These words lie inside, they hurt me so
Edinburgh Film Festival wrap-up is online over yonder: Antichrist and Antipasto.
Edinburgh footnotes: Last year I saw The Fall and when I came out it felt like Earth’s magnetism had reversed while I was in there – I may have mentioned this before. This year people emerged from Antichrist on their hands and knees looking for someone to surrender to. Different year, different world.
I have seen detective films hinge on sex, drugs, science, sorcery and every type of unseen glowing whatsit in a suitcase. Until The Missing Person, I had never seen one hinge on the power of art to heal America after 9/11. So a marketing challenge there. If “Awesome use of that Edward Hopper painting” is of any use on the poster, then you’re welcome.
The Hurt Locker is not for everyone, but made me yelp like a small child on occasion and I’m taking that as a good thing. Kathryn Bigelow is still the best antidote available to stupidity in action films; so no more duff Lamborghini commercials now, please.
I yelped during the wonderful Modern Love Is Automatic too. I did it quietly every time its deadpan nurse-dominatrix threw a look of withering disdain at the world in general, which was about half the movie, and did it again whenever she switched to bottomless apathy, which was the other half. I laughed out loud when the festival programmer called it ‘pure punk’, which made me think one of us had been hitting the whisky a bit early and watched the wrong film. But in the end I had to stop: Melodie Sisk’s four-minute voice-cracking bittersweet karaoke at the end was just too much. If she doesn’t get you deep in the chest then you’re made of stone. Or disdainfully apathetic, which works here too.
