TIFF Report: Short Cuts Canada Review (Supposed To, Elizabeth Short, The Eyes of Edward James, The Ecstasy Note, Screening)

Cohene’s work, assembled from what looks to be clips culled from videotapes of seventies area films, is a screed against the blandness of daily life, people doing what they are supposed to eventually driven to suicide. The art here is in the assembly, the razor sharp edit job that butts images together to build a mood and tell a story completely different from the sources’ original intentions and the intermingling of new narration with original dialogue to create a new conversation generates well deserved laughs while also making the point.

Elizabeth Short is an entirely darker piece of work, laying out the notorious Black Dahlia murder from the perspective of the victim by assembling newsreel footage and crime scene photos filtered through a layer of grainy static with the dialogue a blend of new narration, newsreel audio and sound bites lifted from vintage film noir. The Dahlia crimes are a hot topic right now and with a fairly unvarnished approach Elizabeth Short does them justice. Be warned, though, the crime scene photos are truly ghastly, worse by far than anything I’ve seen in even the most extreme horror films released of late.

The big draw in this quintet will likely be the middle film, The Eyes of Edward James. Directed by Rodrigo Gudino, the founder and former editor of Rue Morgue Magazine, the fans should turn out to see if Gudino can successfully make the transition from writing about film to making it and they’ll be happy to see that yes he can. Told entirely through a first person perspective Eyes is an inside look at a hypno-therapy session in which the titular Edward is being guided through his own memory of horrific events. Well shot with a solid script Gudino shows that he’s been paying attention while writing about all those films and he’s learned his lessons well. An auspicious debut.

Geoffrey Uloth’s The Ecstasy Note reads like a film that should be a minor classic but thanks to an overlong running time and one unfortunately bad piece of casting in a key role it reads slightly better than it plays. The film tells the story about a beaten down unemployed man whose only joys in life are flying kites and volunteering at the local center for the deaf. When a violent confrontation with his domineering wife leads to the discovery that a fork embedded in his hand will emit a sound triggering the pleasure centers of the brain when struck by a metal knife our hero develops a thriving cottage industry mutilating himself to pleasure others. Things, of course, get out of hand. Some judicious trimming would improve the film significantly but the basic premise still yields some quality, gruesome laughs.

Anthony Green’s Screening is, on one level, the best of these films while also, on another, the worst. This cautionary story set in our very recognizable – literally, some of it was shot in Toronto – post-terrorist world has by far the highest budget of these shorts and puts it to very good use. Production values are excellent, the film beautifully shot, very well performed, and the locations and sets the sort you normally only see in a decently budgeted feature. The problem lies with Green's apparent belief that his audience is just too thick to understand what he’s saying without driving it forcefully home. When the final reveal comes – a reveal virtually everyone in the room will have seen coming within the first two minutes of the film – it comes driven home by the sweeping sounds of Sigur Ros cranked up to eleven. While I love Sigur Ros in general and this track in particular it is used here to manipulate emotions with all the subtlety of a hammer blow to the head.