- Boogaloo and Graham
Starting Friday at Landmark’s Century Centre you can see each of the 87th Academy Award’s nominees for Best Live Action Short Film. The two worst offerings from this year’s nominees suffer from similar issues, most glaringly a surplus of plot unfit for the short-film form.
Similar to Butter Lamp (more on that later), the British drama The Phone Call richly—and wisely—explores a single scenario. A woman working in a suicide prevention center (Sally Hawkins) receives her first call of the day. On the other end is a man, voiced by Jim Broadbent, who calls himself “Stan,” but that’s probably not his real name. He’s sobbing uncontrollably, and it’s Hawkins’s job to get his story, but he says “it’s already done,” and writer-director Mat Kirkby spends the next 15 minutes slowly revealing what “it” is. This simple setup—a single onscreen character in a single room having a conversation on the telephone—invites intense character interplay. Without a plot to get in the way, Kirkby is free to direct Hawkins in an excellent performance and experiment with different kinds of framing and interior compositions. The rhythmic editing is also inspired: in more dramatic moments, Kirby cuts to a close-up of Hawkins foregrounding a window basked in early-morning sunlight. Just about the only thing Kirkby fumbles is tone: the film is tense in the beginning but grows increasingly mawkish before reaching a sentimental denouement. The ending might not stick, but getting there is rewarding.
