Friend Or Foe

I like creepy guys, admits Sophia Myles' character in Hallam Foe, the
latest feature from Scottish director David Mackenzie. She's not the only
one: the Young Adam director seems to have a predilection for protagonists
who skirt the borders of acceptability, challenging audiences to find them
sympathetic. "I think we're all weirdos," says Mackenzie. "I'm interested in the idea of proper human beings, people who do feel the loneliness and
confusions of the world around them, as opposed to cardboard heroes."

The film, adapted from the novel by Mackenzie's friend Peter Jinks, gets this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival off to a suitably literary start - the festival's official theme being 'Cinema and the Written Word'. It's Mackenzie's love letter to the capital, which features as a dreamlike, magical cityscape, all subterranean, labyrinthine streets and glittering rooftops. Inaugural festival director Hannah McGill was unequivocal in her praise of Mackenzie (whose previous films have all featured at Edinburgh), describing Hallam Foe as "a stunning achievement by all concerned, a film with an unforgettable atmosphere and some of the finest performances of the year."

Hallam Foe also features Jamie Bell's first starring role in a British film since Billy Elliot, and the ludicrously talented wunderkind revels in a showy, challenging part as the titular teen misfit. Bell is consistently excellent, giving a playful, gleefully warped exuberance to a character that could have appeared inscrutable in lesser hands, as Bell acknowledges. "When you pick up a script and on the first page it says 'Hallam takes off his sweater and circles his nipples with lipstick', most actors would probably close it and think otherwise." But he admits a conscious move towards more independent fare. "I feel it's much more rewarding as an actor, you get to really challenge yourself. You're not running away from big monkeys all the time." Roles like Hallam don't come around too often: a cross-dressing necrophiliac voyeur, nursing an oedipal itch while scuttling around the chimney-tops of Edinburgh's Old Town - teen angst doesn't get much loopier than this. Think Holden Caulfield meets Donnie Darko by way of Peeping Tom, then stop thinking: our eponymous hero is a world unto himself.

The cast get full marks for authentic Scottish accents: the always reliable
Ciaran Hinds convinces as the weak-willed paterfamilias and Ewan Bremner
has an enjoyable cameo as an acerbic concierge. The luminous Sophia Myles is especially notable, adding intelligence and pathos to her role. "I've spent a lot of my career playing people from hundreds of years ago, dressed up in corsets and crinolines," she says, "so I jumped at the chance to play somebody who lived in the 21st century who does a nine-to-five routine job." There's genuine chemistry between the leads, and the younger-guy/older-gal dynamic is a refreshing break from the norm.

Bell admits that the "sex stuff" was "immensely awkward" but credits his
relationship with his co-star for allying any discomfort. "I think that a romantic scene where all the dialogue is pure profanities about genitals..." Myles laughs and adds "...it breaks the ice." Mackenzie's oeuvre is testament to an abiding preoccupation with the "sex stuff." After Young Adam, Emily Mortimer will never look at custard the same way again. But the director's depictions of cinematic coitus are, as he affirms, "about much more than just sex." There's a claustrophobic intimacy and unflinching vulnerability to those scenes. "I guess they're always about collisions and about human connections" says Mackenzie. "Those are the things I'm interested in."

Despite twisting narrative threads of loss and estrangement, there's a
playful, warm-hearted sweetness to Hallam Foe, in contrast to Mackenzie's
previous films. "We called the film the beautiful nightmare," says Bell, an apposite summation: despite characteristic flashes of real darkness and an unflinching poignancy, Mackenzie sees his latest film as essentially hopeful, emphasising the possibilities of "rehabilitating a rather damaged kid into the world at large again." Back on form after the lacklustre Asylum, Mackenzie's film is a gripping, edgy and delightfully skewed visual feast with a central performance that will be hard to top, and the best rooftop-negotiating since Mary Poppins. See it first in Edinburgh.