EIFF Blog - Day 10. I racked up another Michael Powell Award contender last night in the shape of Matthew Thompson's debut feature Dummy. Once again, this film continues the thematic thread that runs through this year's crop of UK features - namely that of loneliness, abandonment and the striving for human connection.
Perhaps this is what all films are about in general and I just missed the boat before?
And once again, echoing my thoughts on yesterday's Powell contender Helen, Dummy is a bold, interesting and quite original film which doesn't in the end add up or deliver the promise it starts with.
I wasn't quite sure whether I liked it or not while I was watching it, as it was uncomfortable although it kept me intrigued enough to stay on till the end. It's an oddly affecting tale and I thought about it long after I'd seen it, but as a piece of cinema it doesnt quite deliver.
Dummy depicts the trials and tribulations of two brothers, Danny and Jack. Danny is your typical moody angsty late teen into drugs, girls and music. His younger brother Jack is a rather untypical adolsecent probably around 12 years of age. Unlike Danny, Jack is an acutely mannered and somehwat idiosyncratic character rather like a terribly posh and polite butler. Their mother takes her life to avoid the painful degradation of an unspecified terminal illness and instructs Danny to promise to love and look after his younger brother. This proves more difficult than he expects as Jack is unable to come to terms with his mothers death and his slightly eccentric behaviour clashes with Danny's more grown up demeanour.
As a coping mechanism, young Jack rigs up a makeshift dummy, a mother lookalike to caress and talk to while the real mum upstairs develops rigormortis. Despite Danny's relative maturity, he initially goes along with Jack's desire to keep the body around while humouring his affection for the artificial replacement.
It sounds twisted and Lynchian, but it's not. This is really just an average family coping with grief and trying to work out who will take care of them and in the end it's mainly a story of brotherly love. I did feel that the most interesting thing to watch were the interactions and dynamics between the brothers, but this was undermined by various other unnecessary threads in the story.
Aaron Johnson as Danny gives a fine and charismatic performance and I dont doubt we'll be seeing more of him in the future but I wouldn't put my money on it winning the Michael Powell Award. Despite some interesting shots and lighting this a TV film. So Better Things for me still looks like the top contender, but I'm still left with Summer and Donkey Punch to mop up so I'll get on the case right away!
And now to the closing gala Faintheart (pictured). I was rather worried when I read the programmes crit, it made it sound like twenty film student nerds on the internet had cobbled this drama together from as many cliches as possible and somehow dragged a handful of the UK's most beloved comic and acting talent into the embarassing fray. But fear not mere mortals, for Faintheart is an actual genuine proper film and an entertaining one too.
It's a gentle, life-affirming, crowd-pleasing, comedy drama populated by the kind of comic fanboy nerds and sci-fi enthusiast characters you see hanging around Forbidden Planet on a Saturday afternoon arguing over the details of who the best Middle Earth Orc is ever ever like it mattered.
Or they could discuss which famous cup of Earl Grey tea in which episode of Little Klingons House on the Prairie unexpectedly provided the crucial plasma defibrillating boost to the crippled warp drive engine of an M Class star freighter. Ok I made all that crap up, but you get my drift - they're usually a bit gothy in appearance, maybe a bit spotty, bespectacled and wear a Dr Who scarf for good measure. You know who I'm talking about. You're one of them arent you?
Faintheart (as opposed to Braveheart of course) is played by Richard (Eddie 'EN-RA-HA' Marsen who recently gave an astounding performance in Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky), works in a crap B&Q style store and is estranged from his more grown up wife Cath (Jessica Hynes - formerly and better known as lovable comedienne Jessica Stevenson). And of course he's also estranged from his young son whose (and you'll have to forgive me here) name I cant remember nor can I find the young actors real name mentioned in the festival programme nor through an internet search, but he's probably the best thing in it.
His father Richard along with his daft mates get involved in historical battle re-enactments dressing up as pythonesque Vikings, usually getting the crap beaten out of them by more modern Anglo Saxons. Richard generally mucks everything he does up whilst avoiding the more adult responsibilities in his life.
Consequently his epic quest to reunite himself with his wife and son proves to be the real battle in his life and gradually transforms him into a realtively normal adult by the end whilst still retaining his goofy charm and silly antics. Fortunately for us, Richard and his nerdy accomplices (with a film stealing comic performance from Ewen Bremner as his shy, gangly, disaster-prone brother) take us on an admittedly cliched and very conventional drama but with so many daft comic moments and enough enjoyably silly lines of dialogue - (Q "How come you know so much about women? A-"I used to be one") that the film sweeps you up and carries you along with it to the end. It's not highly original, it's just very crowd pleasing and I imagine it'll do good business at the UK box office. A final note - its great to see the wonderful Bronagh Gallagher back on the screen - where has she been and long may she stay.
And now in the spirit of Faintheart's mentality I must go and brush up on my Klingon or more up my street would be what James Bond once told 'M' with 'I'm just brushing up on a little Danish' when he was required of course to save the world. I on the other hand am required merely to see some films and party away so that you don't have to. (I can hear you all going 'Oh god save us' and slapping your foreheads).
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