are no big disasters, no real violence, no overblown dramatic moments of spectacle.  Just a simple story of family life in all it's confusion and doubt and laughter and love and constant minor difficulties to overcome.  And a reminder of what's important in life.  Highly recommended.

White Chamber, Cineworld, Edinburgh International Film Festival

A portentous opening sequence brings us a future UK which has fallen to the rise of neofascism, which in turn has led to a military coup and subsequent uprising.  Civil war has become the new normal.

Ruth (Shauna Macdonald) wakes to a small stark room, white panels on all sides, perforated metal floor below, and is subjected to a strange, disembodied, interrogation and sudden, brutal torture, but swears she is a lowly cog in the machine, knowing nothing.  After twenty minutes of this intensity the action switches back five days, and, day by day, gives us the events that led up to Ruth's incarceration, turning our perceptions on their heads.

The twists that follow show the fine dividing lines between captors and captives, and the twisted justifications for inhuman behaviour that humans will use when they have a 'cause', have 'belief'.  And the power of revenge as a motivational factor.

The film makes no effort to nail a particular political standpoint, but it's equally clear this is envisaged as a Britain suffering the worst effects of the brexit fallout we are already seeing.  (And makes an underlying assumption that 'the UK' will continue to exist....)  There's a mishmash of genres at work throughout (something the director, in an interview after the screening, said he was aiming for) so it's hard to push this into any box - sci-fi, psychological drama, thriller, apocalypse, horror are all in there.  This makes it satisfyingly unpredictable, but leaves the viewer feeling unsatisfyingly confused.  And the horror elements are so memorable as to swamp memories of the more interesting aspects of the movie.

Great supporting performance from Nicholas Farrell as a calming centre to the storm, and the sets, whilst clearly done on a shoestring, are impressively clinical and devoid of empathy.

As The Handmaid's Tale has become the gloomy prognosticator for Trump's America,  White Chamber, as a story, had the potential to take on the role of our own dystopian warning.  It misses that target by some distance.  There's a lot to enjoy about this film, but it's too flawed to be any more than an entertainment.

The Isle of Love, Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh

A small Hebridean island, a place of permanence and transition, where people come and go and stay and leave.  So The Isle of Love begins, introducing us to a range of characters who are on the island for their own varied reasons.  A wild man living off the land, escaping from .... whatever ; a couple trying to patch up their marriage; a lovelorn man, seeing no future; a woman wanting to change her life.  They, and sundry other characters, provide a mix of plotlines that weave in and around one another, and come together at the end, exploring their own dilemmas and the impact of the island on their lives.

The set looks a mess at first glance, but reveals it's cleverness, able to to work as beach, harbour, cliffs, hills, rooms and shops.  There's a cast of six.  Five handle the various roles and share the narration that moves each story forward.  The sixth member is Adam Ross, driving force of indie band Randolph's Leap, leading the music with guitar and an excellent voice.  The others are also accomplished musicians and competent singers, and together form a full band line up with a folkpop feel to it.  Ross also briefly joins the action, playing himself traveling to perform on the island, and quickly shows why he's the musician!

That slight weakness aside, this is a strong ensemble performance, with no individual standing out, but everyone doing their job effectively.  There's a decent script too, funny, intriguing, thought provoking, and the songs are to the point with some clever lyrics.  You know where you are when you hear someone described as talking like a weatherman.  Occasionally, with so many characters coming around, it can be hard to keep up with who has which problem to resolve, but it all falls into place towards the end.

This is a play with music, rather than a musical, and although there is a feelgood ending of sorts, it also reminds us that there are't always easy answers to our problems, that running away rarely solves them, and sometimes the place you need to be isn't always where you thought it was.  Very enjoyable, with catchy songs and some real meat on the bones of both plot and character.  Recommended.

Edie

I reviewed Edie almost a year ago, in the EIFF, and was interested to see if it was still a pleasure second time around, and if I would come away with different impressions.  So I'm not going to go over old ground, and you can read that first review here.

The first thing to say is it remains enjoyable and inspiring.  Yes it is a bit overly sentimental at times, and can be predictable, formulaic even, but the subject matter is unusual enough to transcend that. There aren't many action parts around for eighty-somethings.

Sheila Hancock's Edie dominates of course, but this second, more critical, viewing does show up her occasional tendency to over-emote, although she has plenty of wonderful moments, and moments of wonderment, for this not to be a big issue.  Whereas Kevin Guthrie as Jonny looks all the more assured and impressive.

The cinematography is the other big plus, those individuals pitted against a wild landscape give a powerful sense of just how small human beings are in a planetary context, especially to a unreconstructed city-dweller like myself.

Edie should have wide appeal, not just to older generations, but to anyone who feels they want to get more from their life.  And, as last time, I'd advise you to watch this short video beforehand, to get a greater sense of Hancock's achievement in making this movie.

Go and see Edie.