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The Best of British, in Edinburgh
By Nick Roddick 21.08.07
Extraordiary Rendition: convincing and terrifying, but ultimately disappointing
Matthew Beard and Jim Broadbent in Anand Tucker's film of Blake Morrison's memoir
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With little to link them other than their nationality, Jim Threapleton's Extraordinary Rendition and Anand Tucker's And When Did You Last See Your Father? stood out among Edinburgh's early British films, the former for the provocation of its subject matter, the latter for courage of a very different kind.
Extraordinary Rendition
Filmhouse
**
Threapleton shrugs off the label of being the former Mr Winslet to emerge as a promising writer/director with his debut movie about Zaafir (Omar Berdouni), a British Asian who is snatched off the street for reasons that are never revealed, flown to an unknown destination and tortured into signing a confession that he is an Islamic terrorist.
Ripping several pages out of Michael Winterbottom's book, Threapleton creates an edgy, docudrama-style thriller which makes Zaafir's experiences both convincing and terrifying. But the scenes of his post-release trauma, where he is alienated from his wife and drifts towards the extremism of which he was falsely accused, are much less effective, leaving the film disappointingly unresolved.
And when did you last see your father?
Dominion
****
Resolution of a very different kind is the subject of the movie version of Blake Morrison's bestselling 1993 memoir about the death of his father. After the wrong-turn of his Hollywood effort, Shopgirl, Tucker achieves the near-impossible by delivering a movie that is as engrossing and emotionally powerful as Morrison's book. It is a film likely to strike a chord in almost everybody.
The screenplay by David Nicholls (who wrote last year's underrated rom-com Starter for 10) navigates most of the obstacles involved in telling a story with no obvious structure that switches constantly between time-frames: the 1950s, when young Blake idolised his father, a Yorkshire GP with an irrepressible eye for the main chance; the Sixties, when the father's saloon-bar manner failed to offer the affection and support the adolescent needed; and the present, when the old man is in the terminal stages of bowel cancer.
Heading a wonderful cast, Jim Broadbent is at the peak of his formidable form as Morrison senior, while Colin Firth's bottled-up style - a sort of British Gary Cooper - makes him ideal casting as the adult Blake. The real revelation, however, is teenager Matthew Beard, who perfectly captures the anguish of the adolescent Blake without ever appearing sulky or ridiculous.
