The name of the festival may have been contracted from Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema to the Philadelphia Film Festival, but the event is as inclusive as ever. Shorts Curator Mike Enright put together a program of short films – Fools in Love – which is surprisingly broad in scope. From what appears to be an Elimidate (a popular Dating/Survivor TV brainchild) inspired short to faux-philosophical knock-offs of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, to forays into Freudian and Expressionist views of the construct of “love,” this program was a very well balanced cross-section of films with diverse takes on their common theme.
Amores Payasos
(USA, 2002, Brad Aldous)This one was fun in the same way a Mentos commercial is fun. It was shot in a very clean, happy, European-commercial way as two grease-paint clowns encounter an entire world of groping, lust-driven humans.
The boy and a girl clowns go unacquainted through the city. We know that at some point they must meet. Each of them goes through life feeling different and alienated - an easily relatable theme – by the “norms” who have someone significant in their lives.
At one point we see the boy clown picking up a copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dating from some stacks in front of a book store. He pages through it, puts it back on top of a cart of books and leaves. Some minutes later, down the same sidewalk walks the girl clown who sees the book on top of the cart, picks it up, and sighs, pining. Clearly these two are destined for one another and just slightly chronologically out of sync.
This is a sugary, formulaic encapsulation of the alienation an individual feels in a world where coupledom is lauded as one of the highest emotional aspirations as well as – as we are to learn in the end – the importance of timing.
***
The Fine Line Between Cute and Creepy
(USA, 2002, Robert D. Slane)Robert Slane directs this short about two women courted by two different men in exactly the same way with very different results.
Slane chooses to highlight the obvious comedy of the situation over the genuine human honesty, which could be illuminated in an equally amusing, if not funnier way. In Fine Line, everyone is reduced to a stereotype. Perhaps this was the intent, but it failed to reveal any real fine line, just choices and reactions that were superficial at best, shallow at worst.
Both Amores and Fine Line could have examined their themes in a more poignant and subtle way without becoming self-conscious or losing any of their comedic element.
He sets the parallel events and “fine line” with a clever split screen. The acting and dialogue are exaggerated and false. The ending is predictable.
**
