This was such a pleasant surprise. Normally one watches shorts out of a sense of duty, or in the hope against hope that one will be among the first to spot a fully fledged talent. Unfortunately, there have only been two talkie-era shorts worthy of the name genius - Le Balon Rouge and 35-Aside. Fetch may not be quite up to that quality, but it has an acute sense of genuine strangeness, that is lacking in much of today's cinema.
Although it treats of darkness and the uninsurable terrors of chance beneath happy bourgeois life, it forswears Lynchian psychodrama in favour of a bizarre lightness of touch. The decors are excessively cheerful, gorgeously coloured; the camera movements are amiably bouncy, the dog is adorable. Everything begins like a normal date - expectant, nervous - and gradually disintegrates. The horrors, when they come, are so shocking, so unexpected, yet so stylised that they're hilarious. The accumulation of wealth and comfort cannot buffet death, and yet emotion has been so sterilised in our culture, that we can only shrug our shoulders and walk away.
The lead is delightfully deadpan, shirking guilt, hoping that by not admitting anything he won't get blamed. I personally can't moralise as I'm exactly like that myself, so where others might castigate him, I can only smile in rueful recognition. It is, the newspapers tell me, an indication of out 'hands off' culture. Fetch (what a rich title) is the equivalent of a Nabokov short story, seemingly slight, detached, indifferent, parodic, yet containing a multitude of ironies, ambiguities, and disturbances. A small, comic, frightening gem.
Although it treats of darkness and the uninsurable terrors of chance beneath happy bourgeois life, it forswears Lynchian psychodrama in favour of a bizarre lightness of touch. The decors are excessively cheerful, gorgeously coloured; the camera movements are amiably bouncy, the dog is adorable. Everything begins like a normal date - expectant, nervous - and gradually disintegrates. The horrors, when they come, are so shocking, so unexpected, yet so stylised that they're hilarious. The accumulation of wealth and comfort cannot buffet death, and yet emotion has been so sterilised in our culture, that we can only shrug our shoulders and walk away.
The lead is delightfully deadpan, shirking guilt, hoping that by not admitting anything he won't get blamed. I personally can't moralise as I'm exactly like that myself, so where others might castigate him, I can only smile in rueful recognition. It is, the newspapers tell me, an indication of out 'hands off' culture. Fetch (what a rich title) is the equivalent of a Nabokov short story, seemingly slight, detached, indifferent, parodic, yet containing a multitude of ironies, ambiguities, and disturbances. A small, comic, frightening gem.
