A collection of brilliant short films by Joe Lawlor & Christine Molloy (a.k.a. Desperate Optimists) filmed in various parts of Britain in a single take. Although the films vary slightly in terms of the successful realisation of an idea, they range from unmissible gems that provide a startling reminder of good short films can be to diverting curios that are still worth a watch. All the films were designed to include participation of local inhabitants of the city where the short was film and vary in content from a dialogue free murder mystery in Enfield to a group of friends’ last journey on the Tyne.


Who killed Brown Owl (9 mins)
The first film in the collection allows the viewer to go on a voyeuristic dreamlike trip through a pastoral scene in an idyllic London park. Terrific use of a free floating camera on a crane, great choreography of the locals and stunning 35mm cinematography combine to make a moving (in both senses of the word) Tableau vivant that recalls the best work of Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman. The most self consciously ‘arty’ (this would be as equally at home framed in a gallery) of the series but also one of the best. Although not my personal favourite of the seven, it comes a close second and is perhaps the best introduction to the work if you were to only watch one film in the sequence.
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Moore Street (6 mins)
A slight disappointment after the rousing and intriguing first instalment, this low key film follows an African woman down a deserted market street in Dublin late at night and explores his cultural identity in an immigrant community with a strong heritage.  Poignant but slightly underwhelming.
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Revolution (10 mins)
Returning to the format of …Brown Owl, Revolution seems like a thematic sequel to the first instalment, but at the same time is more ordered and chaotic as the camera pans around an open day at the Lambeth YMCA, with each revolution of the camera revealing greater disintegration of the family events taking place. Even more than the first film, this has an unsettling, dream-like surrealist quality as innocuous events turn increasingly dark and unusual from the couple trying to break a world record at kissing ending up covered in blood and a group of lost children ending up with the gorillas in the library!
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Town Hall (10 mins)
We join a tour of West Bromwich Town Hall and see local events and discussions going on. Although a great celebration of local life and a stunning technical achievement (like a smaller scale Russian Ark), the film unfortunately does its job too well as it could exist as a promotional video of the town hall but isn’t particularly more interesting than that. 
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Twilight (5 mins)
The most artistically formal and emotionally potent of the series, the camera doesn’t move but our perspective does as the location is a boat travelling up the Tyne. Intriguingly the narrator moves behind the camera to address the audience both on the boat and beyond the screen which slightly dislocates the viewer from the emotions (particularly as the elderly cast are quite stoic in the event of bad news) but it’s touching all the same. Again, the film-makers show their technical prowess as the film is expertly shot at the luminous blue moment of dusk recalling canvasses by 19th century painters such as Whistler and Monet.
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Leisure Centre (18 mins)
The longest and also most impressive of the series, Leisure Centre follows the journey of a young father on his return to work as he greets various colleagues and then confronts his inner turmoil when he rejoins his family in the changing rooms, stripping both himself and his emotions bare. Another feat of great choreography, presumably practised from the film-makers’ experience in theatre, the film deftly moves between the leisurely paced (pun intended) laconic journey through the centre to the intimate surroundings of the changing rooms and then out into the pool area where the dialogue becomes voice-over and the shutter speed subtly moves out of real (reel?) time.
As is always the way, anything that’s almost perfect has a slight flaw. In Who killed Brown Owl, it’s the slightly arbitrary abrupt ending while here the Optimists slightly over-egg the pudding by having the screen go dark and then light again (presumably through the exposure) when the young man is at his most tortured in the changing room scenes; which by way of its artifice makes us aware of the film-making technique. Otherwise, this is a beautiful, accomplished film and one of the greatest shorts I’ve seen in years.
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Now we are grown up (12 mins)
It’s a shame that Leisure centre with its perfect synthesis of narrative and film-making technique didn’t provide the climax to the series. Instead we find ourselves in another town hall with another revolving camera…
Now we are grown up is quite a good idea – a group of teenagers confide their problems with their peers while they are sat around an overwhelmingly grand meeting room. Equally, the technique of having one of them talk about their problems, their hopes and their fears while the camera pans across the faces of the others has the potential to be devastating. Unfortunately the two problems with this are: the local untrained actors don’t have the gravitas or experience to pull it off and we haven’t spent any previous time with the characters to actually care about them.
However as with the previous films because Lawlor & Molloy take risks with the format, tailor the film to the environment and do something genuinely intriguing it’s still worth a watch.

Overall: a brilliant collection that shows there is still some hope for British cinema in a world where Peter Greenaway can’t get his most recent film released (outside of DVD in Spain). Desperate Optimists are planning to do a feature after their next short (Daydream) and if they combine their adventurousness, technical expertise and eye for a beguiling shot with a strong cast and narrative it could be a masterpiece.
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