Ripple
2008 · 17m · United Kingdom
Directed by Paul Gowers
Genres: dark comedy, thriller
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
After an act of malice smashes an egg against his windshield, an ordinary man's day spirals off the main road into a dark adventure he will not soon forget.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A man's day gets derailed by an egg—not a metaphor, an actual egg—and somehow this becomes genuinely unhinged territory; Gowers treats the premise with the kind of deadpan absurdist commitment that makes most scripts look cowardly.
Competent dark comedy with clear lineage to Haneke and early Linklater, though the escalation from windshield incident to 'dark adventure' lands somewhat predictably once the tonal register locks in.
The whole film hinges on how Gowers sustains the tone shift after that initial act of malice—the decision to keep playing it straight rather than wink at the audience is what makes the absurdity actually work.
Reviews
« Ripple » (cascade) est une comédie noire sur le hasard et le destin inspirée d'un jour de la vie du réalisateur, animée par le burlesque des frères Coen et imprégnée de la géniale personnalité de Billy Wilder. Doté d'une mise en scène fluide et dynamique, « Ripple » réussit le pari de ne jamais ennuyer son public et de le surprendre le plus possible.