Four Eyes
2017 · 15m · Canada
Directed by Michael Clowater
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age, drama
Tones: humorous, melancholic, tender
Set in suburban 1977, an 11-year-old boy with autism whose glasses keep getting broken by bullies, and his trapped, frustrated mother, learn from each other how to stand up for themselves. A bittersweet, period-detailed mother-son portrait loosely based on the director's own childhood.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a film about autism and bullying to either break your heart or teach you a lesson — Four Eyes refuses both, instead wrapping its sting in 70s nostalgia and letting you laugh at the mess of it all, which is way more subversive than it first appears.
Clowater locates himself in a specific lineage of American memory cinema — the gauzy, tonally complex coming-of-age picture — and executes that tradition with formal precision, letting the period detail and editing rhythm do the emotional work rather than the script.
The entire film hinges on a single decision: to shoot the 70s setting not as kitsch or irony but as genuine lived texture, which reframes every moment of bullying and maternal frustration as something both funny and unbearably tender — that tonal calibration is everything.
Reviews
A fun film that makes us laugh and cringe, reminding us of different times and how people dealt with issues.
Festivals
- Silver Wave Film Festival 2017, Best Canadian or International Short
- Toronto International Short Film Festival 2017
- Ojai Film Festival 2017