Six short films, unrelated except for whatever it was that Echelon Studios’ marketing people were smoking when they came up with the title “Shorts for Cats.” It’s a cute idea – catnip affair. Perhaps that’s why the fuzzies slept through the whole thing.
Marketing oddities aside, “Shorts for Cats” is like most anthologies: a mixed bag of quality technique and persuasive storytelling. On the lesser side, films like “The Fight” set up interesting characters and the promise of drama – Nicholas T’s dialogue has that ring of sincerity, and the performances are good – but oddly fail to follow through. The meager plot of a man who aspires to art school but plays at mixed martial arts for dollars instead resolves itself before even getting started. Never mind anti-climatic; there’s no peak to reach without a slope to climb. In “Duel,” the collection’s lushest cinematography, along with a sharply choreographed fight, duels with substance and handily wins. The tragically ironic meeting of two characters, one an elite member of the King’s guard and the other a drunken former royal assassin, has no character development to rest on nor plot to ride – meaning, no emotional impact. And perhaps strangest of the lot is “Don’t Leave Me,” an attempted mind-bender involving romantic infidelity that is too obtuse and abstract for its own good. The mysterious dual identities and narrative looping, a far cry from David Lynch’s “Lost Highway,” are interesting, but only in the sense that cutting through a Gordian knot with a sword is satisfying to a puzzle lover.
Not all the shorts are incomplete or lacking in comprehensibility. “Little Winds,” essentially a polished greeting card, boasts of an august performance by Ron Canada as a butterfly whisperer and an appropriately cloying child protagonist in Joseph Castanon. But the straightforward plot suffers from dubiously pitting wishful thinking and escapist fantasy against domestic violence. As we vomit “aww, shucks” at the sweet ending, we also throw up when realizing how the moral of the story is that it’s better to run away from problems than confront and solve them.
The Upside
But the upside is that the remaining shorts are bang-up representations of how well short forms can work when plot, character and cinematic technique converge seamlessly. “No Menus, Please” is a subtle character study dressed up in the comic premise of a rivalry between two fellows whose job it is to put menus on apartment doors. Richard Chang says little, but has a face as expressively mournful as a basset hound’s. The immigrant’s loneliness in an unfamiliar environment, the strange mixture of determination and disinterest in a menial job; these lurk below the surface and drive the film’s poignancy.
For “The Big Break,” quirky dialogue and Luca Costa’s physicality make for a comically reactive mix. But it’s the surprise twist in a tale of a man attempting to kill a film producer – and encountering an equally desperate actress instead – that gives the film a boost of character. As with “No Menus, Please,” there’s more going on than the surface comedy suggests, and the two films are easily strong enough to make for their undeniably interesting, if not quite successful, cinematic companions.
Entertainment Value: ** (out of two)
Technical Quality: * (out of two)
Echelon Studios presents a film directed by Mark Prebble. Written by Mark Prebble and Benedict Reid. Starring Alistair Browning, Danielle Mason, Peter Rutherford, Glenda Tuaine and Michelle Ang. 80 minutes. Visit www.echelonstudios.us
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