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conjunctionsI suspect that this and Submarine (Richard Ayoade, 2010) are the closest we'll get to the movie of The Wasp Factory, in terms of sensibilities anyway - I can't claim that either of them would warrant the original novel's video nasty tag. Then again, neither did the novel. Submarine is probably distant - I just had a feeling.
Anyway, Hallam Foe - adapted by David Mackenzie and Ed Whitmore from Peter Jinks's novel - is an Oedipal gothic tale, full of incest, intrigue, fear of murder, voyeurism and desire. Hallam's (Jamie Bell) mother has drowned in suspicious circumstances, and his father (Ciarán Hinds) has rather rapidly married his secretary (Claire Forlani - from Mallrats). After spending time spying upon lovers from his tree house (in the grounds of a castle) and his neighbours, Foe is confronted and semiseduced by his stepmother. He runs away to Edinburgh, where he starts spying on Kate (Sophia Myles), the double of his mother.
It's a variant on the Hamlet/Oedipus theme - when I first saw the film I nearly applauded when the father reappears with crutches (oedipus = swollen foot, and all that) - with a the object of desire being murdered, apparently by the object of his father's desire. Foe's seduction by step-mother and quasi-mother are both against his will - they break too many taboos - and it is perhaps inevitable that he feels more comfortable as a voyeur than a participant, and even then attempts to disrupt the primal scene. Both mother substitutes have clay feet - or, rather, neither are the angel of the house he perceives his mother to have been, but this is a perception he learns to question through the course of the narrative. At the same time, it's not entirely certain how far the narrative can be trusted - he might not understand what he sees (although occasionally, and wrongly I think, we move away from his experiences) and we only know what he is told, and we are told he has been lied to. When we see him giving a thumbs up to himself through an attic window, we know that at least some of the film is fantasy.
What makes the film - aside from a series of impressive performances, and rather brave shifts between melodrama and comedy - are the locations. It's a truism that the locations of gothic narrative are representative of character psyches - notes how Elizabeth Bennet falls in love with Darcy the moment she sees the size of his stately pile - and the loch-side castle and tree house are clearly fertile symbols. In a curious inversion the escape is to the city to sort out the problems of the country, and with the city as Edinburgh we get a whole metatext of Knox, Hogg, Brodie, Burke and Hare, Jekyll and Hyde and Rebus, of dual identities and the damned and the elect. Foe can ascend and descend in the hotel he works in - he is meant to be circumscribed by the bowels of the building and its kitchens, his progress to porter gives him a free rein around the hotel and his bolt hole is in an attic, with most freedom being on rooftops. There's metaphors of class here (although he is clearly of upper middle class origin) as well as the Freudian/Zizekian scheme of id/ego/superego as spatialisations through architecture.
There's more thinking through to be done - the names are also symbolic: the father Julius (Julius Caesar), stepmother Verity (truth), sister Lucy (light), double Kate (Kiss Me/Kismet Kate?), Alasdair (the Gaelic Alexander - homage to Gray, perhaps?) and Hallam Foe as ... enemy of some kind. But why Hallam? Sheffield steel? Hall am Foe points to more architecture (his father is an architect, just to confront some more superego issues)
I think there's a lot more to unpick here, and I definitely need to go and find the book. I also want to go and check out the director's other films
Anyway, Hallam Foe - adapted by David Mackenzie and Ed Whitmore from Peter Jinks's novel - is an Oedipal gothic tale, full of incest, intrigue, fear of murder, voyeurism and desire. Hallam's (Jamie Bell) mother has drowned in suspicious circumstances, and his father (Ciarán Hinds) has rather rapidly married his secretary (Claire Forlani - from Mallrats). After spending time spying upon lovers from his tree house (in the grounds of a castle) and his neighbours, Foe is confronted and semiseduced by his stepmother. He runs away to Edinburgh, where he starts spying on Kate (Sophia Myles), the double of his mother.
It's a variant on the Hamlet/Oedipus theme - when I first saw the film I nearly applauded when the father reappears with crutches (oedipus = swollen foot, and all that) - with a the object of desire being murdered, apparently by the object of his father's desire. Foe's seduction by step-mother and quasi-mother are both against his will - they break too many taboos - and it is perhaps inevitable that he feels more comfortable as a voyeur than a participant, and even then attempts to disrupt the primal scene. Both mother substitutes have clay feet - or, rather, neither are the angel of the house he perceives his mother to have been, but this is a perception he learns to question through the course of the narrative. At the same time, it's not entirely certain how far the narrative can be trusted - he might not understand what he sees (although occasionally, and wrongly I think, we move away from his experiences) and we only know what he is told, and we are told he has been lied to. When we see him giving a thumbs up to himself through an attic window, we know that at least some of the film is fantasy.
What makes the film - aside from a series of impressive performances, and rather brave shifts between melodrama and comedy - are the locations. It's a truism that the locations of gothic narrative are representative of character psyches - notes how Elizabeth Bennet falls in love with Darcy the moment she sees the size of his stately pile - and the loch-side castle and tree house are clearly fertile symbols. In a curious inversion the escape is to the city to sort out the problems of the country, and with the city as Edinburgh we get a whole metatext of Knox, Hogg, Brodie, Burke and Hare, Jekyll and Hyde and Rebus, of dual identities and the damned and the elect. Foe can ascend and descend in the hotel he works in - he is meant to be circumscribed by the bowels of the building and its kitchens, his progress to porter gives him a free rein around the hotel and his bolt hole is in an attic, with most freedom being on rooftops. There's metaphors of class here (although he is clearly of upper middle class origin) as well as the Freudian/Zizekian scheme of id/ego/superego as spatialisations through architecture.
There's more thinking through to be done - the names are also symbolic: the father Julius (Julius Caesar), stepmother Verity (truth), sister Lucy (light), double Kate (Kiss Me/Kismet Kate?), Alasdair (the Gaelic Alexander - homage to Gray, perhaps?) and Hallam Foe as ... enemy of some kind. But why Hallam? Sheffield steel? Hall am Foe points to more architecture (his father is an architect, just to confront some more superego issues)
I think there's a lot more to unpick here, and I definitely need to go and find the book. I also want to go and check out the director's other films
