During Pierce Brosnan's spotlit, Bond-like bound on to the Edinburgh Odeon's stage to introduce the European premiere of The Thomas Crown Affair, it became abundantly clear that the Edinburgh Film Festival had not only got back its sense of occasion but, in its 53rd year, was set to almost recapture the glory days.
The guest list was the best in years, and Edinburgh's tradition of new discoveries old masters continued. Director Lizzie Francke, in her third year (this time with much-needed sponsorship from FilmFour), hosted the return of Gregory's Girl director Bill Forsyth from the Hollywood wilderness as well as the British unveiling of fellow-Glaswegian Lynne Ramsay's first feature, Ratcatcher. The latter was the first Scottish film to open the festival since Forsyth's Comfort And Joy 15 years ago.
The breathless ancipation of an audience fed on Cannes hype was reduced to a subdued murmur in the face of Ramsey's dour, yet lyrical, drama of childhood which leans heavily on the austere poetry of Bill Douglas and Robert Bresson. But if the grimness of life was ever-present in the festival opener, Brosnan added the twinkly smile and the glitz the following night, a pattern repeated when the original Bond, Sean Connery, arrived to escort a luminous Cate Blanchett to the premiere of Mike Newell's quirky Pushing Tin. As the harrassed wife of John Cusack's nervy air traffic controller, Blanchett delivers yet another chameleon-like performance and proves she is becoming one of the great film actresses of our time.
If the stars drew the crowds and the tabloids, there was a heartening clamour for foreign film, documentaries and new British work, although occasionally for the wrong reasons. Catherine Breillat's erotic drama, Romance, shocked even the French with its explicitness - erections, ejaculations and penetrations displayed in the raw detail of a woman's search for fulfilment through a series of sexual encounters - but any edge is blunted by the droning narration of Caroline Ducey as the woman, and by Breillat's complete emotional detachment. Marking a breakthrough in film censorship, it has been passed uncut for a British release in October; but look to Ai No Corrida or The Last Tango In Paris for the sulphurous tug of sexual obsession.
On the same theme, L'Ennui, from Cedric Khan, deftly explores the obsession of a middle-aged professor for a sexually precocious girl. They have continuous wild sex, but he falls into a life-wrecking spiral of jealousy and paranoia. Another French film about sexual desire - but this time with heart, and a complex soul.
But in a festival which contained Tim Roth's ultra-bleak, (and, to my eyes, dubiously voyeuristic) tale of incest, The War Zone - which won the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature - the most unexpectedly shocking sex scene was in Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Two Girls. But The opening sequence shows the well-over-thirty-something Gregory, now a teacher at his old school, having sex with a 16-year-old pupil (Carly McKinnon) in the locker room he used to frequent as a gangly, innocent youth. It turns out to be a dream sequence, but it is a queasy start to a curious curate's egg of a film spiked with slices of vintage Forsythian humour and a serious political diatribe on human rights.
Craig Ferguson, the former Scottish stand-up, was returned prodigal number two with the world premiere of his debut film, The Big Tease, a breezy comedy about a gay Scottish hairdresser who mistakenly thinks he has been invited to L.A. to compete in the World Hairdressing Championships. The Red Adair of hair takes on the glaring vacuity of the Californian salon crowd to take part in the climactic "hair-off". Strictly Ballroom with advanced gel use replacing the dancing, it is a sometimes clumsy comedy of errors, but Ferguson plays the gay cutter admirably straight.
The Big Tease was only one of five festival films shot by the Irish cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, the overall behind-the-scenes star of the festival, who also shot The War Zone and I Could Read The Sky. But British comedy was particularly thick on the ground. Irish actress Eileen Walsh manages a near-perfect Scottish accent and a gorgeously gormless performance in Clare Kilner's Janice Beard: 45 WPM, about a Walter Mitty-ish temp in London who wins over the vicious typing pool head (Patsy Kensit - who arrived in Edinburgh heavily pregnant with a weirdly quiet Liam Gallagher in tow) and foils an industrial espionage plot. Walsh is endearing, but there is a televisual feel to it and it falls into the sitcom trap too often.
As did many of the avalanche of new British films, proving that lottery funding and an explosion of productions does not great cinema make. Elephant Juice, written by Amy Jenkins, was the worst, despite Daniella Nardini and a fine cast playing (guess what) thin, thirtyish, middle-class Londoners. Full Monty writer Simon Beaufoy's directorial debut, The Darkest Light, is an immensely disappointing allegorical story of childhood religious visions in Yorkshire, while Phil Davies's Hold Back The Night is an unconvincing Scottish road movie held together by the excellent Sheila Hancock.
Miles better, and an effortless Edinburgh crowd-pleaser, was Damien O'Donnell's exuberant yet touching mixed race comedy drama, East Is East, with the Irish director in for a fortnight of partying only slightly dampened when he was pipped at the Audience Award post by Wim Wender's lustrous documentary about the elderly high kings of Cuban salsa, The Buena Vista Social Club. Audience Awards for documentaries are unusual, but this was amongst an exemplary strand of filmed American reality, including Chantal Ackerman's disturbing portrait of the American South, Sud, and Chris Smith's embarrassingly hilarious movie about making a no-budget movie in small town Winconsin, American Movie.
Near the close, another world premiere unveiled one of the best British films of the fortnight; Shane Meadow's return to form (after Twenty Four Seven) with A Room For Romeo Brass, a warm yet wickedly incisive story of childhood friendship disrupted by the arrival of a funny but dangerously inadequate adult. Hilarious, edgy, and illuminated by unaffected performances from a cast of unknowns, Meadows stamps his idiosyncratic North English comedic drama with a maturing authority. And Beautiful People, Yugoslav director Jasmin Dizdar's optimistic and manic Cannes hit about Bosnian refugees in London, was the most rousing finale in years. Meanwhile Damien O'Donnell was still with us, ending his two-week Scottish sojourn at the closing party, much to the amusement/outrage of the Scots film community gathering, in a loose-fitting kilt.
