Life Lessons from a Dead Girl Review
Life Lessons from a Dead Girl is a 2018 short film from writer/director Mich Gelinas.
A tad poetic with a humorous take on existentialism, the lack of clear direction with a floating camera leaves the story of Life Lessons from a Dead Girl feeling almost better as a stage play than a film.
The biggest issue with the film is the introduction sequence, which does not give the audience much context of our main protagonist. The description of the video mentions that this is a man who has spent life alone, but there is nothing to illustrate that here. Instead, we are just shown someone who is sifting through the woods for almost four minutes of the total length of the film. With no sign, it just appears we are watching someone out on a Saturday stroll.
The film gets better once it introduces us to the living dead woman. The banter between the two characters is both witty and existential. It delivers a nice interplay and helps to further clarify the lives of each of them.
The major problem with this though is the camera angles at play and the framing. Just holding for far too long in wider shots that show quicker editing as the film moves forward, but it is still not enough to rescue the pacing problems.
This all leads to the key point of this working almost better as a stage play. This story seems ripe for a more theatrically minimalist style where the setting strips away in favor of just focusing on the banter between the two characters. In film form there is just nothing to keep the interest of the viewer throughout the whole 18-minute run time.
Overall, there are elements of the film such as the aforementioned banter that work really well. Also, there are some genuinely nice poetic elements of wide shots of nature, but it just cannot find the ultimate footing of an identity in the end.
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Cheers!
Daniel Hess
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