Showing @ Cineworld, Edinburgh, Sat 21 & Sun 22 Jun

Lluís Miñarro / Spain / 2014 / 105 mins

Edinburgh International Film Festival always offers up some bizarre images, but an oddly beautiful sequence of a man engaging in carnal relations with a melon may take the biscuit this year. And yet, within the context of Falling Star, the scene feels very much at home. Or at least no less incongruous than the rest of the film.

Lluís Miñarro has a string of production credits under his belt, but he has used his first stint in the director’s chair to create a period drama that’s lit like a Vermeer and glitters like Baz Luhrmann at his campest. Falling Star tells the poignant tale of Amadeo van Savoy of Spain, a democratically elected king whose chief advisor is killed in battle before the coronation. When Amadeo (an engaging performance from Àlex Brendemühl) refuses to step down, his corrupt ministers confine the new monarch to his castle for his own safety and the self-declared “Republican King’s” idealistic plans are overtaken by impotence and isolation.

Miñarro eschews traditional storytelling in favour of hallucinatory vignettes: the vegetarian king picks at elaborate displays of fruit, the staff indulge in wanton assignations, a jewel-encrusted tortoise creeps past. Every shot overflows with jewel-bright colours, elaborate costumes, and extravagant sets, and it is precisely this sensory assault that will lodge Falling Star firmly in the memory.

Showing as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival 2014