The relationship between a mother and son is universal and has been addressed artistically for centuries, so it's not easy to say something original. When Dutch-based writer-director Boudewijn Koole took on the subject in his short film “Off Ground” — one of 12 finalists in TheWrap's 2014 ShortList Film Festival — he chose to eschew words altogether. Instead, he partnered with choreographer Jakop Ahlbom to make a stark 12-minute movie that says plenty without a word of dialogue. In it, a mother (Louise Lecavalier) and pre-teen son (Antoine Masson) dance on, under, around and with a simple table and chair,...
- 8/22/2014
- by Todd Cunningham
- The Wrap
Purcell Room, London
There is something disturbing going on in this tale of identity, gender politics and Frankenstein-style experimentation
It is breakfast time for two men – inventors who both live and work in the same shared cramped space. Food and drink are delivered by rigged contraptions and pulleys; the bed doubles as a piano and the bookcase is also a refrigerator. There is a sense of both ingenuity but also of entrapment.
Buster Keaton's 1920 silent movie The Scarecrow, about two farmhands driven apart by a woman, provides the inspiration for this quirky show created by Jakop Ahlbom, which comes with a jaunty and wistful live musical accompaniment from Alamo Race Track. But although it begins in similar fashion, the title – with its sinister Nazi connotations of territorial expansion – suggests that there is something more disturbing going on in this tale of identity, gender politics and Frankenstein-style experimentation.
In their...
There is something disturbing going on in this tale of identity, gender politics and Frankenstein-style experimentation
It is breakfast time for two men – inventors who both live and work in the same shared cramped space. Food and drink are delivered by rigged contraptions and pulleys; the bed doubles as a piano and the bookcase is also a refrigerator. There is a sense of both ingenuity but also of entrapment.
Buster Keaton's 1920 silent movie The Scarecrow, about two farmhands driven apart by a woman, provides the inspiration for this quirky show created by Jakop Ahlbom, which comes with a jaunty and wistful live musical accompaniment from Alamo Race Track. But although it begins in similar fashion, the title – with its sinister Nazi connotations of territorial expansion – suggests that there is something more disturbing going on in this tale of identity, gender politics and Frankenstein-style experimentation.
In their...
- 1/14/2014
- by Lyn Gardner
- The Guardian - Film News
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