Short reviews for Short Cuts on 22nd July:

24/7/06 UPDATE! Gavin Lim's replied to comments about Hello? on SGFilm. (Link to the thread).

(earlier post)

Let's see –

Hello?

The director apes Wong Kar Wai's direction, look and music choices in In The Mood For Love. He also tries to imitate Christopher Doyle’s cinematography, but the only things that achieved were extremely orangey or extremely grey scenes. The short film eventually descends into camp, which amused me to no end since it was so incongruous with all the ersatz In The Mood For Love.

Old Woman

Ah, this one probably had the most significant narrative of the four. Well scripted and paced, particularly the scenes leading up to the end where the titular old woman’s sense of loss and confusion is explained with economy of dialogue. Not as polished – shot on DV – but this short has substance.

Lost Sole

Old man loses his sandals, and the randomness of the ensuing events reminded me a little bit of Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know (IMDB entry). The semantic pun on sole/soul isn't bad, but probably not strong enough to anchor a short film on existential crisis. Also marred by a few incongruities. For instance, the protagonist complains about cardphones being "new technology" when they’ve been around for more than a decade.

3 Meals

Essentially a string of gags that mines the wealth of Singaporean cultural stereotypes so deeply that it probably wouldn’t be able to extricate itself for a non-Singaporean audience. It's really funny -- if you're Singaporean, but Woo Yen Yen and Colin Goh have never claimed to be international. Polished production helps, I suppose: the short film looks good and sounds great.

I won't be around for the ones on the 29th, 'cos I'll be in Hong Kong then. Naturally, I plan to hit all the film-related places there. Which ones do you like?