Madam Black
2015 · 11m · New Zealand
Directed by Ivan Barge
Tones: darkly comic, whimsical
After accidentally running over a young girl's cat, a glamour photographer invents an elaborate round-the-world story to avoid breaking her heart.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise is sweet in exactly the way that makes me distrust it—a photographer spinning fairy tales to spare a kid's feelings should be unbearable, but Barge somehow commits to the con with a deadpan sincerity that subverts the expected emotional payoff.
Barge's restraint in the framing and pacing recalls the tonal precision of European comedy-dramas; the film understands that the architecture of a lie—how meticulously it's constructed and sustained—is more interesting than its inevitable unraveling.
The film's entire weight rests on a single, brilliant sound design choice: the ambient world of each fabricated destination bleeding through the photographer's apartment, making the fantasy more texturally real than the present, which is what sells the deception and breaks your heart.
Festivals
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2016, Prix du Public