Little Failures (2003)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

John Dilley

Genre:

Short

Plot:

After ditching class, 15-year-old skate punk Olive decides she must approach the awkward young boy who has fascinated her for so long. |

Cast

Cat Chong-Quigley	...	Olive
Lewis Hurrell	...	Young Boy
David Enos	...	Older Boy
Becky Haycox	...	Anti Smoking Woman
Daniel Fuentes	...	Skater 1
David Lim	...	Skater 2

Runtime:

11 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Color

Self-deprecating title aside, a little success.

Having just experienced the world premiere screening of this short film at Sundance, I am happy to brand it a small, but sweet, success. It is one of the rare American films that accepts the short medium as a poet would: the opportunity to rekindle in the viewer the sights, smells, tastes, feelings, and sounds of an important moment. (Many others I've recently experienced have done little more than prove to me that their directors would make great VW ads.)

"Little Failures" brings us back to a moment in adolescence through the eyes of Olive, an understated but dead-on teen skate rat who is obsessed with the young man waiting at the nearby bus stop each day (any presumed Ghost World associations should be forgotten immediately -- the similarities end at the bus stop reference). The "little failure" we witness is her failure to communicate or connect with her seeming "best friend" -- a shy, sympathetic young man we all once knew who, in spite of all of Olive's sneering, continues, over and over again, to reach out and attempt to connect with her.

However, the narrative kindly brings us to a big success once Olive (spurred by her overly-loyal friend) finally breaks down and talks to this young man at the bus stop, hearing the words from him that we all needed to hear in adolescence and continue to need to hear, now: "Don't let anyone change you." The poignant irony is that, in saying these words, he *has* changed her, forever. We can see it in her face, before she realizes we've noticed and re-applies her signature sneer.

This is the first film I have ever seen about which I can say "The end credits are the best part!" and that's no insult to the rest of the piece, merely a note on how perfectly this team managed to cap off an already sweet experience.

If you saw it at one of the Sundance screenings at the Library and not at the Eccles, be sure to see it again -- you haven't really seen it. And if you haven't seen it yet and notice it in the program at your next fest, be sure to savor this bite of visual poetry.