Ewen Bremner’s sausage and oth­er high­lights from the 2020 Glas­gow Film Festival

There’s a lev­el of warm inti­ma­cy at the Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val that you just don’t get else­where. It’s like being on the periph­ery of a big fam­i­ly meal and watch­ing as every­one muck­ing in to make cer­tain that every­one has their seat at the table.

It might be some­thing to do with the nar­row cor­ri­dors and the dinky bar space (not a crit­i­cism!) at the Glas­gow Film The­atre, the festival’s cen­tral screen­ing hub. It’s very easy to bump into peo­ple you know, or spot pro­gram­mers and film­mak­ers milling about ahead of their next Q&A or intro. See­ing the same faces lends the event a sub­tle sense of com­fort­ing cohe­sion, even as the pro­gramme itself cov­ers a wide range of sub­jects, styles and locales.

My fes­ti­val began in the most rois­ter­ing and col­le­giate style imag­in­able, at a rep screen­ing of 1994’s Tam­my and the T‑Rex. The film sees tou­sle-haired jock Michael, played by Paul Walk­er, hav­ing his brain trans­plant­ed into the head of an ani­ma­tron­ic T‑Rex after he is mauled by a lion in a local safari park.

Denise Richards’ cheer­girl Tam­my has the hots for Michael, much to the vio­lent cha­grin of her psy­chot­ic part­ner Bil­ly (George Pil­grim), who hounds the lovestruck quar­ter­back to the point of near-death. When Tam­my quick­ly realis­es it’s Michael’s brain pow­er­ing the T‑Rex on a gore-soaked killing spree, she rekin­dles her love for him and tries her utmost to free him.

The film was made because a South Amer­i­can entre­pre­neur got hold of an ani­ma­tron­ic T‑Rex and writer/​director Stew­art Raf­fill (the mind behind Mac and Me) wrote some­thing which he could shoot close to his house in Texas. All the splat­ter scenes were even­tu­al­ly expunged so the film would achieve a PG-13 rat­ing, but no-one went to see it.

Now, the Amer­i­can dis­trib­u­tor Vine­gar Syn­drome, who spe­cialise in art­works of ill repute, have restored and recut the film, bring­ing it back to its for­mer gory glo­ry. At the screen­ing I attend­ed, many view­ers were swig­ging from wine bot­tles and bel­low­ing invec­tive at the scene, a noise to be heard amid the rounds of howl­ing laugh­ter. Although its tongue is def­i­nite­ly set firm­ly in its cheek, this gaudy rel­ic has the poten­tial to become a late night phe­nom­e­non á la The Room. Just don’t let James Fran­co see it!

From tin­ker­ing with a botched future clas­sic to build­ing a movie around your obses­sion with an actress: the title of Chiara Malta’s Sim­ple Women is a nod back to Hal Hartley’s 1992 film Sim­ple Men, which con­tained with­in it an icon­ic dance sequence set to Son­ic Youth’s ​‘Kool Thing’ and led by Eli­na Löwensohn’s mys­te­ri­ous epilep­tic Elina.

When aspir­ing film direc­tor and Sim­ple Men super­fan Fed­er­i­ca (Jas­mine Trin­ca) bumps into Eli­na Löwen­sohn on the streets of Rome, she pitch­es a biopic of her life to be filmed in her native Bucharest. Löwen­sohn hes­i­tat­ing­ly accepts, and what begins as a chance for the actress to revis­it her tumul­tuous youth, soon turns sour when argu­ments erupt about who the subject’s life real­ly belongs to. It’s cer­tain­ly a nov­el, well-exe­cut­ed rumi­na­tion on the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al logis­tics of film­mak­ing, even if it does lack for a sat­is­fy­ing conclusion.

Of a more seri­ous polit­i­cal stripe was Amjad Abu Alala’s You Will Die at 20, a slick­ly-realised Sudanese teen movie with a macabre twist. As a baby, Muza­mil is tak­en to a nam­ing cer­e­mo­ny over­seen by the Sheik, and when one of her dervish­es faints at a key moment, it is pro­nounced that the child will – per the title – die at the age of 20. Very quick­ly, Muzamil’s father ships out, claim­ing that he’ll find work abroad and send back mon­ey, but the real­i­ty is that he can’t bear the shame.

The boy his con­fined to his house, mocked and abused by his peers, and thought to be a dead loss to the com­mu­ni­ty. He mem­o­ris­es the Quran, but nobody real­ly cares. The curse shapes every­thing about him, even his ret­i­cence to forge human con­nec­tions. The film slow­ly, care­ful­ly rolls towards a dénoue­ment in which we are able to wit­ness the results of his two-decade exis­ten­tial break­down. It’s a lit­tle lacon­ic and occa­sion­al­ly a lit­tle over­wrought, but it’s impres­sive as a debut fea­ture, both in its visu­als which play on the high con­trast of sun and shade, and the sub­tle pow­er of the performances.

Famil­iar­i­ty at film fes­ti­vals – just as in real life – can breed con­tempt, so it’s always worth stray­ing a lit­tle off the beat­en track. Using resid­ual direc­tor recog­ni­tion, or fes­ti­val awards as a guid­ing light, can only get you so far. I took a chance on Ulrich Thomsen’s Gut­ter­bee, a tire­some­ly wacky slice of South­ern Goth­ic which was made worth­while by Ewen Brem­n­er play­ing an expat Ger­man sausage butch­er who is clear­ly based on Wern­er Herzog.

The biggest sur­prise of the fes­ti­val was Katharine O’Brien’s Lost Trans­mis­sions, in which Simon Pegg proves there’s more than one string to his act­ing bow by play­ing a man suf­fer­ing the adverse psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of years heavy drug abuse. It’s a rough-edged film, but every­thing about it feels ripped from an osten­si­bly cred­i­ble reality.

The way O’Brien depicts the cru­el bureau­cra­cy of the var­i­ous treat­ment cen­tres and the dif­fi­cul­ty of see­ing a close friend in a new light is both detailed and affect­ing, with Juno Tem­ple on fine form as the elec­tropop singer-song­writer who falls into car­ing for this lost soul.

I feel like, in all, I was only able to dip the point of one toe into the deep waters of this fes­ti­val, but all I can say for cer­tain is that it was very warm (like usu­al) and I’m cer­tain­ly han­ker­ing wade in a bit deep­er next year.