The Mess
2017 · 4m · UK
Directed by Dorothy Allen-Pickard
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A four-minute portrait of the filmmaker's friend Ellice Stevens and her experience of bipolar disorder, where objects fall around her in super slow motion as she discusses the cycles of her mental health.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Allen-Pickard commits fully to the surreal metaphor—objects raining down in slow motion while Ellice talks about bipolar cycles—but the conceit feels too tidy, too on-the-nose, like the visual is doing the emotional work instead of earning it through friction or surprise.
A formally considered essay film that situates itself in the lineage of experimental documentary portraiture; the slow-motion grammar recalls structural cinema's meditative tradition while the intimate testimony grounds it in contemporary essay practice.
The single decision to drop objects in super slow motion around a stationary subject could've been gimmicky, but Allen-Pickard's restraint—letting Ellice's voice carry the weight while the falling things stay peripheral, almost incidental—is what makes it work; the visual becomes rhythm, not metaphor.