The Party's Just Beginning

24 year old Liusaidh (Karen Gillan) lives an aimless life in Inverness. She works at the cheese counter in a supermarket. She gets drunk in bars, screws random strangers, and eats chips to finish the nights. She watches a guy jump off a bridge and seems uneffected. She sees a neighbor hang himself. Her best friend Alistair is struggling with his homosexuality. She encounters Dale (Lee Pace) intent on committing suicide from the same bridge.

This is Karen Gillan's theatrical directing and writing debut. The intention is interesting. In more skilled hands, the back and forth in time would be better handled. A veteran filmmaker would have some definitive physical identifiers to differentiate the two timelines. It leaves the structure of the movie a little confused. At first, I thought she may be Sixth Sensing. Otherwise, this is an effective performance of self-destruction. It's also an interesting first stab. It's not mind blowing but it shows some promise.

Chastising small town Scottish life to indifferent yet surly pubsters more interested in their drink than this open mic looney, Liusaidh delivers her trash talk with poetic vigour before stumbling out for her nightly shag and take away.

As Liusaidh, (Lucy or Loosey) Karen Gillan owns the screen, as she trudges through her insufferable existence, something her best friend decided against a year's past. Her nightly drink/shag/fries concludes with a stagger over the train bridge favoured by local jumpers, and visions of her dear departed, departing. This unsettling tragedy of events soon becomes mundane with repetition, as is everything in the unfortunate ville of Inverness.

Staring into deep dead space from the local deli counter, under harsh fluorescents and a tight hairnet, she encounters a new bloke interested in more than just processed meats, and we are off. "The Party's Just Beginning" doesn't follow the paint by numbers movie canvass, instead delivering a choppy story in jumpy time slices, with equal doses of edgy humour and dark pathos. Attention must be paid.

Although there are glimmers of hope, the film, like it's perpetually grey, dead end town, has trouble finding a rainbow among the clouds, and that may be the point.

This one, for better or worse, or both, stays with you.

I've loved Karen Gillan ever since Doctor Who and I've followed her career since then. Her debut as a director comes off as true to herself, as if every single step was made with Karen's approval first. This film feels so determined in the story it wants to tell and absolutely commited to its characters and plot development. Karen's performance is also admirable as she turns into this reckless person who is struggling to cope with loss. I'm glad she chose to deal with heavy themes like this because it's important to make them visible for anyone out there who may feel identified with such a troubled state of mind.

It's a great first effort for her and hopefully she will continue down this path of making small but highly compelling indie films. If her future endeavours are also set in her native Scotland, it will certainly add a much more absorbing atmosphere, since she really succeeded in capturing a strong sense of Scotland's environment. It's what she knows, so if she embraces her roots she could even make Scotland as if it was another character, much like Woody Allen did with New York or Jean-Luc Godard did with Paris. By all means, Karen, be my guest and keep doing your thing, I'm excited for more.

I'm not going to spoil anything here, but I will say that Karen Gillan's "The Party's Just Beginning" isn't a perfect film. There's a lot of stuff going on and not all of it gets a resolution. But it's still very well acted (Gillan's best performance yet), well written, and beautifully directed. It's a very confident debut and Gillan's voice really shines through.

I've seen reviews angry at the film, saying that it "exploits" people who identify as transgender or that she "exploits" suicide, which I think is just ridiculous. I really believe that all of that is just down to the fact that Gillan tried to include a lot of different topics and themes in this film. Some are included unsuccessfully, and the film can feel a bit overstuffed, but in my opinion, most of the themes have a good pay off.

Without spoiling anything, I can say that The Party's Just Beginning is an incredibly assured debut. It's got a strong cast, a socially relevant, poignant, and funny script, and even when it doesn't land every punch, The Party's Just Beginning is still an admirable, emotional, and immensely enjoyable directorial debut that marks Karen Gillan as an actor and a director to watch. 9 out of 10.

If you've ever read the book or seen "Trainspotting" the film, you know that it gives an unfiltered look at what heroin addiction is and its effect on people, all through the eyes of the main character Mark Renton. In a very similar fashion, "The Party's Just Beginning" gives you a glimpse into the hellish world of depression.

Karen Gillan did an amazing job writing and directing this film, which is especially surprising (and awesome) because it's her first. As a directorial debut it's a hit, but even from a seasoned director this would easily be a winner. Like any film that deals with such a specific and supremely dark subject matter (and being so bleak as it is), it's certainly not going to win everybody's heart. However it's that bleakness that Karen managed to capture which really resonated with me, and is portrayed so well, both in the film's characters and its substance.

In fairness, I must admit to some bias, as I've always found Karen gobsmackingly beautiful. With that said, if you've ever struggled with depression, this is likely to resonate with you. And if you're like me, it's going to leave you crying and writing good reviews. Finally worth mentioning is that the last film I gave a 9/10 to was "Pulp Fiction"; indeed, I liked it that much, and I can't say enough good things about it.