Pikadero (Ben Sharrock)

Set in a small town in the Basque area of Spain, Scottish director Ben Sharrock’s comedy-drama follows a young couple as they attempt to consummate their relationship. The title translates as a discreet place where couples can meet for sex. There’s even an app listing locations though Gorka (Joseba Usabiaga) is so skint he can’t afford a phone, or in fact a car. Girlfriend Ane (Barbara Goenaga) is also struggling financially having recently completed her studies. Both are still living at home with their parents. Mostly they just hang out having conversations about their hopes for the future. Their ambitions are modest. She’s contemplating going to Edinburgh. That’s how bleak things seem, working in a hotel in Scotland seems like an attractive proposition. Gorka has an apprenticeship in a factory, but knows getting the job will keep him there for life.  The film’s deadpan humour and the muted sadness of the characters are reminiscent of Roy Andersson, while Sharrock often frames his characters in the corner of the screen, or against plain backdrops to make them seem isolated by their surroundings. Pikadero is prescient about problems facing working-class twenty-somethings in the current economic climate and its ending is quietly devastating.

The Love Witch (Anna Biller)

Beautiful witch Elaine (Samantha Robinson) moves to a small town to start a new life after the death of her lover. Though outwardly she seems positive and intent on pleasing men her voice-over makes it clear she’s unhappy. Despite her recent heartbreak she’s intent on finding the man of her dreams and has concocted a love potion to help her identify him. Unfortunately this potion has side-effects reducing would-be alpha-males to weeping needy wrecks and eventually leaving them dead. Square-jawed Detective Griff Meadows (Gian Keys), follows the trail to Elaine’s door but arresting her is the last thing on his mind when he sets eyes on her.

Anna Biller’s stunning retro-styled fairytale borrows the iconography from classic movies but the result is anything but derivative. There are nods to Hitchcock’s Psycho, melancholy Italian horror movies, Douglas Sirk melodramas, and Jacques Demy’s fairytale romances but The Love Witch has most in common with Angela Carter’s feminist reworking of Brothers Grimm stories with Biller is using familiar tropes to critique female roles and masculinity in popular culture.

Moon Dogs (Philip John)

Visually impressive coming-of-age road movie with an impressive score by Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Screenwriter Raymond Friel’s original draft was apparently a raucous teen comedy and you can still see traces of his original intent here but the finished film is more interested in the emotional journey taken by the youngsters. Michael (Jack Parry Jones) follows his girlfriend to the mainland when her family moves to Glasgow. Dragging his troubled step-brother Thor (Christy O’Donnell) along with him the two team up with Irish singer Caitlin (Tara Lee) who’s heading for a Celtic music festival in the city. I didn’t always appreciate the humour and Caitlin is a bit of a manic pixie dream girl, but director Philip John and his director of photography Alasdair Walker make spectacular use of locations making Moon Dogs feels like a distinctly Scottish take on a well-worn genre.

Sixty Six

Director Lewis Khlar is primarily a collage artist and Sixty-Six is a collection of twelve short films formed from magazine cut-outs and Roy Liechtenstein pop-art drawings all telling stories formed from 50s’ Melodrama and Film Noir. I haven’t heard an audience give out an audible sigh of relief when a film ended since albert Serra’s Story of My Life at LFF a few years ago but it’s worth the effort.