Sweet little film tells its story completely in video letters between the two characters. It charts the course from the first time that Asha contacts Hank to say how much she liked a short film of his that she saw in a film festival through the end of the film (what that I'll leave for you to find out). The film really has no other on screen characters other than the pair except for the people who wander in and out of what ever the locations one of the pair is filming (There are other characters we get to know but never meet since they are mentioned in the letters).
The limited factor of video letters could have been deadly but the film scores major points in that Andrew Pastides as Hank and Mahira Kakkar as Asha are so good at what they do that any of the reservations I have about the film are swept away. Actually the real star here is Kakkar who makes Asha the girl I think most people I know would want to date. (To be honest Pastides is probably just as good but there is something a tad more friendly about Kakkar that makes me put her a half step up)
If there is any flaw in the film is that it’s simply video and handwritten letters. One would have thought that the pair would have spoken on the phone or Skyped. If they do we never see it. There is of course nothing wrong with the film not using it, but it’s the only thing that kind of made no sense to me.
One of the things that the film gets right is that the film runs as long as it needs to tell the story and gets off. Running a scant 73 minutes the film takes the story as far as it can be taken and then ends. It doesn’t extend things or add things it just does what it has to do and gets off. I love that since we have a nice tightly packed tale with no fluff. Its a perfect package of a pretty much perfect film as a result
This film is a treasure. Its one of the small gems that I wanted to highlight when I started Unseen.
This is one of those films that is best to see first and then talk about.This is a delicate flower of a film. It’s a film that I could easily wax poetic about in great detail, but I don’t want to do that. Like a flower I can describe a flower and explain to what it is and how beautiful it is, but at the same time until you actually see it you can’t understand how wonderful it is. Like a flower I can explain the colors, the scent and the shading and the arrangement of petals but you won’t see how it all fits together until you actually see how it all fits together. You need to see how it all fits together.
Trust me on this, this is one of those films that you’ll want to run out and see when it plays at the Brooklyn Film Festival tomorrow at 5 at Windmill Studios and on the 8th at 8PM at Indescreen...
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