I arose at some ungodly hour this morning to make it into Edinburgh in time for the press screening of
Toy Story 3. The EIFF has developed a fairly good relationship with Pixar of recent years, having shown both
Wall*E and
Ratatouille. This is the most commercial movie of the festival, but if they are going to align themselves with a commercial studio then what better than the almost consistently brilliant Pixar? This is a fairly big movie for them to get hold of, although it should be said that its screening today (Saturday) comes a day after the American release, so the internet is already awash with reviews, although I managed to avoid reading any before the screening. It, bizarrely given the state of modern piracy, comes out here in the UK a full month from now. I walked into the cinema excited to be seeing it a month early, but with a strong feeling running through my head that it would, inevitably, be a let-down. How many great Part 3s follow great Part 1 and 2s? None, thats how many. I was fairly sure it would be at least a bit of a disappointment, although was hoping that if anyone could buck the trend it would be Pixar. And they did. I did not want the movie to end. It was wonderful, funny and poignant. Its theme of lost childhood touched me, partly because the first
Toy Story is amongst my earlier memories of going to the cinema. Others who saw
Toy Story as children I think will respond similarly, while kids new to the series will find much to love in it. I struggle to think of a single criticism I can make of it, except that I have to wait a month to see it again. I dont know how Pixar does it. Their name is the only one in the American movie business that is a guaranteed sign of quality. In this age of disappointing sequels and empty-headed blockbusters, they should be treasured deeply. I think they may have just rounded off one of the most consistently good trilogies in the history of the movies.
I followed
Toy Story 3 with
Thelma, Louise and Chantal, a French comedy about three middle-aged women who leave or are left by their partners and go on a road-trip to a wedding theyve been invited to (one of their exes is marrying someone they share a mutual dislike of). I was wary, mainly because of the title (which was admittedly all I knew about the movie), but found it to be charming and funny. Its no great work, but its certainly the most enjoyable foreign language picture Ive seen so far. There are too few movies that allow women to take the main roles and run with them. There are men in this picture, but we see them all through the womens eyes. This makes it the perfect antidote, I believe, to
Sex and the City 2. It is, admittedly, written and directed by a man
Benoît Pétré but nevertheless a man who dedicates it to his mother and mothers everywhere. It was a pleasant surprise.
The only movie showing this afternoon for the press was called
Putty Hill, and was, to put it kindly, interminable. It focuses on a group of kids living in the aftermath of a death amongst their numbers: a heroin overdose. It was shot in twelve days, and looks like it was shot in one and a half. It is clearly inspired by Gus Van Sant and his movies
Elephant and
Paranoid Park, but the director,
Matthew Porterfield, cant achieve the same sort of hypnotic imagery that the former of those movies, at least, attained. Nor was I remotely interested in any of the kids, who mumble in unconvincing pseudo-interviews to the camera. It is a movie with a lot of kids mumbling, and occasionally I struggled to hear what they were saying. This feeling passed when I realised how uninterested I was in hearing what they were saying. I counted eight walk-outs, and saw at least one person taking the opportunity to have a nap. So it is with seeing things on a whim at a film festival: sometimes you get encouraged by a nice discovery like
Thelma, Louise and Chantal, sometimes you are subjected to self-indulgent hooey like
Putty Hill. It is a tiny-budget movie that will not get much of a release, if it gets one at all, so I dont take much pleasure in kicking it when its down. But I found its 90 minutes to be painfully slow.