It’s always a welcome change to see a film set in Scotland that isn’t routine British miserablism centred around gangs and/or drugs but, much like 2013’s Not Another Happy Ending, Scottish Mussel has a stab at setting a romcom up here and sadly falls short on just about every level.
Set mainly in the highlands, the film focuses on Richie (Martin Compston), a cocky Glaswegian who sees a way to make a quick buck by poaching pearls. He goes undercover in a conservation centre where he meets Beth (Talulah Riley) and the feelings he develops for her threaten to scupper his plans.
The story is standard romcom – he’s up to no good but is deep down a good guy, she falls for him, believing he’s being genuine and will be heartbroken when she discovers the truth. It doesn’t take a film scholar to figure out that at some point Ritchie’s scheme will be unveiled but he’ll won over Beth eventually and everyone will live happily ever after.
Written and directed by Riley, the film has good intentions but is too poorly executed to give it a pass on that alone. Compston has natural charisma but shares no chemistry with Riley, whose character is oddly wishy washy considering she presumably wrote the role for herself. The supporting cast has talented actors but almost all are sorely miscast, with the likes of Joe Thomas (The Inbetweeners) and Harry Enfield being lumbered with dreadful Scottish accents and Paul Brannigan, so good in The Angel’s Share, clowning it up as Ritchie’s dim-witted friend. Worst of all is English actor Morgan Watkins who, for some unknown reason, plays an American at the conservation centre. His accent is as atrocious as it is unnecessary.
It might sound nit-picky to pick up on actors accents but it’s emblematic of how messy and poorly conceived so much of this film is. It does raise a few laughs but isn’t nearly funny enough and the lukewarm romance isn’t convincing enough to inspire any level of investment. To top it off, the whole thing is scored with a series of pop tracks from Scottish bands, with the same Paolo Nutini track popping up at least three times before, inevitably, The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles pipes up for the big finale. That says it all about the perception of Scotland this film has, failing to capture any nuance of the place, instead relying on easy cliches and shortbread tin stereotypes.
It’s not impossible to do a light-hearted film in Scotland – look at Dexter Fletcher’s lovely Sunshine on Leith, which also had a big finale set to 500 Miles – but Scottish Mussel definitely isn’t it.
EIFF 2015 — count: 22
Festivals — count: 132
