Festival

Writer/director Annie Griffin's film follows the exploits and foibles of aspiring actors, narcicistic stand-up comedians and jaded festival judges as they're all caught in the swirl and energy of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The film is shot in the style of a documentary and it's chaotic, funny, noisy, and grimy, and I left the cinema completely depressed.

What a strange movie this is. It's billed as a comedy, and it's funny enough (the clueless Canadian acting trio is almost worth the price of admission alone), but the film is absolutely bleak in its outlook of human affairs. Everyone's either an asshole or an idiot.

We're meant to laugh at these lives, which is a tad sadistic. But it's these same self-obsessed jerks and clueless fools who are rewarded in the end, while those with integrity and conscience are destroyed by circumstance. The actor/priest kills himself out of despair. The unappreciated personal assistant is left alone and shattered, turning to drink. And the naive talentless Innocent remains naive, talentless, and innocent with absolutely no change. It's tragic all around. I'm left wondering if the filmmakers hate people.

I feel I've glimpsed a window into the present, and I don't like what this world has grown into at all. It's helter-skelter and desperate. Sure, it's also funny, but at the end of the day, Festival is a cruel circus. Wahoo.