"The Garden" is an American English-language live action short film from 2014 that runs for 14 minutes and was written and directed by Natalia Iyudin, usually a prolific editor, but also not entirely inexperienced as a director. (Dmitry Iyudin (her brother?), is a co-writer here and also can be seen in this film in front of the camera.) Still she is of course not the reason that this little film here has received some attention recently again. That would be lead actress Sophia Lillis, who is enjoying a solid breakthrough these days. The tomboy-looking girl here plays a ballerina in a tale where she is about to go through a procedure that turns her into an immortal, but also she has to sacrifice her talent and creativity for it. I kinda liked the idea behind it really. The plot idea is not bad admittedly, but sadly the execution did not win me over. Lillis was not good enough to carry the film in my opinion, so acting-wise, the one that stays much more memorable to me was Heather Hollingsworth early on despite her brief screen time. But she fit in really well with the approach she gave her character in terms of atmosphere and tone. As for Lillis and her male counterpart, there were merely okay I guess. And do not elevate the mediocre material. Also I did not like the film in terms of realism and despite the genre, they are still going for that, so it is a negative deal-breaker. First of all, why would they employ a boy who really has a tendency to not pull through with the process and agrees that if she shows him some dance moves, then he will spare her. At leastg for a while. And well, seeing the guy try to copy these dance moves, he is not a complete failure. The way she is after the procedure towards the end, so well this did not make any sense that she can barely move and the explanations that the procedure just happened or that the boy is just copying her moves before that do not really suffice to explain that. I mean it is good and right to understand what they turned her into she is not gifted anymore (maybe even a prodigy you could call her before that) and it is an interesting idea story-wise and a crucial plot-point. However, then don't mess it up before. Overall, like I said tone and atmosphere are not too bad in this film and it is far from a failure, but overall, it feels too flawed for a positive recommendation. I give it a thumbs-down and only the biggest hardcore fans of the genre should check it out. Or the biggest Lillis fans.
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