I saw The Illusionist on Sunday. More catch up cinema. And I must say I was a bit puzzled.

Now I think back to what people who’ve seen it have told me about it and it’s fair to say that I don’t actually remember anyone saying it was brilliant. Naomi suggested that My Friend Mr Neill had felt that not very much had happened in it. But this could be a wicked falsehood. Though it does sound like something that he would say. And Russell I recall was fairly pragmatically muted. And he saw the EIF premiere.

The film looks unquestionably gorgeous. Edinburgh seems to lend itself to this jaggedy scribbly gorgeous attention to detail illustrative style. Even the lighting is beautifully observed – that miraculous way that Edinburgh can be strewn with patches of clear sharp light inbetween heavy plump grey clouds is surely distinctive and unique. George Street I loved. The dresses I loved. The bizarre occupants of the boarding house. There’s all sorts of tiny observations in there that smack of a thing which had love lavished on it.

But the story. I think I just couldn’t quite figure it out. I couldn’t believe this peculiar relationship between magician and (?) child was sinisterly intended. But if it wasn’t, what a dreadful tragic ending. Are we really meant to think that she bled him relentlessly dry - with only a maybe rabbit stew and a bit of ironing offered up in return - and then departed without a backward glance when she had all she wanted? This would be a perfectly reasonable plot line but sits surely ill at ease alongside such a charming, delighting in life series of pictures.

And the angry rabbit. Well, I wept when he set it free – although rather unfoundedly as it was a mean old thing. Let me imagine instead that I wept for all that the rabbit represented

And then the mournful card that he left behind on the vacated kitchen table. Well, after this, I almost forgave the rest of the film as it made my disillusioned romantic’s heart sing.

But really, in summation, puzzlement. Gorgeous looking but a sad and bitter story that ruined it. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.