Fools in Love

Daypass

Deborah Chow’s Daypass starts with what I thought when I read the description would be the premise for a very cool film - “Some ex-boyfriends just won’t die.” An old boyfriend who returns from the grave tries to win his girlfriend back after being murdered by her.

The first hat-tip was to Michael Jackson for his Thriller video before the title. Then as soon as the “ex”-boyfriend entered, his appearance gave me Beetlejuice flashbacks - Beetlejuice without Tim Burton’s originality or honest, penetrating, dark humor. It’s the Dogma or Titus of shorts. Plenty of talent, a promising premise, and fun, low budget special effects don’t survive the flatness of the direction and a clichéd and tiresome script.

The most interesting character – the only one to infuse some kind of life into a “lifeless” plot – is the clerk at the convenience store (thank you, Kevin Smith) where our heroine has decided, quite mysteriously, to spend her first daypass from the asylum to which she has been sentenced.

This film was a sad waste of a good idea.

**

Dimensionless Woman

This is a semi-surrealistic feminist parable about an archetypal “woman in red.” Our blond bombshell swivels and primps and smooches the air in front of a mirror in preparation for a trip…to the library.

Here the fun begins. There are axes aplenty being ground in the 12 minutes of Dimensionless Woman – without apology or subtlety. Director, Anita Somone adds symbolism to the oppressive cleavage shot by making it conveniently fit into her choice of a series of men viewing her from “on high” camera angles as they droolingly look down on her, licking their teeth and mouthing “Oh, baby.” Gradually and quite literally the men strip “strip” her of those attributes which “make her a woman,” namely her lips, her ass, and her breasts.

There are some very thoughtful visual choices here. A blurred-edge lens used for the entire film except the fantasy sequences, wherein the men gaping at the woman in red as she fulfills their wishes…in their dreams. The dream sequences are shot with not less (through Vaseline fogging, etc), but greater focus and clarity, as if this is what is real to a woman. Perhaps women perceive these male fantasies more than they may admit or show, or that for men, perception is reality, and that men see women as objects, and the film shows this to be their reality.

As the woman in red runs her gauntlet, we are occasionally shown other women. These “other women” are expressionless, devoid of makeup (and apparently, personality), and dressed Expressionistically in black. This provided a great contrast to the woman gradually losing her own female “identity.”

This was a film with a heavy-handed means to deliver its message, but the story is told in a mode that is visually interesting (in fact, not a line of dialogue to be heard – lips to be read, but not heard) and cinematically rendered.

****

Unscrew

A couple, married five years, divides their belongings as they separate. We learn about their relationship by observing the items over which they squabble and which are more valuable to whom.

The performances are impeccable. We are shown a range of emotion as the couple divides their belongs from quiet nostalgia, to coldness, to vicious possessiveness of fragments of a broken relationship. The dialogue is believable and natural.

In one scene, the man says, innocently, “At least there weren’t any children,” to which she responds, hurt and venomously, “At least then I’d have something to show for the last five years.”

After all the honesty and believability, Scottish filmmaker Clara Glenn does a sharp 180 as she shocks the audience (this particular audience, audibly) effectively with a surrealistic and final gesture that is anything but unclear.

Much is explored and established in the 9 minutes of Unscrew. The content belies the “length.” This piece is a credit to the genre.

*****

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