Elephant Feet (2011) dir. Dan Geesin
***
Review By Greg Klymkiw
We've all had weird BandAid jobs in our lives. God knows, I've had a few. You know, the sort of occupation that provides temporary financial relief when one needs cash - any cash - like a boo-boo on your finger that feels so much better when you squirt some Polysporin on it and then cover it up with a good old fashioned plastic bandage.
Usually these jobs are so out of our element that we often feel like strangers in our own land.
Thomas (Josh Meyers) goes one step further - he's a foreigner in Holland and takes a decidedly brain-dead McJob in an all night gas station and convenience store.
He's a stranger in a strange land, multiplied by two.
With Elephant Feet, Writer-Director Dan Geesin marries vaguely surreal with borderline neorealist styling to deliver a very funny short film about a night in the life of this clerk and the parade of late-night denizens of the dark who enter his dull-as-dishwater domain. Geesin cleverly sets up the dull procedures of Josh's work, follows him through the toil and at times brilliantly shifts perspective and point of view so that we're never quite sure if our protagonist is being watched by the surveillance cameras and/or someone and/or something else.
The movie is often as disquieting as it is funny and Meyers delivers a fine performance as the man who would rather not be there, but eventually attacks his McJob with unexpected relish.
We've all been there and done that, but what's especially creepy and compelling about the film is just how rooted in the reality of the unreal it is - not unlike life, really.
"Elephant Feet" is playing at the Canadian Film Centre Worldwide Short Film Festival in the Official Selection programme entitled "Someone To Watch Over Me" at the Isabel Bader Theatre: Thursday June 7, 7:00 pm and Bloor Hot Docs Cinema: Saturday June 9, 4:30 pm. For more information, contact the Festival website HERE.
