Ratcatcher starts film festival

A Scottish film does the honours for the first time

By BBC News Online's Matthew Grant in Edinburgh

The Edinburgh International Film Festival has started its 53rd year, with a gala performance of Ratcatcher by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay.

Ratcatcher....homegrown talent

The event marked the first time the opening slot had been taken by a Scottish film for 15 years.

The emphasis on homegrown talent and local heroes reflected a new consciousness and pride, brought about by devolution and the new Edinburgh parliament.

But the city still lacks a first-rate cinema. Even with the assembled paparazzi outside the Odeon and a procession of expensive cars drawing up to drop of those in possession of tickets, it appeared a far cry for the sun, celebrity and style of Cannes - where Ratcatcher received its international premiere.

Inside, the glamour of the gala equally proved less overwhelming than the prospect.

Proceedings began with the festival's director, Lizzie Francke, paying thanks to a long list of sponsors. Luckily, chairman John McCormick was more entertaining.

Doing his bit to strengthen Lib-Lab ties, he welcomed "Sir David Reid" to the performance, fusing the names of the Scottish Parliament's presiding officer Sir David Steel and the Scottish Secretary Dr John Reid.

Moments after, the screening almost descended into farce before the film had begun, when a girl carrying a bouquet of flowers to present to Lynne Ramsay had to chase the oblivious director as she walked off the stage.

Style over substance

The film itself is set during a dustbinmen's strike in Govan, near Glasgow, in the 1970s. Rubbish bags pile up around the housing estate where the family at the centre of the film are forced to live.

Special day for the cast

From the outset, Ratcatcher plays languid mood shots against sudden bursts of activity. Its main appeal is the skill and artistry behind the camera work, which brings alive the grimy reality of the characters' lives and transforms it.

Unfortunately, the film makes up in stylistics what it lacks in dialogue and plot. The images on the screen possess more character than the roles the actors portray and it is for this reason that, despite the hype surrounding the film in Scotland, it will not be on general release even here.

Visual gags

It does possess some humour, but the best gags are purely visual, such as when the drunken father, played by Tommy Flanagan, is dribbling in his sleep or when his son goes to the toilet in a house without plumbing.

The film also includes a bizarre segment when one of the children who lives on the housing estate releases his pet mouse into the air by tying it to a helium balloon.

Suddenly abandoning the social realism it mainly strives for, Ratcatcher shows the rodent float up through the atmosphere and land on the moon, a scene that would not be out of place in a beer commercial.

Despite this brief anomaly, Ratcatcher feels as though it ought best to be viewed in an art gallery, sitting on a hard chair and with other people walking in and out every few minutes.

But those who attended its gala performance in Edinburgh instead awarded it an overwhelming, if not standing ovation.

Gregory's Girl returns

Other highlights in the two-week film festival include the low-budget horror success The Blair Witch Project and the international premieres of Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Mike Newell's Pushing Tin.

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar also returns to the festival with All About My Mother.

But attention in Scotland will focus on the opening of Gregory's Two Girls, Bill Forsyth's long-awaited sequel, which returns to Cumbernauld after 20 years to find Gregory has become a teacher at the school he used to attend.