- Quaint, affected homage to bygone pop culture.
- Elegant, whisper-thin voices framed with lithely self-conscious body language.
- Stuart Murdoch's God Help the Girl.
It is a real pity that Belle and Sebastian's frontman, who has an unparalleled track record of invoking pristine character studies in under three minutes, can't for the life of him transfer his writing from song to screen (even if it still contains song).
Murdoch's film maker failings are super apparent within thirty seconds of the film's opening. He may write a mean '50s pop pastiche but he has difficulty shaking the literal representation of his lyrics, both in his visuals and his effete characters. 'Pretty Eve in the Tub (Please allow me to scrub / Please allow me to rub) gets, you guessed it, shots of our bespectacled hero, James (Olly Alexander) washing troubled heroine, Eve (Emily Browning) in the bath. 'I'll Have To Dance With Cassie' sees the pair, um, having a dance with Cassie (Hannah Murray), the third member of their band. I say "band" but the trio barely sing a note in front of an audience; instead, most of God Help the Girl is spent jaunting around Glasgow making apathetic (and woefully scripted) comment on the healing power of pop music.
Murdoch's conspicuously un-Glaswegian cast is stocked with talent so it is an out and out crime that he has given them nothing to work with. At all. Sorry, Eve has a whisper of growth as she combats a vague mental illness and eating disorder but it is never tackled with any rigour, which leaves it feeling like just more window dressing.
With all that in mind, the songs are, more often than not, delightful and there are some wonderfully breezy scenes that riff off makeshift '60s cinema. Basically, Murdoch has the look, the sound and the feel down pat; he just needs to work on the glue.
So much promise, so little payoff.
★★
Trailer:
Disclaimer: Due to excessive work and excessive film going, MIFF posts are going to be pretty sketchy this year. I'll come back to some of the better ones and write them up proper-like if the mood takes.
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