London Film Festival: Edge

Edge is a film about a bunch of people who are all a bit on the edge, psychologically speaking, and who come together at a hotel which is located on a cliff edge, geographically speaking. It's like their physical location somehow reflects and exaggerates their mental state, yah?

It's one of those films the BFI would probably describe as "haunting and poetic" (cf. Womb), which is to say it challenges you to not collapse, comatose, into a pool of your own dribbles. While it's ultimately forgettable, it's worth noting that none of its characters are clichés and their individual reasons for being "on the edge" aren't the usual excuses screenwriters vomit up in order to get an escaped murderer into the same scene as a forgiving priest or some such toss. There's a vague mystery running through the plot that's tied up in a clumsy and unlikely fashion but it's incidental to the central themes of desperation and hope so we'll forgive that.

Beautifully shot during a typically glacial January in Eastbourne, Edge also boasts some quite lovely titles and is the film you've been waiting for if you've longed to see Julie T Wallace providing room service in her own basement, if you catch my drift.

What's most interesting about the whole exercise, though, is that it was financed by Genesis Entertainment, a company set up by the owners of the Genesis independent cinema in London's Whitechapel. It was there that I saw Edge during the LFF, and it would have been a lovely occasion for all if it hadn't started twenty minutes late and then played with the soundtrack about ten frames behind the pictures, making it look like a badly dubbed foreign film.

Sexual Equality Corner: Edge was written, directed, produced, shot and edited by women. It's the future I tells yer.

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