Gallivant

Director Andrew Kotting, his 90 year old grandmother, and his 9 year old daughter (who has cerebral palsy or something like it) take a trip around the coast of Great Britain.

As a story, it's not dramatic: all it does is to give some vague hint of a narrative thread to what is basically a cinematic essay.

It is beautiful to look at, at times, even though it was shot on 8mm. It shows little which would be familiar to, or visited by, a tourist.

There is a constant sense of the past being lost; some footage from an earlier period is intercut, but many of the interviews with the very real people the crew meets on their travels also reminisce.

This is an engaging piece of a reflective, contemplative nature.

The previous reviewers have said most of what I feel about this film, but I'd like to emphasise the touching nature of the relationship between Eden, disabled by Joubert's syndrome, and her "big gran", 85 year-old Gladys, and their relationship with the changing landscape of a vanishing Britain. Like Powell & Pressburger with "A Canterbury Tale" Andrew Kotting presents us with a mystical vision of pilgrims searching for "blessings". Perhaps the lollipop lady motif, Eden dressed as the Virgin Mary or Kotting in a monk's garb are not entirely whimsical? Suggestion: the BFI should have a Kotting season, and include his recent film with a grown-up 23 year-old Eden, "Louyre: This our Still Life".