shox74
I really don't see how some could give this 1 star. It'd be helpful or at least polite to the makers of the film (especially so for shorts) to give reasons why.For my part I was hooked by the story and the performance and I feel inspired by the simplicity but effectiveness of it all. Some may have found fault with it in disagreeing that it is a story, rather a story fragment, but let me qualify my views. This is a love letter from the protagonist to a man she doesn't know and hasn't met, and what she wants is --quite needily (pathetically some would say)--to love and be loved, to start a relationship with this man. The obstacles to her want which form the conflict, I would argue, really boil down to one thing: they do not know each other, so she is striking out blind here--being naively romantic. It is almost an implied obstacle, one which draws us in emotively, and it is this emotion portrayed and engendered in the audience that I believe gives the story its power: because she shows us her vulnerability (the way she looks almost unwaveringly into the camera, at us, giving us a window into her soul, portraying her complete openness), we are led to care--to worry, to fear--for her, for someone that vulnerable, and what response a person on the other end of such a letter (the audience members, by inference) would make to it. We are involved emotionally. So, analysing the story along these lines it becomes apparent that the protagonist cannot perform any action other than what she is doing to overcome the obstacle in her way and the conflict cannot be resolved without access to Wes's response; however,in the end, this resolution is denied us, we are left wondering, so that when she fades out, her voice drifting to us in the peace of the field--when the film ends--we are left haunted, touched.Lookng at it like this I believe it was a well thought out and reasonably well executed piece so I cannot see why anyone would, reasonably, give it just the 1 star. I found the film arresting and emotionally powerful, if, to quibble, a little over-performed (the really breathy pauses and to my mind slightly over-sexed body language), so I give it a 7. Good film. Good short.
