This film was shown at the London Film Festival earlier this week as the first in a programme of shorts; such was its effect on me it threw me off balance and I did not pay much attention to the other items on the programme (apart from a delightful and poignant documentary about a man and a sheep). From the very first shots, which reveal themselves in retrospect to be not an indulgent stylistic quirk but an ironic foreshadowing of what is to come, this work holds the attention and does not let it go. A sense of unease, of strange dislocation, is set up from the outset and only increases as the film unfolds. The contrasts in casting between female and male roles, the nervous spare jokey dialogue, the bleak and incongruous setting (who belongs there?), the atmospheric, ominous lighting all contribute to make this one of the most uncommonly powerful short films I have seen. I am looking forward to seeing it again with the added awareness of what is to come.
