Edinburgh International Film Festival - Tuesday

In his immediate post-Bond outings, Pierce Brosnan seemed to be consciously distancing himself from the suave womanising image that playing the superspy had left him firmly stamped with. But Married Life sees the Irish rogue fully embracing the ‘smooth charmer’ side of his personality once more, and the film is all the better for it. His wittily self-aware narration gives a deceptively light tone to this ‘40s-set tale of “the things we do for love”, which hides some dark themes under its shiny surface.

Good as Brosnan is, it is Chris Cooper who really makes this film worth watching. He adds yet another complex and layered performance to his bursting CV, this time as the husband who wants to leave his wife (Patricia Clarkson) for his mistress (a platinum-blonde Rachel McAdams), and decides that murder could be the easiest way out. Director Ira Sachs handles the film’s shifting tone well, moving from frothy comedy to nail-biting tension with ease, resulting in a very satisfying character drama.

For those wanting to get away from big stars and costly camera angles, Love and Other Crimes is about as low budget as it gets. The debut film from Serbian director Stefan Arsenijevic, it’s a sort-of comedy that centres on the humdrum lives of a group of small time criminals in Belgrade. We join Anica (Anica Dobra), girlfriend of crime boss Milutin (Fedja Stojanovic), waking up on the day that she intends to make her escape from this dead-end life, and the film proceeds to detail the various events of this single strange day.

Arsenijevic’s film is so low-key that it occasionally veers towards blandness, but he sprinkles it with enough surreal humour and absurd character moments to just about keep things interesting up to the beguiling conclusion. My highlight is a scene in which Anica pays a visit to an old boyfriend, ending with a moment of laugh-out-loud visual comedy that’s all the funnier because it’s so unexpected.

And I can’t let this day go by without mention of The Surprise Movie which, as the title suggests, is a surprise. In previous years it’s been sublime (Pulp Fiction), forgettable (The Life and Death of Peter Sellers) and somewhere in between (The Kingdom), so who knows what this year will offer. Whatever the case, there’s nothing that captures the pure pleasure of moviegoing quite like having no clue as to what you’re about to watch until the moment the title comes up onscreen. It’s an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.

• Married Life (7/10) is at Cameo, Home Street on Tue 24th at 19.45
• Love and Other Crimes [aka Ljubav i drugi zlocini] (6/10) is at Cineworld, Fountainbridge on Tue 24th at 19.45 and Wed 25th at 21.40
• The Surprise Movie (?/10) is at Cineworld, Fountainbridge on Tue 24th at 19.00

Posted by: Paul Gallagher from Screen Fever