Assessment

As so often is the case with recent UK shorts, there is often so little story telling. It would be refreshing if filmmakers broke the kitchen sink and did so without feeling any compulsion to remove plot. In its place their micro studies of a particular moment, expanded into significance, proliferate the festival circuit. You are good at these.

Assessment could see its filmmakers help move this increasingly loved format into some new territory. This film is no genre-masher but it melds normally unhappy bedfellows: Romance and drama into something fresh, likable and interesting.

Rifle shots punctuate the story, reminding us precarious lives hang in the balance under the microscope of adult supervision and scrutiny. Music is employed is a naturalistic way, leaking from headphones or latterly from ballet school dorms with sudden power and emotion. There are excellent performances from the two leads in a film employing entirely unknowns all of which refuse to be the weakest link.

Not everyone's gonna like the style but those that do will feel a glow of satisfaction that it is still possible to find powerful and emotive visual story telling in our shorts scene. Having come up through what's left of the old UK Film Council's shorts funding, lets hope the likes of this and too few others herald a new confidence.