TEACHING an old dog new tricks is virtually impossible, so the faint sense of deja vu which hangs over the pick of the Scots films in Cannes, Ken Loach's My Name is Joe, should come as no surprise. Well made, well acted, brilliantly in the case of Peter Mullan in the title role of a reformed alcoholic who finds true love with a feisty health worker played by Louise Goodall, it suffers from a predictable plot.
Paul Laverty's dialogue sparkles, but he is less inventive when it comes to telling a story and Loach, for all his skill with actors and as a social realist, is not one of the cinema's great storytellers. Once Joe meets Sarah there is an inevitability about events and the casting of David Hayman as the wicked Ruchill drug baron does not help. It is a baddie once too often from him.
One can see why the Scottish Arts Council handed out lottery cash to the film and Glasgow Film Fund gave its might - glitz by association is a wonderful thing - and the chances are they will be rewarded for their efforts. But they were playing safe.
My Name Is Joe has gone down well with a festival audience most of whom will never have seen good, socially-aware British television drama. Having broken new ground with his Spanish Civil War film, Land and Freedom, and his Sandinista drama Carla's Song, also written by Laverty, Loach is here playing safe.
But, for all that, the film's heart is in the right place and this could be his year to win the Palme D'Or. He has won the Jury Prize twice and recognition at this, the most prestigious of all film festivals, is long overdue. There is, however, some fierce European competition.
Scotland's ageing answer to Leonardo DiCaprio, Ewan McGregor, does a barnstorming turn as an androgynous glam rock star in Tod Haynes's Velvet Goldmine, which will be screened tomorrow.
It is a noisy, garish, and hugely stylish account of the attempt by a music press journalist, played by Christian Bale, to discover what happened to a mega glam rock star called Brian Slade, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers in mascara and cock-feathers but not much else, whose career foundered after he faked suicide as a publicity stunt.
McGregor plays a fellow rock star who gets to seduce the young Bale back in the 1970s and strut his stuff rather like a young Mick Jagger. The role fits him like a glove.
It is great fun finding out what happened to Slade and it would be unfair to Frank Ifield and Englebert Humperdinck to say any more.
Glasgow Film Fund and the Scottish Arts Council put their money into Peter Mullan's debut as a director, a rough and ready but very funny black comedy called Orphans.
Set in Glasgow over a rainy night it is a black farce about three Catholic boys, played by Douglas Henshall, Gary Lewis, and Stephen McCole, and their paraplegic sister, Rosemarie Stevenson, the night before their mother's funeral. The language is a bit too crude, but the cast are terrific and Mullan handles the whole thing with aplomb.
You have no idea where the story is heading. The flaws are obvious and it would do him no service to overpraise, but all the same it's a most impressive debut. The two funds also put their money into Acid House, directed by Paul McGuigan. This consists of three tales by Irvine Welsh and the hope clearly was that they would have Train-
spotting II on their hands. That
hope has not been realised. McGuigan's direction is flashy and the stories are stretched way beyond the limit in a film which is far too long. If this is, as the publicity suggests, 100% pure Irvine Welsh, Jeffrey Archer would be an improvement.
The Governess, which was shot on Arran and stars Minnie Driver, is being screened in the marketplace. The press, how-ever, have been excluded and, judging by my spies, for good reason. It apparently lends new meaning to the concept of ''deid slow and stop''.
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