Movie of the Month - August - Earrings

Alex Withrow who runs one of my favorite - if not my favorite blog - And so it Begins - recently released his debut short film entitled Earrings. Because it's really good and I want as many people as possible to see it it's the movie of the month for August on my blog. Here is my review for the film:

75/100 (2012, 31 min)
Plot: A young woman dives into increasingly destructive behavior after witnessing a traumatic event.
Director: Alex Withrow
Writer: Alex Withrow
Stars: Catherine Warner, Martin McSweeney and Andrew Kirkley

Earrings is directorial debut from Alex Withrow, very good writer and passionate movie fan. You can see many influences here, in his haunting short film, but one that particularly stands out is the influence by Steve McQueen's Shame - we observe a character having a breakdown, the reasons for which are for most part unknown to us. We see their daily routine, we see the camera follow them and ultimately we see them being consumed by despair.And we want to know - why? What could have possibly happened to make them live - or either stay alive without the desire to live - like this?

The style of the film while it is an asset when it comes to keeping the mystery also proves to be a problem at times - there is very little dialogue in the movie so we don't really know much, also one of the best way to know the character is by seeing how she/he interacts with others. There is only one conversation in this movie and while the dialogue was good the acting, especially by Martin McSweeney, didn't convince me at all. In the effect, the scene that is somewhat a centerpiece and the deepest you will see into this woman character through someone else's eyes fails.By contrast in Shame we could witness an actual relationship between two people, here we simply witness young woman being depressed, walking around, drinking, doing drugs.

That said, the young woman in question is beautifully played by Catherine Warner who is fantastic on screen - both in the moments when we see her character being severely disconnected from everything around her and in the scenes where she breaks down, crying, screaming, hurting herself. We don't know much about her but because of the depths of suffering we witness we feel for this girl, who appears to be consumed by overwhelming sense of pain.

The structure the movie has is very interesting - it's uncompromising in showing as the girl's actions, there are no cuts when the cliche would be to use them (that fails only in numerous scenes where she is brushing her teeth which I thought brought nothing to the film and was needlessly long) and the reason for that woman's suffering is something that keeps us guessing. The ending is quite charming, though I thought it would be much better if we never saw the person she sees and just saw the smile on her face.

The true accomplishment here is cinematography  it is truly something that makes it worth seeing. The camera work is very impressive and doesn't seem to be amateurish at all, we always follow this woman, we get to see close ups on her face and many memorable shots. She is always splendidly positioned in the frame, which adds interesting beauty to the film. The editing is also fantastic, particularly in the film's best moment which features the best use of Radiohead's finest song How to Disappear Completely I've seen in a movie.

Earrings has flaws but its admirable effort and I'll definitely see it again just to marvel at its beauty. I'll be very interested to see what Alex Withrow's future projects will be.

You can watch the film HERE.

Previous movies of the month: