So many film festivals have been supersized that, in order to find a decent movie, visitors usually need to do their planning with a map and a GPS device. Edinburgh is just about manageable, although with more than 130 films and 30 events, it is stil
l substantial. But it's also a festival that knows its audience, without pandering to or insulting them by rigging the schedule with too many crowd-pleasers.
While the 62nd line-up has its predictable heart warmers, like the frothy Miss Pettigrew Saves The Day, a few movies, such as the Brazilian political thriller Elite Squad and Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure, wage an assault on complacency without forsaking entertainment value. Hollywood of course is well-represented with the premiere of Pixar's Wall.E following last year's premiere of Ratatouille, while Married Life, an odd, original picture from writer-director Ira Sachs, combines black comedy and suspense, in a style that is European in feeling but American in attitude.
Opening proceedings is a British film with fortuitous Scottish connections thanks to Sharman Macdonald's script for The Edge Of Love, detailing the relationship between Dylan Thomas and his muse, Caitlin, with Matthew Rhys and Sienna Miller as the tempestuous Thomases, and Keira Knightley as Vera, Dylan's childhood friend and – according to Macdonald – also his first love. Director John Maybury is an Edinburgh favourite; his portrait of Frances Bacon, Love Is The Devil, was also premiered here – and The Edge Of Love is something of a companion piece. A painterly rendition of artistic lives, it's just unfortunate that the characters fall so comfortably along trite lines: Matthew Rhys's Dylan Thomas is already indulgent and far too fond of his own sonorous voice, while Caitlin is well on her way to becoming the strident loon of popular myth. It's images, not words, that Maybury loves though, despite taking the wartime blackouts literally with many scenes so severely underlit that it's hard to distinguish Cillian Murphy's high-minded soldier until the light bounces off his cheekbones. Despite rationing, both Vera and Caitlin appear to have access to buckets of mascara and lip-gloss, and the film treats Miller, but especially Keira Knightley's Vera, the way a tongue treats a lollipop. "If I were a man, I'd fancy you," Caitlin tells Vera. You can almost hear the film cross its fingers.
Distilling the closeness and conflicts between Israelis and Arabs, Lemon Tree stars the luminous Hiam Abbass (Syrian Bride, Munich) as a dutiful hardworking Palestinian woman whose family grove is threatened when Israel's defence minister (Doron Tavory) moves next door just over the Green Line boundary and decides the trees are a security hazard. From being a woman who always does what is expected of her, a young lawyer (Ali Suliman) helps her realise her fight for her rights all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court. As they fight the case, an attraction develops between lawyer and client, while across the road the minister's wife also develops a fascination with a woman she can only watch and never talk to. A sort of Middle East Erin Brockovich, this deceptively simple tale about people trapped in a political situation is both wise and affecting.
After an eight-year absence from filmmaking, Terence Davies returns with his first film since his adaptation of Edith Wharton's The House Of Mirth. Of Time And The City is a free-ranging, highly personal film essay about Liverpool, Davies uses documentary footage, music and his memories of home to braid his own story with the story of the redevelopment of his home town. Part valentine, part eulogy, Davies's themes are those which run through his feature film; Catholicism, homosexuality, violence, death, loss, the glory of cinema, being an outsider and childhood. Contrary to its title, the movie is more concerned with Davies than the city; recalling his passionate interest in Friday night wrestling tournaments, he admits the draw was not their "pantomimic villainy" but for "something more illicit", the erotic charge they gave Davies as a closeted gay teen.
In The Visitor, Richard Jenkins (the late father in Six Feet Under) is Walter Vale, a widowed economics professor sleepwalking through life until he discovers his New York pied-à-terre is occupied by a young Muslim couple (Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira), illegal immigrants who were tricked by an estate agent into thinking the apartment was his to rent out. When they fall foul of post-September 11 bureaucracy, Walter becomes more involved in their lives than he's been involved in anything in years. An offbeat tale of a middle-aged loner reawakening to life, the story may become a little heavy-handed when it expands to become an indictment of the political realities behind US immigration policy, but The Visitor's emotional corners are still unexpected and compelling and its impassioned testament to the power of personal engagement should appeal to fans of Tom McCarthy's previous arthouse-pleasing effort, The Station Agent.
Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris (The Fog Of War) turns his lens on the photographic legacy of the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal in Standard Operating Procedure. Morris demonstrates again that he's one of documentary's great interviewers when his camera confronts five of the seven mostly young and guileless soldiers who photographed their abuse of Iraqi war prisoners. The most well known of Morris' subjects is Lynndie England, who attributes the snaps of her leading a prisoner on a leash to the pernicious influence of her older soldier boyfriend. "Every single woman in the brig with me was there because of a man," she says unhappily.
The film also delves into the story of Manadel al-Jamadi, a prisoner who died during an interrogation at Abu Ghraib and who was subsequently photographed as a corpse by MP Sabrina Harman. No CIA agent has been charged in connection with the murder, yet Harman was sent to jail for six months for taking the photograph. Morris lets each soldier speak candidly – some for the first time – about the horrors of daily life at the prison but this is about context, rather than vindication. Human nature abhors moral vacuums but sometimes humans get sucked into them.
• The Edge of Love, Cineworld, Edinburgh, Wednesday, 9.30pm and 9.45pm. Released Friday. The Lemon Tree, Filmhouse, Edinburgh, June 22, 5.45pm and June 23, 6pm; Of Time and the City, Cineworld, Edinburgh, Thursday, 5.30pm. Released October 31. The Visitor, Cineworld, Edinburgh, Saturday, 7.15pm and June 22, 4.30pm. Released July 4. Standard Operating Procedure, Cineworld, Edinburgh, Saturday, 7.30pm, Sunday, 5.30pm. Released Friday
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