The Completed Film


The director did a good job. There are only two criticism I have of the film, one pretty major.

The interior monologue is probably the worst device by which to tell a story on film, and this was the director's primary tool in her conception of the story. I should have argued against it from the beginning but I didn't. The actress if superb and pulls it off as much as she can but this inherently is a novelistic device, not a film device. It shows. I think I never again will agree to write an interior monologue in a screenplay. A narrative voice would have been better. (The difference is, in an interior monologue we hear a character's thoughts; in narrative, a character tells us a story.)

The second area was the problem of the homeless man. He was a poor actor and the scene doesn't work at all. All of the specific clues for interpretation -- delivering a line automatically, another with irony -- were ignored. The scene sticks out as strange, something that seems not to belong to the movie, whereas the intention was to provide a dark realistic commentary on the environment in which the love story is happening. I suggested to the director that she cut the "Let them eat cake!" line if she re-edits (she can't remove the entire scene because of the set up). Then it will seem like a harmless little street scene. Now it is strange.

You can access this short film, called Love (Abridged Edition), on the Internet at http://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/Video.htm

Despite these criticisms, the project was a great success. So much so that we are now planning a second short film together.

Read about our second project.


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