Directors’ Fortnight shorts selection

Much more than any other selection, the Director’s Fortnight short films are placed under the sign of loneliness. People are silently lost, doomed by some unspeakable force. A wandering man, a hypnotic road-trip, a dying old woman, a fragile little child, a short family meeting, and an investigation in the desert are awaiting the more curious of spectators. For those who need precise questions and answers, they could be quite disturbing.

The selection seems quite harmonious in its despair, with people drifting along the margins of society. Strangely, two of them portray the death of their main character: Shadows of Silence (Pradeepan Raveendran, France) and Licht (Andre Schreuders, The Netherlands). In the first, a middle-aged Indian man, husband and father, wakes up and finds himself in several suicide scenes, watching his own deaths whilst wandering around his everyday life. In the second, an old woman leaves her home and begins a journey to an isolated convent where she will finally find the peace she needs to disappear. Built on repetition - meeting the other, walking in an endless routine, detangling dreams from reality - these two shorts refuse to enter into the minds of their protagonists. Passive, the audience is forced to follow them and when the credits arrive, is condemned to wonder what they were all about.

’Shadows of Silence’, by Pradeepan Raveendran

Children aren’t spared either. Even if not one of them actually speaks, these little human beings carry in them the same tragedy. A Silent Child (Jesper Klevenas, Sweden) narrates the shocking story of a deaf child, while Shikasha (Hirabayashi Isamu, Japan) follows a group of policemen searching for a mother and her child buried alive in the desert. Coming from two very different countries, these shorts nevertheless share the same desperation. When stories start, everything is already played out; powerless, we watch the unfolding of events. Everything seems pointless; the characters are left within their own limitations, punished by some force that no one understands.

Tre Ore is also about a young girl who has the opportunity to spend three hours with her father in jail. Hours are compressed into minutes, as the two figures try to consolidate their fragile link, knowing that they won’t see each other during an indefinite time. Even if this film is quite easy, we can only admire the well written dialogues, especially their harshness. But the true merit of Tre Ore goes to the two convincing actors.

’Mary Last Seen’, by Sean Durkin

The one that stays the most in mind is also the strangest of the Director’s Fortnight selection. Mary Last Seen (Sean Durkin, USA) follows a young couple along the American roads. Exactly where and when remains unclear - although everyone will have come up with some sort of explanation by the end - and a sweet yet alarming atmosphere is set up. Sean Durkin has a gift for creating a hypnotic and dreamlike climate through sounds and images. Sadly, the screenplay is way too vague and boring to keep the viewer’s attention. Thanks to his two excellent actors - especially Brady Corbet, whose breakthrough came in Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin and who is now seen in Alistair Banks Griffin’s Two Gates of Sleep - this film is fascinating enough to be noticed.

’Petit Tailleur’, by Louis Garrel

More hotly anticipated than the others, Louis Garrel’s director’s second short will be screen this Thursday. Starring Léa Seydoux - ubiquitous in Cannes with Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood and Belle Epine, Petit Tailleur binds together the romantic trials of a group of friends lost between desires, fears, hopes and uncertainty. Meanwhile, Zedcrew (Noah Pink, Zambia) and Cautare (Ionut Piturescu) follow respectively three young rappers and two isolated peasants talking about their lifetimes. This Director’s Fortnight is once and for all under the sign of lonely doubts.

By Geoffrey Crété