Another collection of short films that I've been pointed to or had recommended to me and which I've enjoyed watching. If you have anything you think I should see, drop me an email at the address on the sidebar, and to read other short film reviews, click on the 'film' tag at the end of the post.
(This is just the trailer for the film I'm afraid) Based on the HG Wells tale
The Door in the Wall, Andrew Steggall’s short film The Door is a rather lovely
piece of film – with a stunningly good cast – which delves into the ambiguous
world of between personal memory and boyhood fantasy as an older man tries to
make sense of a key event from his past. Charles Dance plays the older Thomas Arlington
with a resigned enigmatic quality as he debates with his son, a sharply-suited
Elliot Cowan, but clearly distracted by his memory of discovering a magical
green door into a extraordinary world.
In that world, discovered with a sweetly boyish charm by Thomas Hardiman’s
younger Thomas, is all manner of wonderment, evocative of Alice’s Wonderland
and peopled by the likes of an achingly moving Harriet Walter, Tobias Menzies’
Bourne-like swan-angel and Michael Culkin’s clock-obsessed king. Its fable-like
story remains something of a mystery but is all the more powerful for it. Steggall
directs with a gorgeously sweeping cinematic vision, aided beautifully by Jools
Scott’s sumptuous score, and it is definitely worth keeping an eye out for any
opportunity to catch it.
It’s always nice to see creative relationships continue in different forms
and though their connections may well have been previously made, short film
Spirit Children sees a number of the cast of the Almeida’s 2010 hit Ruined
reunited. Written and directed by Kehinde Fadipe, Jenny Jules’ mother is a
mentally disturbed woman and cared for by her struggling children. One day to
please her, her daughter, Pippa Bennett-Warner, and her twin brother played by
Jahvel Hall set out to obtain something special to make her happy with terrible
consequences.
Played out near-wordlessly, Fadipe’s film is really quite beautiful. Gorgeously
lingering shots of the mini adventure are accompanied by a highly evocative
score from Nate Connelly and yet each is packed full of meaning and story-telling.
We learn so much about the relationship between the twin children and how their
power dynamic is fixed, Jules speaks huge volumes with just the smallest shift
in her mouth and the whole 9 minutes is quietly moving.
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Aw, Robin Baker’s 10 minute tale of an evening between two gay colleagues in
East London is really quite good fun and sweet-hearted. Daniel Ryan and Navin
Chowdhry bump into each other coming out of a supermarket and decide to go for
a drink, something Ryan’s Colin is rather more keen on than Chowdhry’s Naveen.
What follows is an increasingly messy night out as they go to drink, eat,
drink, club and drink some more, all the time talking about and working on
their sexual frustration. But where Naveen is after instant satisfaction, Colin
is on the lookout for something more meaningful and so it is an unlikely match.
Ryan and Chowdhry make a great pairing, the former’s reticence most endearing,
the latter’s roving eye full of confident swagger and as they follow their
paths through the haze of alcohol-fuelled libido, Baker incorporates a backdrop
of the fast-moving East London landscape and a cross-section of some of the
people that make it up. A deceptively simple but effective film.
Between Us
This short is another simple story about the potential held in fleeting
encounters. Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s film, co-directed with Stefan Mørk,
is set across two cars stuck in a traffic jam as a boy and a girl spot each other
through their windows of their cars and albeit with limited communication, form
something of a connection. Their worlds may be completely different: Lukas’
family are argumentative and working class and the window of their banger won’t
wind down and Amanda’s is all loving middle class and electric windows, but
they bond over the shared boredom of sitting alone in the back seat and their
CD listening habits.
Luke Bromley and Madeline Duggan were both sweet enough to make us forgive the
fact their CD of choice was Robbie Williams’ Escapology and their acting –
mostly wordless – really is engaging and rather adorably captured by
Christensen and Mørk. Amanda Drew and Robbie Bowman made a good pair of
bickering parents for Lukas too and made for a charming film.
The
Silent City
In all honesty, Ruairi Robinson’s The Silent City wouldn’t be my regular cup of
tea to watch, but it was recommended to me on Twitter so I sat down to it
regardless. A cross between a war film and a computer game, it calls to mind films
like 28 Days Later and Resident Evil with its visual effects, horror tinged
imagery and abandoned cityscape through which 3 bloodied soldiers are trying to
execute a mission. And with its short running time and cliffhanger ending, it
has the feeling of a taster of something conceived to be larger rather than as
a piece of film in and of itself. So it is a mildly diverting watch, Murphy
appears briefly for those interested in him, but it’s hardly essential stuff.