Edinburgh Opening Night Best Party Yet
Every film festival has to kick off with a good party and Times film correspondent Wendy Ide found that the EIFF is on the up....
Edinburgh had started as it clearly meant to go on, with an opening-night party for The Flying Scotsman that blew spots off previous years' events. A new location offered an expansive open-air courtyard and an unusually balmy evening had revellers thronging outdoors. The film's star, Johnny Lee Miller, was conspicuous by his absence, but other cast members made the effort. A kilted Brian Cox munched on the burgers scorched on braziers manned by ruddy, slightly flustered catering staff. Elsewhere a radiant Laura Fraser was mobbed by fans at every turn.
And while the festival always has a few casualties by its end (single malt at 3am has a kick like a mule and people are inevitably going to get damaged), this festival had walking wounded right at the very beginning in the bruised and battered form of the director and film buff Richard Jobson. Recently returned from Hong Kong, where he has been prepping his latest picture, Jobson had a painful eye infection that he was hiding behind shades and a broken wrist sustained after asking the fight choreographer Woo-ping Yuen to show him a few moves.
Goodness knows what kind of state he'll be in by the weekend, when the likes of Kevin Smith and Charlize Theron are scheduled to have arrived and the serious partying will have started.
But this festival is about more than carousing - there are movies to be seen. Two particularly strong British pictures are generating an early buzz. Although it's difficult to second-guess the decisions of the jury for the Michael Powell Award, my vote for best of British this year goes to London to Brighton, an outstanding, hard-hitting drama that spans a day in the life of a browbeaten hooker, her pimp, a runaway child and the man who wants to kill them all.
Written and directed by the first-time feature film-maker Paul Andrew Williams, this is a supremely confident piece of storytelling. The performances, particularly that of the excellent Lorraine Stanley, are blisteringly raw; the story is taut, economical and utterly compelling. You'll leave the cinema feeling as if you've been in a street brawl, but you certainly won't forget it.
Full report and film reviews in The Times