Hallam Foe (2007)

Hallam Foe could only be made in Britain. I could hardly see Hollywood film producers green-lighting a film that is about a reclusive, obsessive peeping tom who crossdresses and breaks and enters other people's property. And yet, he - Hallam Foe (aka Jamie Bell from Billy Elliot fame) - is our hero and, stranger still, we root for him.He gets in all sorts of trouble when he leaves his father and stepmother to go and live and work in Edinburgh, where he meets someone who looks like his late mother and then starts a relationship with her.The soundtrack is great and goes well with the beautiful shots of Edinburgh city from on high. There's not much of a story and normally that sounds like a negative. If you ask me what it was about, I can't really say - other than I loved it. It's touching without ever being sentimental and you actually care about the damaged characters you're watching.Plus there's a great scene that lists all the names you'll ever need to know concerning - well - body parts (if you know what I mean).

If I were pitching this script, I'd prob'ly say something like "'Moonrise Kingdom' meets 'Psycho'!" (which is why I'd never get pound one of the £4 million or so that was needed). No regrets though—"Mister Foe" is our streaming pick-hit of the month, the best we've seen since "Happy-Go-Lucky" and "Monsieur Lazhar" (both excellent in their different ways, of course). I'll grant you that Hallam Foe, our teenage Scottish protagonist, does take some getting used to—like the way he puts on warpaint and a scruffy old badgerskin cap (with the head still attached) and runs totally amok when he starts to feel the pressure. As soon as you get onto his wavelength, though, "Mr. Foe" is involving and quite suspenseful; Edinburgh, where Hallam ends up after a few frantic scenes, seems like paradise for a teenage voyeur (another of his wee idiosyncrasies) who's not afraid of heights, with its ladders, gutters and pitched slate roofs. There's no problem with the accent, and whether you like murder mysteries, suspense, dysfunctional-family dramas, romcoms (really!), oedipal coming of age stories, Scotland or Gothic Revival buildings with corbiestep gables, there's something here for you. We hadn't seen "Billy Elliot," so Jamie Bell was a revelation; Ciarán Hinds, as Hallam's father, is always good as a suspect authority figure ("Rome," "Game of Thrones"), and Sophia Myles and Jamie Sives are perfect as a lovely apparition and an ugly foe (with a lowercase f). Watch it while it's still on streaming.

The eponymous Hallam is quickly established as a creepy, totally self-obsessed, loser. One who treats everyone with contempt. One who speaks to his father and step-mother in a way that deserves a good slap that never comes. Instead he is indulged for god knows why and consequently I didn't care about him, his dysfunctional family or his boo-hoo poor me plight.There is nothing wrong with the art direction or the acting. Both are of a higher caliber than one expects from a cheapo Brit movie. No, it's the characters and plot that stink.A character based drama should have characters you are interested in even if you don't like like them. I wasn't intrigued, I was offended. How long before I switched off? Probably 15 minutes -- the gruesome assignation up in the tree house between step-mother and son was the last straw. Life is too short to suffer tripe like this.

Hallam Foe tells us the story about a boy who lost his mother and experiences some sort of Oedepus complex afterward.It is something like 95 minutes long but would be better in ten. There's like an hour in the middle where he is doing climbing practice on rooftops, and habits in a church tower like Quasimodo (only he is much less sympathetic).There's a strange love story involved which doesn't have anything to do with anything. She happens to look like his mother, yes so what? We know he misses his mother, that's what the first ten minutes were about. They should just have put the beginning and ending together and it would have been a O.K. short film. Now it's a portrait of a character who doesn't change. He is a guy that stuff happens to. The only active choice he has in the whole middle of the movie is to apply for a job.There's this whole Oedepus thing going on which is supposed to make us analyze his character. He paints his face, dresses in women's clothing and wears a dead Badger on his head. A Badger! You've got to see the ending! He returns to his home with the badger on his head (and it is shot like a tacky Horror film) to kill his dad's new wife (which he had sex with in the beginning). And somehow they thought this wouldn't be entertaining enough so they put some indie punk music in the background. I've got to admit though, I'm kind of allergic to films that want to write a psychological complex on your nose. It feels like this MacKenzie director/guy/whatever is trying to show us that he also has been studying psychology in school. You are so smart! Thank you for bringing all these forgotten theories back into our memories! You really dug! What a Wallraff! Okay so now I realized this film is based on some random book, but anyway..Photowise it is boring. A lot of talking heads. Plus the editor has changed the colors from scene to scene, you know cold and warm etc.. why? maybe "Hallam Foe" is both a feature and a test film for color blind people. Or maybe they just thought that the drama wouldn't be enough to tell us that he feels lonely, so they increased blue so that we really get it.I'm not even gonna comment on the cliché indie-oh-how-how-how-cute drawings they have made in the presentation. And all the "cute" sex stuff going on. This whole film is an independent cliché. But I do recommend it. I laughed more than a few times. Though it is really annoying to be a film student and to see how crap like this gets through the machine.