Meet Monica Velour is a new take on the mature American woman role for Sex and the City girl Kim Cattrall. Visiting Scotland on a special guest appearance to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, I caught up with her to discuss the role. Transforming herself into ex-1970s porn star Monica Velour's self-ego Linda Romanoli saw her gain 20lbs and peel back the layers of a lady of the late-night movies who is past her best. "You really have to be on your toes in independent films. It was an amazing opportunity to do a transformation that I've never had a chance to do before."

Pursued by Tobe, a compulsive high-school graduate with a penchant for 1970s porn and its biggest star, Monica Velour. Making a pilgrimage across the Midwest to meet her at an Indiana strip club, a stark introduction that revelas the reality of her sad existence.

"I started to create this character with Keith [Bearden, director] from the bottom up. The way she speaks, the way she looks, the way she talks, her body language, what her life has been like before - really creating a life other than what was in the script. She smokes, she does drugs, she's had this kind of life, she's burned out. Everything about that so informed what we were going for in terms of this woman's given circumstances."

Though her celebrity status has long since faded, Tobe's feeble pursuits marry the downtrodden with the downright weird, lending a smattering of to comic moments to proceedings.

Despite some tough subject matter, the film is imbued with a real feeling of heart. "The humanity of the story was not that she was a porn star or a stripper or any of that - it was that she was a mother fighting for the custody of her daughter. She's got great humour, a dignity and strength."

Cattrall's performance is the highlight of the film, festival fodder with clever asides but not quite enough oomph to push it into cinemas. Now released on DVD, the best way to Meet Monica Velour is at your rental website of choice.




is available to buy now on DVD.

Clad in grey clothes and golden complexions, Hailsham students are special creatures. Raised to fulfil a very specific biological purpose in an age where life expectancy exceeds 100, their lives are empty vessels propelled directly from preschool to school, through adolescence, and directly into respite centres where they care for, or become, donors. Placing futuristic scientific treatments into a period setting (in this case, 1970s), is immediately unsettling.

Growing up at Hailsham, we are introduced to Cathy (Carey Mulligan), Tommy (Andrew Garfield), and Ruth (Keira Knightley) in a point-by-point set-up of their curious lives. Though the child actors of Never Let Me Go feel somewhat Harry Potter-ish, though, their gossipy cliques and painfully childish competition are offset by a stellar performance from Sally Hawkins. As newcomer Miss Lucy who connects with and battles with a desire to enlighten these strange children, her questioning glances and tidy, unpracticed explanations inject a healthy dose of unrehearsed realism to a world thick with convention and rules. Though the film makes berth at Hailsham, it really begins when Cathy and co are sent to farmhouses known as 'the Cottages' in the English countryside. A fragile-looking teen, Cathy carries her questions and insecurities in her wan frame, quietly searching for the answers behind their strange existence.

Best friend and crush Tommy, sequestered from Cathy's affections by Ruth, is poignantly played by an adorably naive Andrew Garfield. Their innate chemistry and inept fondness carries a sincerity as hapless as it is heartbreaking. The disjointed, bitty selection of plot incidences from Ishiguro's novel are bound together thus; betraying the undercurrents of a relationship between friends shackled together for life in the confines of huge, constricting homes and stifling rumours.

Stories grow up around them as they meander through life with their awkward make-do trinkets and fashion sense. Like Ishiguro's students, they share an intoned way of speaking that's at once innocent and world-weary, all the while conveying a the cramped egos of children denied the love and nurturing of growing up. Stunning locations and beautiful set design converge with a subtly piercing pallette, melding real English countryside and old town beauty with a world that's not quite our own. Though initially piecemeal, Romanek's vision transforms Ishiguro's ethereal novel of questions into a well-crafted story of tragic love.

Never Let Me Go is released on DVD in the UK on 27 June.

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