Hallam Foe

I went to see Hallam Foe in the IFC over the weekend. It was a most interesting film. Very, very unsubtle and fast moving, and rollicking along through a series of some most unlikely events involving lots of sex and selfishness to a surprisingly satisfactory end which left me, well, satisfied.

The plot is simple enough, with sword of Oedipus hanging all over it. Hallam is just after finishing school, but he is far from grown up yet. Hallam's mam died in a boating incident a few years back and he is having trouble coping. He retreats to a tree house on the grounds of his rich architect father's rural Scottish almost castle, and uses binoculars to spy on locals doing it in the woods.

In the first act his older sister, possibly a steadying force, departs for Australia, and his new step-mom, formerly his Dad's secretary Verity (Claire Forlani!), definitely an imbalancing arrival, arrives. Hallam suspects Verity (great name!) of offing his mam to install herself in the almost castle, and is fairly blunt about his suspicions, calling her a prostitute in an amusing scene in a fancy restaurant.

Verity is well able for this though, and confronts him in the first of a number of the mildly disturbing when you think about it mother / son encounters that run through the film. Hallam leaves for Edinburgh's mean streets, which are wet and dark and where he is mistaken for a rent-boy. He is a resourceful sort though, and soon finds another replacement mother figure in the shapely shape of a HR manager in a swanky hotel.

That is about enough of the plot, but there is plenty more, even if it is never over surprising. Jamie Bell as Hallam, is likable and believable as the slightly unhinged but sympathetic hero. Ciaran Hinds is understated as Hallam's ineffectual Dad. Sophia Myles is a nice mix of sweetness, vulnerability and tight business skirt as Hallam's Mom number three. Forlani, who I last saw in the 1990s in Meet Jack Black and more memorably in Mallrats, is fine as the bitchy, sexy, nasty step-mom. Ewen Bremner has a small role as a bell hop with a surprisingly thick Scottish accent.

Hallam Foe is only about an hour and a half long, and the plot unwinds quickly and straightforwardly with characters not spending too much time thinking about consequences of what they are going to do. The film is very funny, with Bell showing a good sense of comic timing. He will be a star, methinks. The soundtrack - with Scottish indie groups from the Domino label like Orange Juice, Sons & Daughters and, well, Franz Ferdinand standing out - is top notch (film won best music, as well as independent jury prize at Berlin 2007).

The real star of the film though is director David Mackenzie, last seen (by me) in gritty but intellectual drama Young Adam, which had Peter Mullen, Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton in a love triangle on a barge. This is another literary adaptation, from a novel by Peter Jinks (never heard of him), but it is more whimsical and the style is more showy, but not too much so. Some nice touches, such as close-ups of eyes and hands and also sweeping vistas of night-time Edinburgh roofscapes, set an intimate, slightly off-kilter tone, that fits the story very well. Sexual acts and actors of various sorts tie the story together and Mackenzie's presentation of these is skillful.

Recommended. And if you don't take my word for it you can check out Nic Roeg's approving letter to Mackenzie on Hallam's blog.