Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is a young high school student from Wales. Obsessive, quirky and faintly reminiscent of a Wes Anderson-ian Rushmore style character, he notices his parents marriage slowly drifting apart. He narrates the story as he monitors his parent's sex life via their dimmer switch on their bedroom wall.
At school, Oliver likes to think he is widely loved by his peers, but he is actually quite alienated for being pretentious and weird. He forms a crush on the moody Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige) and bullies an overweight girl to try and impress her. Jordana invites Oliver to meet her with a Polaroid camera and diary. After taking pictures of herself kissing him to make her ex-boyfriend jealous, his affection for her grows. He defends her in a subsequent fight and then the two decide to start dating.
Meanwhile, at home, his parents relationship continues to unravel. Oliver's mom's former lover Graham, who is a mystic/motivational speaker, moves in next door and re-hashes a bunch of memories. Oliver catches his mom looking at old photos of them together and she insists on attending Graham's mystic lectures. Oliver believes that his mom is going to have an affair and takes it upon himself to save his parent's marriage.
Oliver struggles between his budding relationship and his parent's failure of a marriage. As Jordana confides in him that her mother has terminal cancer, he coldly cuts off contact with her to ensure she has time to mourn her upcoming loss (how mean!). He then devotes all of his time to stalking his mom and Graham, only to soon find out that his mom gave him a handjob in the back of Graham's van. His father and mother manage to work everything out after this and Oliver occasionally notices the dimmer switch on low again!
Jordana, furious at being left alone, dumps Oliver. Frustrated, he sulks for weeks before finally explaining where he had gone -- to stalk his handjob-giving mother and a mystic. The two meet on the beach and slowly walk into the water together. The ending is ambiguous but sweet with smiles and sunsets.
I personally enjoyed the story. It did have a few elements that seemed to really be hitting the quirky, indie, cutesy factor a little too hard, but it was quite endearing overall. Visually the film had a lot going for it; it had a very primary, saturated colour palette that worked well with the characters and setting.
There were also a lot of cutting, directing shot techniques that I enjoyed - The use of kaleidoscope, rapidly cut montages, super 8 film stock, differing aspect ratios, split screen. The actors also frequently addressed the camera and made mention of the cinematic technique. Stark title cards separated the film into chapters and epilogues à la Jean Luc Godard's Weekend.
It was essentially a sort of sampler of French New Wave techniques combined with unique experimentation.
I gotta say, though, one of my favourite elements was that the characters had essentially one costume the entire film. It made the characters seem like cartoon characters and it was really charming? I have no idea. I just loved it. :)
Here are some miscellaneous stills from the film!
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