Review {[Hollie]}

Here is a draft review that I wrote for our film in the style of Little White Lies magazine. x

Writers Hollie Dunster, Jessica Garman and Charlea Rice certainly know how to give first time director, Hollie Ann Garman something excellent to work with. Sam (Samuel Garman) is a lost young boy. However, the overall storyline is difficult to gauge from the opening sequence which is an eerie and isolating series of shots designed to make the viewer feel just that. Sam is introduced, staring blankly at the open ocean, completely alone, he is a miserable child. After the breakdown of his parents’ marriage and his father abandoning him, he is informed that his mother is to have a child by another man.

Unable to cope, he decides to run away from home. His only solace being a ‘bag of chips’ and the deserted beach. His thoughts flow beautifully from the inner sanctums of his mind and leap out at the viewer in a series of distressed rants. Even the wisdom of his grandfather (Roy Ian Clark), an unexpected protagonist who tries to help the child, does nothing to break the film’s poignant atmosphere.

As with the writer’s other, less well known works, such as, ‘Missing’ Dunster, Garman and Rice have entwined the emotive drama of social realism with important issues in the real world in an impressive and original way. Everything about ‘Chips’ questions the issues of divorce, fundamentally its effect on children and the idea of masculinity.

Sam is an interesting take on masculinity as he spews his emotions to the viewer with what some might say is a rather stereotypically feminine take on emotive language. Yet he is not portrayed as anything less than the young boy from a broken home which he is.

Each new turn of the plot makes the short more reminiscent of Stephen Daldry’s ‘Eight’ than any other short film of its type, with a similar style of monologue enveloping the audience’s conscious and a strikingly similar tale of a young boy who has lost his father, not to divorce but death. However, it manages to stand out in a different and visually stunning way.

This is a thrilling and entertaining deconstruction of the post modernist family. Sam is a young child who cannot understand why his family has broken down around him and his father has left him with no security. We should despise his mother for bearing the child of another man and causing this inevitable family breakdown but we are never put in the position to hate her and instead concentrate on empathising with Sam.

Hollie Ann Garman’s intriguing and entertaining debut manages to question without patronising and a magnificent performance from Samuel Garman manages to personify the anatomy of a family breakdown, swaying seamlessly from sadness to anger.

Anticipation: A relatively unknown team. Potentially another short film flop. 2

Enjoyment: An original, entertaining and poignant depiction of a breakdown. 4

In Retrospect: A guaranteed conversation starter and sure to make the viewer think long after the credits roll. 4

Hollie Dunster