Press

Fancy a different kind of summer movie? Try this one, suggests Andrew Eaton.

Artists who make films are often asked why their work is in a gallery instead of a cinema, where it would compete equally with that of any other director. Behind the question is an accusation - that the “art” is just a movie with ideas above its station (and in a few cases, badly made). If some of the more tedious, amateurish art films out there make you feel there’s something in this, Henry Coombes’ new film, ‘Laddy and the Lady’, makes a strong case for the defence. It will be shown in cinemas next month at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Before that, in a kind of eccentric riposte to summer blockbuster season, Glasgow’s Tramway arts centre has given the film a vast space normally used for major theatre shows. See it at Tramway if you can. There’s something fantastically disorientating about watching Coombes’ 11-minute film - made with ¬£15,000 from Scottish Screen- while wandering at leisure in an enormous, otherwise empty pitch-black room. It’s a disorientating film, after all. Set on a pheasant shoot, it was filmed, like Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, with a mostly featureless set and a few props standing in for a real location. There are two actors dressed up as dogs, and a dead pheasant with a human face; the human characters, meanwhile, can act as noisily or viciously as animals. There is much animalistic movement and noise from the beaters, and sharp cries of “bad dog!” directed at the nervy, overexcited Laddy of the title (actually a six-foot ginger haired actor, Kevin MacIssac). This could all be very silly, but in Coombes capable hands (he studies flm before studying at Glasgow school of Art) it is by turns funny, dreamlike and oppressive, often feeling like a painting coming alive as much as a film. What’s it all about? I haven’t got a clue, and I got to spend an hour with Coombes asking him. It was inspired, he says, by watching his architect father on shooting trips as a child, but the film offers no comment on hunting. The Laddy character, Coombes says, is a “vehicle for an individual repressed by the mannerisms and rules around him, who’s always fighting his instincts. Beyond that he’s frustratingly elusive, explaining that he’s trying to work instinctively, in order to inject “innocence and energy”. he worries his old work, painting and sculpture, was “flat and illustrative of an idea”. Coombes has certainly put plenty of energy and ideas into Laddy and the Lady. He painted scenes from the film to help secure funding, then made all the props himself, spending months building the back of a Range Rover out of wood and metal - which didn’t make the final cut. He demanded an equal level of commitment from his cast, choosing MacIssac after hearing he’d once drunk an entire bottle of wine in 30 seconds before throwing up. He says he needed someone who “could enjoy a certain level of humiliation”. Coombes made him drink twp pints of milk in one go, from a fake dog teat. Not something you see often at the cinema.