Director: DAVID MACKENZIE
Mister Foe centers on the eponymous 17-year-old Hallam (Jaime Bell), having a fantasy life and grieving over his dead mother some time after her suicide, hiding out in a tree house on his family’s Scottish Highlands estate. Hallam’s knack for voyeurism paradoxically reveals his darkest fears, and his most peculiar desires.
Even for a teenager this is not normal behavior; nor is his fixation with his mother’s death and the conviction that she was murdered by his dad Julius (Ciaran Hinds) and stepmother Verity (Claire Forlani). Driven to expose the true cause of his mother’s death, he instead finds himself searching the rooftops of the city of Edinburgh where much of the film was shot. In his tortured imagination, he begins stalking a woman (the stunning Sophia Myles) who resembles his dead mother. Bell’s performance and MacKenzie’s exhuberant direction lend comic weight to a real feel for emotional intimacy and a cinematic way of bringing a difficult relationship to life. Its combination of moods, a lively soundtrack, and Jaime Bell’s best performance since Billy Elliot, makes Mister Foe an original and entertaining tale that keeps us wanting more (From a novel by Peter Jenks. A Berlin Fest 2007 prize) (Showcasing a Scotland infrequently seen in cinema.)
SCOTLAND• 2006 • 95 MINUTES • DIRECTOR: DAVID MACKENZIE
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