Gareth Negus, Matthew Turner and Sam Osborn report from the 2013 Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Gareth Negus
The 2013 Edinburgh International Film Festival followed a successful first year for Artistic Director Chris Fujiwara.
Perhaps I ended up seeing the wrong films (with 100+ features and short programmes, it really wasn’t possible to see everything) but I felt the programme was a slight disappointment after last year. A lot of this was down to the underwhelming opening and closing films. It’s clearly not easy to select the perfect films for these slots: they need to balance commercial appeal with star quality for the red carpet press photographers, while maintaining a degree of artistic credibility. So Breathe In, the opener, probably seemed like a good bet: co-star Felicity Jones available for pictures, from the director of the well-reviewed Like Crazy, and an accessible subject matter. Unfortunately, though well photographed and nicely played by Jones and Guy Pearce, the story – middle aged musician and family man finds his mojo revitalised by a younger girl – was a very familiar one, and the film did nothing new or interesting with it.
MostlyFilm 