Director: Fariz Babayev
Writer: Fariz Babayev
Cast: Camilo Doux-Oliveros, Yoshua Tunda & Anne-Sophie Lebeau-Bernackaite
Running time: 12mins
The woods. Mention it to any indy film conosieur, and the very concept will elicit a fearful shudder. Not because of any genuinely nightmarish imagery cooked up by low-budget horror auteurs in that setting. No. It’s because the woods is where you go if you want to rack up a bunch of low-effort B-roll, and film improved dialogue without having to obtain any kind of permits.
There seems to be an (inaccurate) perception that the woods are innately atmospheric, that all you need to do is point your camera at the treeline and shoot. So mesmeric is this apparent x-factor of the wild that you don’t need to evolve your script beyond a ‘first-draft’ on a Starbucks napkin, the scenery will just draw the performance out of your actors. And you can get on with the really important business of writing your pretentious director’s statement, a regular Henry David Thoreau.
We’ve all suffered through many a forest slog – and none of us ever want to go back.
Condylura cristata dragged me kicking and screaming to just such a place though, and I resent every second it robbed me of. I don’t frame reviews like that lightly – but after sitting this scenario on countless occasions, enough is finally enough.
We follow Camilo Doux-Oliveros, playing ‘Man 1’, as he ambles through deserted rural roads, and becomes befuddled in a forest clearing, where several paths diverge. He staggers and sways back and forth for what seems like the run-time of Titanic – and at two moments is circled by that most accursed of cinematic devices, the drone camera, before finally forging ahead. But after such an apparently consequential decision, does his new path change anything? Well, you might be surprised to hear that the trees continue to be green and leafy, and the ground continues to be dusty and brown – while our protagonist continues to be breathless and confused.
At certain points, we flash back/forward to encounters Man 1 had with the titular Condylura cristata; the Latin for a star-nosed mole – but this is actually just a very human-looking Yoshua Tunda. It is hard to say whether I am more confused by why this person is standing in for a tiny burrowing creature, why Man 1 seems mortally afraid of him, or why on earth this film needed an assistant director – considering its ultra-minimalist approach. But regardless, the sequences add nothing to proceedings; not least because the two actors suffer from an utter lack of chemistry.
One brief cutaway does at hint at what could have been, if the filmmakers had decided to be a bit more daring. In a brief segment where Man 1 dreams himself on a country road, he is approached by a strange and aggressive figure – who, using some kind of animation-plug-in, is reduced to an impressionistic blur of limbs and teeth. As I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing, a series of nightmarish faces presented themselves, and playing with this to make some kind of offbeat post-apocalyptic drama – where post-modern shapes take the place of zombies/mutants/cannibals for the scares might have at least been entertaining.
But this strange and fleeting sequence collapses without consequence, before Man 1 begins to muse much less interestingly about a lost love of his. Mercifully, that is out of the woods. But since that is outside that magical realm where the looming trees can distract from scripts and performances, the filmmaker does not dare to give the woman anything to say.
To anyone who reads this website for advice on their first forays into filmmaking, heed the following. Unless it is essential to the plot, unless you can bring something interesting and fresh to the scenario, avoid the woods like the plague. There are many other ways to produce experimental art on a budget – but in the earliest stage of building a relationship with your audience, if you set it in a forest, viewers will find it hard to get past the idea you checked out in production. Like One, Meadow’s Disturbance, Sombre Soleil, and so many others before it, Condylura cristata is testament to that.