Hallam Foe

Perverse but oddly palatable.

Film Review by Lindsay West | 09 Aug 2007
Film title: Hallam Foe
Director: David Mackenzie
Starring: Jamie Bell, Sophia Myles, Ciaran Hinds
Release date: 31 Aug
Certificate: 18
Opening this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, and fortifying Scottish director David Mackenzie's reputation for visceral storytelling, Hallam Foe is a bold, uncompromising depiction of a teenage misfit's psychic chaos. Haunted by the suspicious death of his mother, and with compulsive voyeurism his only outlet, Hallam (Bell) abandons his life at the family's country pile, and flees to the rooftops of Edinburgh's old town, where the vantage point is better. His retreat into a semi-feral state, surviving on a diet of the constant surveillance of crush Kate (Myles), is perverse but oddly palatable (largely due to Bell's hypnotic performance), and the hand picked, spot-on soundtrack will siphon the movie under even the toughest of skins. In the end, Hallam Foe is as much about rehabilitation as it is about damage, its final message oddly uplifting, even inspirational. [Lindsay West]
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