A Favour - Review (Written Version)

The short film ‘A Favour’ is one which I had to speculate whether I liked it or not and I decided that it’s not one of my favourites, not because of the storyline as I think it’s an original, creative and simple idea, but because there was not much emotion involved in the scenes and in a completely personal view, just wasn’t keen on the whole mise-en-scene and camerawork of the short. It starts with the split-screen narratives of two contrasting families of a White British Male and a religious, Jewish European male. As the audience, we are placed on neither side as for yet and are being told this story through subjective character identification and in terms of narrative range; it is a restricted narration as we do not know the point of plot until the last scene. It could be seen as an episodic narrative as at first we think these two families are apparently disconnected but come together in normal circumstances, but as the end of plot reveals for the wrong reasons in terms of the white male. The first scenes include the contrasting moving images of two normal families completing what seems their normal morning routine so personally I wasn’t gripped at the start which I believe is essential as it is what makes the audience intrigued and interested. There was a mix of camerawork involving angles and movement, flicking from one to another, which I thought, was good as it was presenting just the average, rushed, family morning. In the car park scene, I thought although the diegetic music helped add realism, it was quite distracting as to focus on the significance of the conversation when these two males meet, as the audience suspect they are connected in some way and wish to make interpretations about how the plot will unfold.