just watch it!

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Charming and brutal

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

This was a terrible, terrible movie! Oh my god, I can't even get the words out. It's freaking' dramatic. As in 'dramatically bad', not as in 'this is a dramatic movie'. Oh my word.I did not have one moment where I empathized or sympathized with any of the characters other than the older dude doing the dishes whose name I don't even remember. This movie tries to portray Halam as if he's freaking' endearing (or understandable) when he's busy spying on people, with those typical background tunes and everything, and he's not. He's a creep, he's creepy, he peeks into windows when people are unsuspectingly doing their own things. And the ending just confirmed my feelings. I wish it wasn't so, all the while I was wishing I would stop seeing him as a creep but I didn't. Terrible movie. Voyeurism is not endearing, no matter how troubled you are.

If you wanted to mock 'Hallam Foe', it would be easy. There's the over-enunciated Edinburgh accents, for a start; the spider-man like abilities of the film's eponymous hero; the hackneyed device of a beautiful, sexually aware but troubled woman; the slightly unsatisfactory plot resolution; and the use of soft, folky music to provide a generic mood of wistful depression. But see it not as realism, but rather as a modern day folk tale, and its equally easy to like the movie, with its slightly fanciful vision of Edinburgh, and a slightly more fanciful vision of a fey but horny teenager let loose in the adult world. And there's a final bonus for anyone who remembers 'Tutti Frutti', in a decent role for (the highly underrated) Maurice Roeves.

There's a half in "Chung King Express" that has stuck with me. It is an expression of being and seeing that is close to the core of this film. It is so much better, deeper, that it hampers my appreciation for what is here. I wonder if that is a particularly good thing; if there is something to be valued by the newness of discovered loneliness. I came to this in spite of the male actor, who was involved in one of the most trivial instances of wasted time I've had. He wasn't responsible for it of course, but actors are tokens, and even child actors carry responsibility for bad choices. I came because the filmmaker made "Young Adam."If you do not know that film, it is deep and real. The filmmaker has some insight into the outer limits of accidental couples. Its an adventure in anti romance and resulting sadness. The same thing drives this, but from a more traditional form.In "Young Adam," the context was real life, a river of life that was imagined and received as genuine. Here, the context is moved to a strictly movie reality: the "coming of age" business that we know so well it seems more real. There's some simple wrapping that allows us to accept this: a mother's suicide, but the matter of this is the impossibility of the real in relationships.Sophia Myles — a sort of Rachel Weiss done right — is the woman here, one of them. Her job is to be a character that stands both in real life and this imagined notion of a sexual teacher. We need that for this to work, because we need to see why this kid would fall in love with her, by us falling in love as well. Its all about the tension created between what you know and what you desperately want to.Her job is cleverly supported in the story in three ways. The first and most obvious is that she is the lover and the reflection of the lost mother (because of physical similarity). We even have a "Vertigo" reference to subtly help us in this. The second is that she is observed, watched, the same way we are watching the movie. Its Hitchcock again.The third has to do with her as a sort of casting director who finds roles for her clients, and the boy having this pathology of having to play roles. Its a makeup and costume thing that is implanted in the story, seemingly but not really sensibly.It all works. Its all rather effective, until the writer's copout at the end. Until then, you get entangled in the inevitability of disappointment in love. The more you see it on screen, the more you cling to the opposite in your life. Its a wonderful mechanism and I think unique to film. Seeing damage makes you the fixer.But it is compromised in the Ned when the filmmaker (and no doubt his funders) wanted the thing to end happily, with our hero visibly coming of age. We literally have to see him walking down the street in what we will know as a more mature posture. Stop, dear viewer, before that part. So you can trust in love.Its nice seeing Claire Forlani back in a cleverly sculpted project.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

it is great to see jamie bell develop into such a fine actor. his performance in this lacklustre film really saved it from being completely unwatchable. it is a pity that his touching performance which was so subtle was not better used.the film doesn't know what it is, is it a peeping tom movie, are we going to discover the murky habitat of a teenage prowler. or is it a coming of age story as a young adolescent learns to deal with his mothers death. the film could neither play up to the sinister suggestions of the beginning or play it down. i kept waiting for something dangerous to happen, feeling that the story was stuck in a boring interlude, until i realised that was the story. a boy falls in love with a girl who looks like his mother - and the imagined murder of her mother was the interlude.well i still rate this film as watchable purely because of jamie bell's beautiful nuanced performance but for nothing else