ABIGAIL
2012 · 17m · USA
Directed by Matthew James Reilly
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tense
On what she hopes will be her final day at a decaying rural gas station, a young woman named Abigail attempts to leave town permanently — while the film gradually assembles the fragmented circumstances that have made leaving feel simultaneously essential and impossible.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Reilly's Cinéfondation prize confirms what the film itself makes plain: that restraint — the deliberate withholding of explanation — can be the most truthful form of character portraiture available to a short filmmaker.
Cinéfondation Second Prize at Cannes, seventeen minutes. Rural gas station, character revealed through accumulation rather than exposition. Wendy and Lucy comparison is the right one and Reilly's restraint sounds genuine. This is American observational short film done by someone who can actually do it.
Second Prize Cinéfondation at Cannes — that's not a small thing. Letting circumstances surface through accumulation rather than exposition in 17 minutes is the kind of patience that distinguishes a real filmmaker from a clever one.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival 2012, 2nd Prize Cinéfondation
- Hamptons International Film Festival 2013
- Melbourne International Film Festival 2013