Mister Foe.

"Making drastic changes to a novel while adapting it for the screen is one thing, but doing so when the novelist is a close friend can induce new levels of anxiety," writes Bilge Ebiri in the new issue of Bookforum. "Scottish director David Mackenzie found himself in that situation when he decided to tackle Peter Jinks's acclaimed Hallam Foe, an offbeat story about a young Peeping Tom's decidedly odd journey to self-knowledge.... 'Peter's being a friend of mine was one of the reasons I considered doing his novel as a film,' Mackenzie says, adding dryly: 'But the thought that your good friend is about to have their work ripped up in front of them is also a bit awkward.'"

"It's a pity the third act takes a pop-therapeutic nosedive, yet for most of its running time, Mister Foe works its maladjusted mojo into something truly unsettling and uniquely twisted," writes David Fear in Time Out New York.

Updated through 9/8.

Vadim Rizov in the Voice: "David Mackenzie has jokingly claimed this as the capstone of his 'sex trilogy' (2003's mostly celebrated Young Adam and 2005's mostly ignored Asylum preceded it), a threesome (har) of films extrapolating a single idea: In Mackenzie's world, wholesome sex is a possibility for other people, but never for the (anti-)hero, whose couplings are always the sublimated expression of something else. What makes Mister Foe such unlikely fun, though, is [Jamie] Bell's accomplished smart-ass routine and Mackenzie's blithe attitude toward taboos."

"Suggesting an extended music video, Mister Foe is all fancy camera angles, clipped editing and dialogue that is either twisted for the sake of being twisted ('I want to suck the dick of the last guy who fucked you,' says Kate [Sophia Myles] to Hallam, fantasizing that he's queer) or announces itself as being "psychological" without ever being deep," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant.

"In his attempt to make the audience sympathize with Hallam, Mackenzie uses the cheapest trick in the book: attempting to give the audience a link into his head with a manic soundtrack," notes Simon Abrams in the New York Press. "Apparently hearing Hallam’s angst in song form adds complexity to his character by highlighting otherwise unseen aspects of Mackenzie’s sweeping camerawork."

Brent Simon talks with Myles for Vulture.

Updates, 9/5: "[I]f the extremity of Hallam's temperament tests the limits of our sympathy as well as our credulity, Mr Bell's ability to seem by turns sweet and scary prevents us from losing interest entirely," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "So does Mr Mackenzie's success in translating Mr Jinks's prose into an atmosphere that is both gritty and picturesque. He infuses the examination of Hallam's emotional disorder with enough macabre and comical touches to prevent Mister Foe from sliding into the clinical sensationalism of the case study."

"Mister Foe could have been hatched by the Quirky Indie Hit Simulator," writes Steve Dollar, outlining the plot in the New York Sun, before giving in: "One thing leads to another and, well, the story unfolds as awkwardly, illogically, and inevitably as such things happen in these kinds of movies."

Bell's "performance has a multifaceted vitality to it, equal parts wounded puppy dog and plucky fighter, and might have carried [Mister Foe] were it not for the fact that the film doesn't treat its subject as a real person, but rather as a term paper-ready vessel for narrative themes of voyeurism and Freudian longing," writes Nick Schager at Cinematical.

Updates, 9/8: "Stylistically buttressed by an opening credits cartoon reminiscent of Juno, a bludgeoning wall-to-wall indie soundtrack, quirky comic relief (including a wacky fellow concierge played by Ewen Bremner), and perfunctory over-editing, Mister Foe is middle-of-the-road dreck that manages no more than timid Freudian pop psychology and audience-pandering cop outs," writes Michael Joshua Rowin in Reverse Shot.

"Mister Foe may not be entirely original or entirely successful, but it's definitely fun to watch," finds Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "[T]he enjoyment in Mister Foe flows more from its foulmouthed wit and from the often dazzling cinematography of Gilles Nuttgens than from its ludicrous plot. As in Asylum, Mackenzie's passion for brooding, rotting, half-ruined Victorian architecture sometimes throws the characters into the shade."

Posted by dwhudson at September 4, 2008 1:20 PM