Hallam Foe

Director: David Mackenzie

Starring: Jamie Bell, Sophia Myles, Ciará Hinds, Clair Forlani

Hallam Foe (Bell) is a strange boy. Living with his father and stepmother, Verity (Forlani), in a grand and isolated Scottish mansion, he has developed a warped tendency to spend his time spying on people and noting down his observations. These observations are kept wrapped up in notebooks and buried in a heavily chained metal trunk in his tree house hideout. Tracking the idiosyncrasies of his family and his neighbours, with a penchant for recording their sex lives in detail, Hallam becomes increasingly concerned with the thought that his real mother, whom he idolises, has been murdered and that there was in fact no accident in the lake at all.

As Hallam’s relationship with Verity deteriorates violently, he escapes to the frenetic world of Edinburgh. Although tree houses and money are absent, Hallam manages to talk himself into getting a job when he stumbles upon a woman who looks exactly like his mother, Kate (Myles). After following Kate to work, he charms her into giving him a job as a porter at the hotel she works for. He then moves into the clock tower, taking with him his bizarre collection of his mother’s dresses and make-up, as well as a badger headpiece. Kate then becomes the new object of his voyeuristic past times and the obsessive target of his binoculars.

Wandering the streets and rooftops of Edinburgh, Hallam searches not only for the mother he has lost but the person he is trying to be once he has dealt with his distorted grief. Mackenzie depicts a touching, if somewhat disturbing, coming of age tale with Jamie Bell meeting the exceptional standards he set himself as Billy Elliot in 2000. Relatively unknown Sophia Myles gives a powerful performance as romantically confused Kate, and Clair Forlani has a formidable air of cruel seductiveness which slices through the film. Hallam Foe captures a twisted side to stunted adolescence, but is still relatable as Mackenzie unfolds the effects of grief, suspicion, loss, fear and misplaced love, split between the roaming Scottish hills and the deliriously shot Edinburgh.

Warning: Do not watch if afraid of heights or badgers.

Ella Walker