A DAY IN A LIFE

That should not come as a surprise that Larry Clark & Jonathan Velasquez make extreme close-ups a rule in this short film “of the day”. Faces are shown close, never as some psychological device, but rather to slide – as skaters should – on skins and skin textures, awkward poses, eyes, mouths and lips. Cigarettes are all-pervasive in the scenes, the exhaled smoke connecting all the characters in a single cloud of uncertainty. Teenagers together – or, rather, side by side. Kids and their parents (like the ever-brilliant Vincent Macaigne, who makes an appearance as a father who is way out there); they do not have much to say to each other, although nobody seems to make a big deal out of it. Sustained energy, fragmented dialogues, melancholy of a pleasure that has lost its name, splendid colours up until the fire-red end credits. A slice of time, flesh cuts, a piece of film that seems to have been torn away from a larger work or, on the contrary, that contains it all, fully condensed, for eternity.
(Jean-Pierre Rehm)