Reviews

Violet

Often it seems that films, in efforts to delve in the mysterious world of teenage girls, forgets or ignores teenage boys, unless they are lovelorn. But this could be the year of the teenage boy in cinema, with films like Hellion and All This Mayhem focusing on aspects of adolescents other than romance. Violet is probably the most interesting and experimental, and probably my favourite.

The opening of the film is a slow tense build up of CCTV footage that concludes with Jesse's witnessing his friends murder. The rest of the film deals with Jesse's grief, avoiding all the cinematic clichés: no angst showers or despairing parents, Violet provides a realistic portrait of Jesse adapting to life now that his friend is gone. With a minimal script Devos is able to build convincing relationships between Jesse and his friends and family, that also provides insight into the various ways grief can affect different people.

Jesse's understated characterisation is a central force in the film which allows Devos to create many beautifully composed long takes: winding through suburban streets, zooming in on Jesse in a heavy metal concert crowd and a claustrophobic journey back to the scene of the murder, that build the narrative. Devos then goes ahead and continuously disrupts these scenes with interludes of visual feedback and white noise, that link back to the opening CCTV scenes and provide a strange texture that is entirely captivating.

Films like Violet that succeed in character, narrative while maintaining a creative experimental element, are few and far between; and films that portray grief this convincingly are even rarer.

The Perfect 46

The Perfect 46 follows in a recent trend in science fiction, that is more interested in exploring the potential of human experience than actually depicting that future through CGI and fancy sets. The Perfect 46 offers new slant on this trend though; whereas the work of Shane Carruth, Gareth Edwards and Duncan Jones focuses on ordinary people dealing with future concepts. The Perfect 46 looks at the experience of the person who has invented the new 'thing' and who has to take responsibility for it when it fails.

That person is Jesse Darden, creator of theperfect46.com: a website service which takes the genome sequence of you and your partner and tells you the likelihood of any future child inheriting a life altering condition.

The film is an interesting mix of stories than depict Jesse's life in various different ways. Snapshots of his personal life and the business' development are contrasted with a tense and slightly sinister break-in at Jesse's home and the discovery, by one of the burglars, of a TV-style documentary about the company and Jesse (which does well to provide all the contextual information and science-fictionally elements of the plot).

In combining these elements the film is able to convey a lot of information whilst still having the space to explore the impact of theperfect46.com in a more naturalistic way. The central example being an extended dinner party scene, where the guests challenge Jesse on his ideals and a technology conference where Jesse spells out his idealistic view of theperfect46.com.

These aspects of the film are so unusual and well conceived that it is almost disappointing that the film takes a more emotional turn in the ending, revealing the motivation of one of the burglars is connected to a very personal experience.

The Perfect 46 is a remarkably brave film that deals with the difficult topic of eugenics, calls into question the responsibility of the dotcom tycoons who have a significant affect on everyday lives and doing so without grandstanding special effects but with a naturalistic and intricate script and an outstanding central performance by Whit Hertford.