The Shorts
Each feature in Fractured Visions was paired up with a short film beforehand. These varied in quality, but the best were exquisite examples of short-form storytelling, refusing to overstay their welcome but still developing an idea in full. Marta (****, Spain, Dir: Lucia Forner) is about a female serial killer, frustrated by the overwhelmingly male dominance of serial killing as a profession. It plays with the standard tropes of slasher films, subverting them from a female angle in what is a very funny and self-aware film, with credit due to Thais Blume’s performance in the lead role. It’s perfect as a short too – a longer feature might be too smugly self-aware and ironic, though I suppose with a strong enough script, such a film might well be possible.
Another slasher short that subverted expectations was Girl #2 (***, USA, Dir: David Jeffrey). This one was raucously funny, gleefully subverting the old “hot girl dies first” trope in preposterous, slapstick fashion. Again, at only 7 minutes long, it does not overstay its welcome.
Many of the other shorts went in other directions, preferring an atmosphere of sombre mystery rather than gleeful send-up. The psychosexual mini-thriller Instinct (****, USA, Dir: Maria Alice Arida) has plenty of Cronenberg in its blood and looks handsomely cold and beautiful to boot – it’s a fine little film about sexual desire and the infinite well of confusion it can summon. I’d love to see more from Arida. Supine (***, Czech Republic/Canada, Dir: Nicole Goode) touches on the same material, but with added taxidermy. It’s very good, but perhaps not as strong as Instinct.
The Visitor (****, Australia, Dir: Justin Olstein) is perhaps the riskiest short. In modern-day Melbourne, a woman wakes up in the night to find what looks to be a Holocaust camp escapee on the run from Germans. She blurts out: “is this a sick joke,” and the audience might be tempted to agree. She allows the escapee into her home, and over the course of the night the woman takes on the escapee’s visual demeanour and experiences. Her hair and teeth fall off, the shower starts leaking gas, she wakes up to find herself in clothes with a Star of David sown on. It verges exceedingly close to tasteless, but beneath there’s a powerful undercurrent about the way the experiences of the past live on in our descendants and the need to remember the past. The famous quote by Pastor Niemoller comes to mind – “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist.” It would be highly interesting to see a more fleshed-out version of The Visitor.
Two shorts were rather more of a disappointment. Time Heals No Wounds (**, Canada, Dir: Jordan Barnes-Crouse) had a nice vibe and gruesome physical effects that recalled the 80s splatter From Beyond, but it feels rather more like an excuse to play with the effects rather than produce a good short. Caducea (*, Belgium, Dir: Christophe Mavroudis) was full-on bollocks. What started as a nice, creepy, visual idea (which in any case is just a homage to the French horror classic Eyes Without a Face) quickly descends into a nonsensical, melodramatic and dull attempt at dissecting a poisonous family relationship. The only thing it succeeded in doing was poisoning my brain.
Thankfully, the final short I caught, Psychopompos (***, Czech Republic, Lucie Gukkertova) was very promising. Fusing a HP Lovefraft poem with influences from Czech folklore is a frankly fantastic idea and the film looks very handsome. The only thing missing was a clear narrative through-line (it feels rather more like a series of handsomely-crafted images), but nevertheless it was quite satisfying.
words Fedor Tot
The rest of the Fractured Visions reports are below