Director: Alfie Alexander
Writer: Alfie Alexander
Cast: Fin Latcham, Freddie Brown, Sam Scholar
Running time: 17mins
The Desert is a film brimming with potential. Writer-director Alfie Alexander’s dialogue is filled with dry wit, and his characters manage to come across as endearingly quirky without overstaying their welcome. But unlike the pregnant clouds which eventually burst to alleviate the drought at the heart of the story, there is no climactic deluge between the film’s players to give us a satisfying conclusion here.
Part of this may stem from Alexander’s risky approach to scripting the time we spend with Claude (Fin Latcham), Will (Freddie Brown) and Seb (Sam Scholar). The majority of the three housemates’ communication is stifled or repressed – meaning our insights into their characters are derived more from what they aren’t saying than what they are.
In some cases, this works really well. The interactions are believably stilted – thanks also to the capable performances of the cast, who emit a convincing nervous energy, as though filled with the urge to say something, but lacking the courage or energy to go through with it. Sheltering from the hottest day of the year, the trio have to contend with a hosepipe ban, and their house’s water pipes jamming at the worst possible time – while trying to contend with some deep-seated emotional issues. That powder keg of factors calls for a very deliberate kind of performance; tightly wound, yet also exhausted – and the actors pull it off.
As a result of these performances, there is plenty of intrigue to enjoy. Skirting around a big issue, for example, one character keeps bringing up ‘interesting’ facts about animals (“Did you know, in seahorses, the males give birth?” Yes, thank you, I believe most people alive do indeed know that…), initially as a means to segue into discussing his own struggling relationship. But as soon as the figurative elephant in the room comes up, he doubles down on the animal talk, as a means of avoiding addressing the subject in any deeper way.
That’s naturalistic and very funny dialogue, and is a good example of how Alexander’s tactic of ‘saying things without saying anything’ can work. But there are also several examples where the gamble does not pay off. In particular, it seems like Claude is the partner being talked about in this heart-to-heart – but there is not enough to really confirm that for us. We either need more context clues to let us in on that, or more blatant expository dialogue (which seems antithetical to Alexander’s methods – but would ultimately help us better engage with the story).
At the same time, the avoidance of overtly naming two of the characters is a problem. We know who Claude is, because at the end of the animal discussion, Will and Seb both call for his help with a plumbing issue. But which person is Will, and which is Seb? It might not necessarily matter to the audience, but it does make my job that bit harder, because crediting the right actor with the right performance suddenly becomes impossible – and that sort of thing matters if you are a young actor on the independent circuit, who might be able to win other roles on the basis of this performance.
But the biggest problem about subtlety is that it does not wed well with a non-linear story. Trying to piece things together in such a small amount of time, with so little information, will make you feel like a detective if you manage to do it – and that will be extremely rewarding for the five viewers who manage it. But for many more, I would worry that it is unclear when the final shots of our three characters are actually from the start of the story, or that the final moments of the narrative came with the pronounced slamming of a door, after the previously mentioned rainstorm.
With that being said, using the brewing of the storm and sudden cacophony of rain drops pelting on the roof to represent the growing tumult in one character’s head (in the way the noises of the subway are used to ratchet up tension in The Godfather) is brilliant. It embodies his inability to talk, leaving mounting emotional issues pushing him closer to more extreme routes of closure – and a final bursting of his own cloud.
The film itself doesn’t quite seem to get there. But then again, as the credits role, maybe leaving us as frustrated as the film’s characters is actually a fitting way to end this story of unspoken feelings?
There is a lot to like about The Desert. But I would prefer to love it. All the excellent constituent parts at play only serve to make what might have been more tantalising – and if Alexander and his team can find a way to help us draw conclusions about their next story a little more easily (without babying us), I can see them delivering something really special.