Empire Online – 17 August 2005

Edinburgh Kicks Off

By Steve O’ Hagan

The Edinburgh Film Festival kicked off on Wednesday night in pleasantly rambunctious fashion, with pretty much everything you want from an opener: a star-studded red carpet, a crowd-pleasing movie and a party where the free booze doesn’t run out. The Red carpet for Richard E Grant’s Wah-Wah was one of the best in festival memory, according to regular Edinbuggers – Gabriel Byrne, Brian Cox, Emily Watson and Anthony Minghella were among the tidy line-up of glitterati pottering up the carpet that is crimson.

Not a documentary on Jimmy Hendrix, Wah-Wah is Grant’s first directorial effort and a semi-autobiographical trawl through his childhood traumas as a lad in colonial Swaziland, circa 1970, which had the audience cackling and crying in equal measure. Actually, take the ‘semi’ bit and make it really small, as all the events depicted in the film, Grant told us at the party, actually happened. And yes, that’s including the bit where his drunken dad fires a pistol at him and and the part when his mum shags a neighbour in the car while Grant was in the back. It’s a world where all the adults are alcoholic adulterers or sneering toffs, constantly chattering while saying practically nothing in their hoi-polloi rah-rah banter. All the while, young Ralph (read: Richard E) watches dumbstruck as parents’ car-crash lives unfold.

Richard E. Grant (above) attends the Wah Wah premiere with wife, Joan, and daughter Olivia (who also appears in Wah-Wah). The film’s stars Nicholas Hoult (right) and Emily Watson (below left) also attended.

With just enough honesty to reign in the occasional outburst of overblown emotion, it’s often very funny and makes a pretty earnest grab for your heart strings. The former Mr Withnail (no story about Grant can go without a mention of that film) must have spent some time on the blower to get such a great cast together, with Gabriel Byrne, Emily Watson, Miranda Richardson and Julie Walters all chipping in. Definitely worth looking out for.

On to the party at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange, where the ginger ale and whisky flowed freely (and free) until 3am, along with, bizarrely, diet Cobra beer. Empire hooked up with directors Dave McKean (Mirrormask) and Gabby Dellal (On A Clear Day) for much of it. McKean is still tearing what little hair he has left out waiting for Sony to put a UK release date out for a film that has sat, completed, in some executive’s cupboard for a lifetime. Well, year. And Dellal, whose film On A Clear Day gets a UK premiere on Friday, was eying up McKean’s kid for a part in her next film. Once they left, Empire fell in with a pair of female producers from the Parkinson talk show on the look out for comedy talent in the fringe, who, despite their petite frames, promptly drank us under the table. Parky wouldn’t approve, surely?

Steve O’Hagan

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