Edinburgh International Film Festival Report 1: BOYZ IN THE WOOD, ANIARA, NOT THE END & THE FURIES

The Edinburgh International Film Festival is filled to the brim this year. We have a guest appearance by Danny Boyle, along with a new Robert The Bruce film from Richard Gray. It’s a great year to be a cinephile in Edinburgh. Me and fellow Film Inquiry writer Jim Ross will be writing reviews for many of these new films, covering both week one and two of the festival. Now, without further ado, lets dive into what the festival has to offer.

Boyz in the Wood (Ninian Doff)

Charming, heart-warming, and entirely engrossing, Boyz in the Wood is a promising debut feature from writer/director Ninian Doff. Set in the Scottish Highlands, the plot follows a group of high school students as they attempt to earn themselves the Duke of Edinburgh Award by participating in an outdoor orienteering exercise. Things soon go south, however, as it becomes clear that the boys are being hunted by someone they believe to be the Duke himself.

The biggest strength of Boyz in the Wood is the excellent performances given by the main cast. The four boys, played by Samuel Bottomley, Viraj Juneja, Rian Gordon and Lewis Gribben, all have excellent chemistry and play incredibly well off of each other. Juneja gives a standout performance here as DJ Beatroot, a young aspiring rapper who’s desperate attempts to spread the word of his music among the Highland community results in some of the films funniest moments.

Doff’s direction is also to be praised. The film is highly stylized, with sequences that strongly evoke the films of Edgar Wright.  It works surprisingly well, although some of the later drug induced moments go on for a little too long. To compliment the strong directing, Doff’s writing is just as solid, with jokes coming quick and fast, allowing the film’s pace to never slow down. It’s just a shame that Doff wasn’t able to work the themes he wanted to explore into the narrative more gracefully. The film’s central theme of a generational apathy towards politics is made slightly too obvious by a speech given by one of the films central characters near its climax. Despite this, Boyz in the Wood is a successful debut feature that is as hilarious as it is endearing.

Aniara (Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja)

Making a good science fiction film is a difficult task. Adapting a long form science fiction poem onto film is even harder. Directors Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja did not give themselves an easy job when they set out to adapt Harry Martinson’s poem Aniara for the big screen. Despite the insurmountable odds, the pair are successful in bringing Martinson’s poem from the page to the screen. Aniara is a bold and beautiful film, that is sweeping in both its scope and thematic complexity.

Following the plot of the poem, the film tells the tale of a spacecraft that is bound for Mars, escorting people off a ravaged and desolate earth. Not long into the journey, the spacecraft is knocked off course and is left drifting aimlessly through the vast expanse of the universe. During this we focus on a group of the ship’s crew as they come to terms with their new and daunting situation.

Aniara is incredibly dense with ideas. The film explores everything from climate change, consumerism and human consumption, to considering humanities place in the wider universe. With all these ideas, it’s surprising that Aniara doesn’t fall flat on its face, and that it is able to balance these ideas with grace – giving each a chance to be explored to a satisfying degree. With all these ideas being explored, it is not surprising that Aniara is filled to capacity with existential dread. This relentlessly depressing tone and atmosphere might be too much for some.

Despite this, the focus of Aniara is its central performances, all of which are strong. Emelie Jonsson gives a standout performance as a women who is referred to as a Mimaroben. She is in charge of a room in the craft known as Mima. This room allows people to access their own memories, and live in them for a short period of time. Of course her character is used to explore some of the films central themes, such as humanities reliance on technology, and to paint a vivid picture of what humanity has destroyed. Even in space, we dream of earth. All this pontificating, however, doesn’t mean that Jonsson isn’t given room to shine. Her performance is excellent, expertly conveying the type of dread you’d expect from someone who is lost in the vastness of the universe.

The production design and special effects are also excellent. On such a small budget, it is amazing to see what the filmmakers were able to achieve. Each set looks incredibly convincing and well designed. The production designers clearly aimed to weave some of the films central themes into the set design, with large portions of the ship recreating the look of a shopping centre, highlighting the films anti-consumerist message. It’s all wonderful work, that brings to mind some of science fiction cinema’s best offerings such as Solaris and Alien.

Kagerman and Lilja prove themselves to be solid directors here, making the most of the source material whilst also injecting their own blend of sci-fi madness into the fray. While most of the film proves their strong direction, it must be noted that the pacing can be faulted. As the film gets into its latter half, some explicit sequences drag on to the point where they lose their initial freshness and shock. The time jumps in the film’s final act are also oddly spaced out and feel rather rushed. Aside from these blemishes, Aniara is an excellent sci-fi outing that, while relentlessly dower, is definitely worth a watch.

Not the End (Sin Fin) (César Esteban Alenda and José Esteban Alenda)

If making a solid sci-fi is a difficult task, one can only imagine how difficult it would be to make a sci-fi romance film. And yet, much like Aniara, Not the End manages to overcome the difficultly of this task. Directors César Esteban Alenda and José Esteban Alenda have made a beautifully heart-wrenching piece, one that transcends the simple novelty of its premise.

The plot follows reserved genius Javier (Javier Rey) as he travels back in time to amend the last date he had with his girlfriend María (María León), who is suffering from suicidal thoughts. Javier attempts to rekindle the initial flame in their relationship by recreating the first date they went on together, in the hope that it will restore their love for each other.

There are echoes of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind here, with the sci-fi twist on a conventional love story. The characters are also similar, much like Joel Barish, Javier is reserved and shy – afraid to take the limelight in his life. This shyness is contrasted by María’s extroverted nature, in a similar way to Clementine’s contrast to Joel. This contrast works nicely as both Rey and León have excellent chemistry with each other, especially as they play into the core differences between their characters.

It’s in this characterisation that some of the film’s problems lie, however. The writing of Javier’s genius and María’s naivety can be quiet clunky at times. Some of this dialogue just doesn’t seem up to par with the rest of the film’s writing, coming across as rather awkward and forced. These are only small blemishes, however, as most of the writing here is strong, it’s just a shame that some of the initial dialogue between the two is so drab.

Directors César and José clearly aimed to pull at the audiences heart strings with this film. Many scenes seem constructed to do just that. But it’s not just these emotionally moving moments that are so effective, it’s also the films resonant themes. Love, regret and forgiveness are all explored within the narrative. Its discussion of regret is incredibly poignant, showing the audience Javier’s deep rooted guilt at not telling María how much she means to him. It reminds us all to show our love to the ones we hold closest – before it’s too late.

I found Not the End to be an incredibly moving piece. It asks us to consider what we would do if we were able to travel back and try again with those we love. Maybe if we were given this opportunity we would do things differently, or maybe we wouldn’t. Not the End seems to be telling us that it’s not in the redoing of previous actions, rather it is in the attempt to amend them itself, that true love lies.

The Furies (Tony D’Aquino)

Australian horror The Furies is filled with over the top gore, ridiculous dialogue, and stock characters. It’s also unrelentingly boring. As the film begins we are introduced to Kayla (Airlie Dodds) as she and her best friend Maddie (Ebony Vagulans) loiter in an underground tunnel at night. The pair are soon abducted and wake up in the middle of an isolated forest, far away from any civilization. It doesn’t take long for Kayla to figure out that they are being hunted by a group of masked men, all carrying deadly weapons.

The Furies’s gore is easily its best element. We are greeted to a plethora of limbs being hacked off and faces being sliced in two. While this splatter is initially fairly fun, it doesn’t take long for it to become slightly numbing. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing and it seems that writer/director Tony D’Aquino has forgotten this. And sadly, aside from this initial novelty of the gore, there is not much else worth writing home about.

While Airlie Dodds is fantastic in the central role, the rest of the cast unfortunately just fall by the wayside. None of them do anywhere near as good a job as Dodds does in delivering some of the films clunky and uninspired dialogue. The masked villains of the piece are sadly also rather dull. None of their costumes are particularly scary or memorable, rather they seem over-designed – like a bad cosplay of a slasher villain.

I would be lying, however, if I didn’t mention that The Furies did make me laugh quiet hard in a few places. Some sections are just so ridiculous that I couldn’t help but bust into fits of laughter. Now, whether D’Aquino intended the film to be as funny as it is, I’m not sure. It’s just a shame that aside from some gut-bustlingly funny moments, The Furies is just a little flat and uninspired.