I first watched Cashback a year ago when my flat mate Chris had it, and it instantly became one of my favourite films. It is the feature length version of the Academy Award nominated short film, and I was fortunate enough to find it lying in my Dad's film collection, nestled amongst a bunch of Danny Dyer films and the Dune boxset, so it is lucky I was even scanning that area at all.
The story follows Ben (Sean Biggerstaff - yeah I know, what a name), a student in his final year of Art college, who is going through the mourning stages of breaking up with his long-term girlfriend, and I would be pissed too if I had just broken up with Michelle Ryan...
oh yeah well done Ben. During this period of depression Ben develops insomnia, and decides, seeing as he now has 8 extra hours a day, he may as well find a constructive way to fill his time, and so he gets a job at his local Sainsbury's, working the night shift. During his employment there, he realises all his colleagues have their own little ways of dealing with the incredibly boring night shifts, making the time fly by with techniques such as never looking at the time, or simply doing anything that can't resemble work as much as possible. Ben discovers his own coping technique; he imagines the opposite. Instead of thinking about time speeding up, he imagines it slowing down, right down to a stop. Somehow this allows him to stop time, whenever he wants, and make it resume again just by cracking his fingers. Sounds strange I know, but believe me, they do it in a way that you don't even realise that there is no explanation to this time warping phenomenon. Anyway, Ben, being an artist, spends his frozen time admiring the female form, which at first sounds pervy, a bit like Bernard's watch got into the wrong hands, but Ben isn't going around plugging frozen honeys without them noticing, he is observing them, and then he draws them. Its all very arty. Then the love story part of the film begins, which I will leave for all of you to discover on your own when you go buy this film, and you will go buy this film *Jedi Mind Trick*
What makes me love this movie? Where to start...first of all its the content, which I think speaks to anybody who has ever been through a terrible breakup. I hate to exit my alpha male state for a minute but the first 20 odd minutes of Cashback cut close to the bone, with Ben doing things that we have all done in those moments when all we can think about is the ex (alcohol fueled or not). Secondly, it is the way that Sean Ellis (the director) manages to fill a film full of naked women, and not at one point have me thinking of sex. I have no idea how he managed that, but you start to see the women the way that Ben sees them, as objects of beauty to be admired, but not to be violated (I will come back to this point in a bit during my rant, just you wait). Thirdly, Cashback is funny. I don't want to go as far as to call it a romantic comedy, because the scenes between Ben and Sharon (the love interest, played brilliantly by Emilia Fox) is whole heartedly delicate and real, with all the funny points mainly focusing on Ben's best friend Sean, a self proclaimed ladies man; and the other male colleagues at Sainsbury's, who are more a comedy of errors. Although some of the comedy is a tiny bit slapstick, a lot of it is based on brilliant one liners and brutally witty trueisms. Fourthly, the film is just brilliantly shot, for such a shoe-string production budget, it is done brilliantly, with the acting, the camerawork, just everything, being top notch and giving you more for less, which I prefer sometimes to the overbearing money machine method sometimes employed in Hollywood.
So yeah, before I begin getting angry, let me insist that you all go buy this film now, it is out on DVD, so you have no excuse.
Now...let me try and calm myself...as I get onto the way the film has been marketed. Cashback, is a film about heartbreak, moving on, grabbing opportunities, and young love; i mean, if I am being honest, it borders on pretentious and 'arty'. Yet on the DVD cover it is portrayed as a softcore porno. I have no idea why, but it is almost like the distribution company didn't even watch the fucking film. They make it seem as if Ben is some kind of rapist who wants to shag women whilst they are frozen in time; trapped in his twisted little world. For instance, lets have a look at the front of the DVD...
see that woman is in the film for around 4 minutes. But they put her on the cover, just because she gets her tits out. Also the tag line "When work's a bore - Turn on your imagination". He isn't using his imagination you tools, he is actually stopping time.Shit like this makes me want to kick a fucking puppy. He isn't sitting at his counter day dreaming about naked women. The second thing that pissed me off about the DVD cover was on the back, a quick snippet from a film review by Nuts magazine, and it quotes "Top Babes" ..... and that is it!?!? What the FUCK? How is that relevant? At all? I mean I can see the inbred chav scum who work at Nuts could watch this and all be sitting around bathing in chants of "GET YOUR BAPS OUT!!" but really thats not what the films about. This has helped me become positive that I should work in distribution, so that films like Cashback don't get marketed to people wanting to see some naked women, but rather to people who want to see good cinema! Although I, quite handily, fall under both categories, so who am I to complain?
Till next time
Peace
No comments:
Post a Comment