After Ever After

"Love can't be defined. It can only be experienced"

This review is part of an ongoing series of reviews I am writing about the nominees for the Beneath the Earth Film Festival, all of which are short films. For more info, go here.

After Ever After is, like fellow Beneath the Earth nominee Chase In Prose, a seemingly semi-autobiographical effort where the director/writer makes a short film about something he knows. In this case it's the process of loss and healing that a man goes through after coming out of a long relationship. The film is presented to the viewer in stages - 1) Grass is Greener, 2) Alone With Your Thoughts, 3) Reality, and 4) Accepting It. The film is actually mostly wordless, full of arresting and inventive imagery, and just lets all the action and editing do the speaking. There's some really clever use of repetition in the way it all hangs together, and Jeff Pinilla has made quite a solid film, and I applaud him for making a film about a guy falling out of love that doesn't end with said guy hooking up with a new girl.

So yeah, I thought this was quite well done, full of great and unique imagery, but I do have to say that it fell just short of greatness for me because it lagged in the middle... a good 17 minutes of the 28 minute runtime was just this one guy moping in silence. It's technically excellent, and quite dazzling in a really professional way, but I think it could've been just that little bit shorter and sharper. One of my three favourites of the competition though, and a very deserving winner of the festival's Audience Award.

DIRECTOR: Jeff Pinilla
WRITER/SOURCE: Jeff Pinilla, Dan Owens
KEY ACTORS: Michael Furlong, Dan Owens, Sara Cicilian, Sanam Erfani

RELATED TEXTS
- Jeff Pinilla previously wrote and directed the short film Dulcet Conversation.
- Pinilla also worked as an editor on the US-Ecuadorian film Bushwick.