Dragons and Don Juans

SWORDS squelched into bodies and curious Los Angeles-Celtic dialects filled the screen as the 50th Drambuie Edinburgh Film Festival opened. The film was Dragonheart, an inauspicious beginning to the longest continuously running film festival in the world, but it was the vehicle that brought Sean Connery, the Festival's patron and filmic patron saint of Scotland, back to his home town - even if he was only voicing an FX dragon on screen to Dennis Quaid's dragon-slaying knight.

Connery strolled and smiled, the crowds cheered and he restated his growing commitment to Scottish nationalism with a throwaway Independence soon" to the adoring opening night audience. The computerised dragon is impressive, the svelte burr of Connery's voice is effective and the man himself, most importantly to the festival organisers, was there. But this sword and sorcery children's epic is so lacking in humour and so poorly directed by Rob Cohen that it makes Braveheart look like Kagemusha.

If the opening film disappointed, the first week was the busiest and most exciting for years; the festival's young Irish director, Marc Cousins, in his second year of turning Edinburgh from a guestless desert into a vibrant arena for film-makers and stars, greeting Connery, David Cronenberg, Stephen Frears and even Jarvis Cocker - the Pulp front man in for the new Mirrorball section on the work of pop video-makers - in the first few days. Cronenberg's Crash, from J. G. Ballard's motor-carnage-sex novel, failed to appear, due to jittery producers' continuing search for a British distributor for the most infamous film of the year.

The only glimpse of the film was three fragments shown during Cronenberg's Scene By Scene talk - the festival's innovative public analysis sessions which turned out to be an extremely annoying game, with Cronenberg announcing the fragments as archaeological pieces" just unearthed in Ontario, before gathering the audience into a Q and A that played along with the smug pretence that he was not the filmmaker involved and that we were examining curiosities from an unknown director. Funny for five minutes, intensely annoying for an hour as motives and intentions for the erotic car crash themes were expertly dodged by the cerebral, charming Canadian.

Physical or emotional damage and sex are strangely prevalent themes throughout this year's festival, with Lars Von Trier's overblown Breaking The Waves focusing on the enclosed, repressive world of a small Scottish island in which a simple-minded girl, played by Emily Watson loves her new husband so much that, after his paralysis in an accident, she carries out his wish to make love to strangers. Only an astounding central performance from Watson saves the film from its own pretension, cliched dialogue and preposterous melodrama.

Nick Broomfield's new documentary, Fetishes, focuses unflinchingly on the dominators and the dominated of a New York S&M parlour and is a disturbing yet horribly fascinating look into a real-life theatre of the absurd, laced with the tragic, abused past of those involved, treading a very fine line between voyeurism and the true nature of sexual relief through domination.

The festival also premiered writer Ol Parker's challenging date rape drama, In Your Dreans. Following last year's excellent examination of the rave scene Loved Up, Parker bravely tackles the events of one night when a young couple's first date results in a rape trial revealed in sudden flash forwards. Thandie Newton and Oliver Millburn are both excellent as the couple and the spoken thoughts and dialogue are stingingly accurate.

The heart of the revamped festival continues to lie with the New British Expo and Rosebud sections. Cousins's increasingly important showcase for all new British and independent product attracted more industry players than ever this year and produced one winner and a strong contender for the festival's main prizes, both produced by the BFI, which seems to be undergoing a new lease of adventurous life.

Andrew Kotting deservedly won the Channel 4 Director's award for Gallivant, a poetic familial odyssey around the coast of Britain which uses stop-motion, real-time archive footage, sea-battered rocks and intimate conversation between Kotting's grandmother and handicapped daughter in a blend of impressionistic imagery that is like nothing I have seen before and expands the boundaries of documentary.

Small Time, a no-budget revelation, was given a special mention by the Michael Powell Award Jury. Made for £5,000, Shane Meadow's acerbic comedy-drama gave the eventual Powell winner, Michael Winterbottom's glorious, richly textured Jude, a run for its money. An exuberant, achingly funny tale of low-life, dole-criminals in Nottingham, Small Time rushes at you like a rough-hewn blend of A Hard Day's Night and Pulp Fiction and was the tiny, glittering gem of the festival.

BUT the surprise of the fortnight came from the festival-goers themselves. Not only did they cheer Stephen Frears's re-edited The Van, giving the Roddy Doyle adaptation a public seal of approval after a critical mauling in Cannes; they also voted Some Mother's Son. Terry Gearge's much-debated film focusing on the Maze hunger strikers with Helen Mirren and Fionnuala Flanagan as the mothers of sons who join the protest led by Bobby Sands - the best gala presentation. This won the Granada Award for the latter, just ahead of the charming Irish-German co-production, My Friend Joe, directed by Chris Bould and set in Dalkey.

Trojan Eddie (wrongly announced as a world premiere here, as it premiered in Galway last month), the cutting, dark-edged tale of Irish travelling people, starring Stephen Rea and Richard Harris back on powerful form, directed by Gillies Mackinnon, also sold out, the Edinburghers taking its themes to their hearts.

The film festival's box office was up 12 per cent on last year and the fresh, youthful breeze of Cousins's essential enthusiasm and risk-taking continues to blow. But, despite visits from Bertolucci and Peter Greenaway, the festival lost much of its steam in the second week and slithered to a sorry end with the closing gala, Chantal Ackerman's near-disastrous A Couch In Neu York. Consequently, this was not the classic year that the 50th anniversary demanded.