festival
building on his original performance, teasing out the adult as well as the adolescent in the former Cumbernauld schoolboy now graduated to English teacher. The plot is a little hokey, but Forsyth wisely builds it around Gregory's character traits, naiveté and immaturity, and delivers what fans of the original film might be hoping for: a charming, cheeky comedy.
I Gregory's Two Girls, UCI, 26 Aug, 8pm, £7 (£4.50).
In The House Of Angels
tit
This disturbing documentary about a Norwegian old people's home is the sort of thing Fred Wiseman was doing in the States twenty years ago: long, fly-on-the-wall indictments of his country’s institutions, while prompting a belief in the strength of the human spirit. For what it is, this works well. Alternatively fascinating and mundane, it proves a healthy meditation on death and old age. The earnest, folky ballads of ex-Waterboy Mike Scott offer some lightish relief on the soundtrack, as do the more eccentric people in the home. (Paul Dale)
I In The House Of Angels, Filmhouse 3, 26 Aug, 6pm; Filmhouse 2, 28 Aug, 10.30pm, £7 (£4.50).
Siam Sunset
**
Perry, tailed by a nasty spot of jinx after the death of his wife by a falling fridge, flees to Australia to find serenity, satisfaction and a natty shade of orange that he calls Siam Sunset. Unlike several moments of this film, this is not completely random. Perry’s job is to think up new paint colours, a skill he finds remarkably adaptable — he pulls a female road-fellow over a dinner of colourfully mixed up mash and jam. This film's redeeming feature is that, apart from challenging the accepted definition of comedy (with only two noticeable jokes), it has no pretensions to any higher level. (Judith Ho)
I Siam Sunset, Cameo 26 Aug;
Film
70.30pm, Cameo 2, 27 Aug, 7pm, £7 (£4.50).
Taxi
**
Luc Besson’s thrillers — Subway, Nikita, Leon - have never been taken seriously, not by filmmakers, not by critics and not by Besson himself. It’s appropriate, then, that Besson should target the ultra-cool macho posturings of his own films in this spoof. Not directed by Besson, but written by him, Taxi also takes pot shots at Tarantino and Scorsese in the tale of a Marseilles taxi driver involved in a war between suave German bank robbers and local cops. But the infantile humour is irritating rather than funny. Besson's writer-only credit suggests he didn't take his spoof project seriously enough.
(Miles Fielder)
I Taxi, Cameo 1, 28 Aug, 70.30pm, £7 (£4.50).
The Five Senses ***
Our innate senses can prove to be of little use in the search for intimacy, and Canadian director Jeremy Podweswa uses this human predicament to craft a humorous and poignant allegorical tale. Five characters living in the same apartment block, each representing one of the senses, experience sensual epiphany in the emotionally fraught three-day period of a young child’s disappearance. An optometrist is losing his hearing and a cake-maker her sense of taste in food, although she fears men too. Just two of the sensorial misfits cast adrift in this intelligent and sharply written film. (Catherine Bromley)
I The Five Senses, Filmhouse 7, 26 Aug, 7pm; 28 Aug, 2.30pm, £7 (£4.50).
STAR RATINGS
***** ****
Unmissable
Very good
Worth seeing
Below average You've been warned
iii **
LA woman: Kurt Voss and Alison Anders's Sugar Town, Cameo 1. 27 Aug, 10.30pm. £7 (£4.50)
“AN ELABORATE AND ELEGANT SUSPENSER...CLASSY AND GRIPPING...DUTRONC IS PERFECTLY CAST”
-VARlETY
*‘k‘k‘k “DAZZLING, INTELLIGENI..
CA THE RINE DE NE U VE SHINES IN THIS CEREBRAL FRENCH THRILLE R’
— TOTAL FILM
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PLACE VEN D
a film by NICOLE GARCIA screenplay by Jacques Fieschi and Nicole Garcia
CATHERINE DENEUVE JEAN-PIERRE BACRI EMMANUELLE SEIGNER and JACQUES DUTRONC
An Artificial Eye Release
ISM-m
from 27 Aug at Filmhouse, Edinburgh
26 Aug-9 Sep 1999 THE US! 51