quiet trickster

Predictably, I’m behind on updating my reviews of the last EIFF films. I stayed overnight in Edinburgh at the weekend, so was away from my computer, and the backlog kept getting bigger and bigger…

‘Course, the real reason I’ve failed to update the reviews is that the first thing I did on returning home was watch the penultimate episode of Doctor Who, and immediately collapsed into a fangirlish heap of ‘What? No! They can’t! They wouldn’t! It can’t be!’ (If you don’t know what I mean, watch this now. Or not. I’m not forcing squealing fandom on anyone. Really.)

After recovering, and having contempt for spoilers, I spent several hours chasing the feverish speculation online about the series finale. To which the only real conclusion that can be made is that Russell T. Davies et al at BBC Cardiff have pulled off a major coup in these spoilered times - nobody knows what’s going to happen.

Sigh. I thought Heroes was bad for my cliffhanger rage…

Daaaviiiiid! (Isn’t he lovely? He is lovely, isn’t he?) If he’s leaving, I may have to hunt RTD down and kill him…

Rather good low-budget SF film from Mexico, the debut feature of Alex Rivera. It does show it’s budget in the CG effects (think mid-90s TV level), but for the most part makes the best of it.

No stunningly original ideas (1 part Matrix, one part Minority Report, and so on…), and the themes/subtext are pretty obvious - Mexico/US relations, migrant workers and the exploitation thereof, water rights - but the story itself carries along quite well. It doesn’t attempt to create a ‘futuristic’ future, instead focussing on the depressed rural areas and Tijuana slums of a near-future Mexico cut off from the US. Instead of migrants, the country supplies the US with workers through the ’sleep dealers’ of the title: factories where workers are plugged in and remotely connected to robots in the States. Of course, spend too much time plugged in (as workers desperate for extra cash often are), and bad things happen.

This particular theme is eventually downplayed - possibly the movie couldn’t address the larger issue on this scale of film. Instead, it focusses on the connections between three characters - the young man who has to come to the city to work when his father is killed by the company who owns the water, the city girl who meets him and sells her memories of him even as she falls for him, and the remote fighter pilot responsible for his father’s death. It’s this third character that leads to the rather weak ending, as he tracks down the young man in order to apologise and try to make amends. This leads to rather forced (and rushed) attempt at a Hollywood ending, and although the film is explicit in saying not everything is resolved, it remains unconvincing.

It’s a shame, because the set-up is convincing and atmospheric, and the leads are sympathetic if a little two-dimensional. It’s always good to see SF films from outside Hollywood - there’s plenty of horror and fantasy (to whatever degree), but far less straight up SF.

Another strong contender for best title of the festival, this is a cute, funny little Korean film about a guy struggling to get his feature film debut made - or indeed, written.

There’s a slightly twitchy cross-cutting of stories/timelines/fact/fiction that could get irritating, but luckily it’s executed with enough irreverence to be endearing. Lots of nice comic touches, with a particularly neat central concept, whereby the central character (who loses his girlfirend because he talks too much), attempting to write about a character with aphasia, first develops aphasia, and then finds himself making sounds like musical instruments when he attempts to speak (only able to be understood when heard through electronic equipment).