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Los Angeles Film Festival Shorts Program 2
As I've already stated in other reviews, I'm not a big fan of shorts, mostly because they tend to be either
too amateurish or a showy exercise of style without any real content to chew on. My other problem is that
it usually takes me 20mn to actually get into a movie—yes I'm one of those!—and by that time
shorts are usually over. As I was talking to a publicist about not having the time to review individual
shorts, she suggested to give it a try as a program, which seemed to have worked earlier with Resfest. So here I am, heading to the Los Angeles film festival Short Program #2 screening.
The program included 9 films of various lengths and style, somewhat a good representation of what that
format is about. The program opened with Denis Lee's Jesus Henry Christ, featuring a rebellious young student
clashing with his headmaster, a sadistic priest. Mr. Lee should know that using kids to be cute doesn't guarantee a successful film, especially as the cinematography and soundtrack were too amateurish, giving his work a superficial surface to which there was nothing to hold on to. Content-wise, there was nothing new—how many films and TV shows have already used that setting—but it's the climax, with its clichéd ending, on which Jesus Henry Christ is based on that definitely kills it.
Saar Klein's Nouveau Riche #11 & 34 which were shown apart, had an interesting premise and fair direction, showing houses with some absurd features--one of them had an actual Indian band to replace your regular radio
alarm while the other one featured a huge bathroom with an attendant. I've never been into bathroom humor
and while the concept of these films would be interesting if they were all shown as their own feature—there are only 2 available so far—what the person who accompanied me said summarized it the best. When the first one ended, after hardly a couple of minutes, she exclaimed, "That's it?" before mentioning that the credits looked—painfully—longer than the feature itself.
There was also Daheli Hall's The Memo, a comedy about a black revolution, which didn't really go anywhere and Gerardo Tort's Departure where an old Mexican woman gets picked up by a UFO, which might mostly amuse fans of the X-files. Alistair Reid's Three Weeks in Koh Samui was a really polished and professional work about a mother and her two kids planning a trip, but by trying to play on the emotional level, the whole thing got trapped by its pace which, too slow for its own good, created boredom. As its title might suggest, The Climatic Death of Dark Ninja, a comedy about kids shooting a ninja film, is one of these pieces you would expect to
see at Slamdance, mostly appealing to geeky film students.
What does this leave us with? Well, two strong entries. Mary-Lyn Chambers' The Rain Has Forgotten Us,
which simply featured a family of farmers desperately waiting for the rain, not only looked great, as it was
shot with a strong sense of style & cinematography, but the filmmaker was also able to build an enveloping
atmosphere in a brief amount of time. Contrary to Three Weeks In Koh Samui, Chambers' film is proof
that, if used with precision, a slow pace—emphasized here by slow motion—could reach the audience at an
emotional level. In a different genre, Nobody's Perfect, a comedy about finding that special person
through magic glasses, directed, co-written by and starred Hank Azaria, wasn't successful because it
featured several well-known actors but because, behind all its professionalism, it was funny and featured appealing
story and characters.
As I got out of the screening, my feeling had been reinforced, as Short programs are indeed mixed bags where you have to dig in to extract these rare gems.
Fred Thom
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Los Angeles Film Festival Shorts Program 2 review
