Coffee
2014 · 10m
Directed by Willem van den Heever, Vaughan Coetzee
Genres: coming-of-age, fantasy, musical
Tones: contemplative, surreal, whimsical
A young musician forced into his father's coffee-selling family business meets an eccentric girl who persuades him to leave town and follow his dreams — if she is real at all.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise promises subversion—family duty vs. artistic calling—but the execution plays it pretty straight; the surreal girl-as-muse device is intriguing enough to keep watching, though it never quite commits to the weirdness it hints at.
A formally competent coming-of-age musical that understands its lineage in Romantic artist narratives, even if the blend of whimsy and fantasy doesn't quite achieve the tonal precision its ambition deserves.
The decision to make the girl's reality ambiguous—neither fully supernatural nor clearly metaphorical—is where this film earns its singularity; that unresolved tension carries the whole modest 10 minutes and justifies the musical-fantasy hybrid that could've easily collapsed under its own eclecticism.