Short films are the perfect medium to hone one’s skills and try things out. They function, more often than not, as experiments that, if the creative brewer weighs and mixes his ingredients well, prove his potential to industry insiders as well as the wider public.
Kenjo McCurtain’s Orange Of Daydreams is such an experiment – an attempt at fluidly sewing a murder mystery together with romance – that re-affirms his talent as a filmmaker and as screenwriter.
His narrative commences with Mariya (Shima Izutsu) telling the spectator that the reality that embraces her is radically monochrome in nature. She feels drawn to cats as “it’s better to share a space with something that sees the world in the same way as you do”. However, when Mariya looks at the sun, she believes she fleetingly can see some colour. Despite not knowing how to describe a colour, she calls it orange.
One night, after discovering a murdered cat, she sets out to catch the culprit. She discovers a security camera and ventures on the world wide web to ask for help and hack it. Yet, due to her slow internet and her ineptitude at installing modems, she eventually has to invite SeaAgent234 or Tomo (Yuga Ando), the person who answered her call, into her home.
Orange of Daydreams, despite its light-hearted flavour, does offer the spectator some pleasing psychological ruminations. As the murder-mystery unfolds, McCurtain seeks to explore the idea that the subject, caught within a contentious relationship with the motherly figure, will seek ways to channel and give expression to his unvocalized frustration.
Within McCurtain’s narrative, the mounting pressure of such frustration turns itself into violent lashing-outs towards the objects of motherly affection, cats. The way McCurtain approaches this frustration leaves no doubt that the contentious nature of the murderer’s relation to the mother is caused by a frustrated desire for love, by feeling imprisoned within a motherly desert devoid of signs of love, yet plagued with a mirage of cat-like shadows: Why do you love cats more than me?
At the level of the romance, McCurtain (unsurprisingly) seeks to stage the effect of falling-on-love on the subject in a very elegant but also expressive way. Without spoiling too much, we can say that for the director, it is not curiosity that kills the colour-blind cat, but love. The genre-blending finale, however, does not only play with McCurtain’s original permutation of the idiom but also the original, delivering a thrilling denouement that culminates into a genuine heartwarming conclusion.
Kenjo McCurtain delivers a well-paced dynamic composition that keeps the spectator engaged from start to finish. The light-hearted atmosphere of the narrative is supported or amplified by the director’s playful compositional approach. He does not merely utilize static shots to break the fourth-wall – to let Mariya (and other) address the spectator directly, but also sprinkles his composition with decorative elements that, beyond streamlining the flow of the imagery, infuse a flavour of playfulness into the atmosphere (e.g. cross-fades, well-hidden and visually pleasing shot-transitions, jump cuts, …).
McCurtain makes the most of his choice to frame his film in monochrome colours. This choice, beyond indirectly putting the spectator in Mariya’s experiential shoes, offers him a chance – a chance he does not fail to take – to prove he is capable of exploiting contrasts and patterns to interweave aesthetically pleasing moments into his visual fabric.
McCurtain relies heavily on musical accompaniment in his short film. He does not only employ music to support the light-hearted nature of his narrative, but also to smoothen the dynamic visual flow and the shifts in mood and atmosphere – e.g. from light-hearted confessional monologues, tense thriller-like atmosphere, to genuine inter-personal drama and romance.
With Orange of Daydreams, Kenjo McCurtain delivers a very enjoyable short. With his playful compositional approach, effective musical accompaniment, he brings Mariya’s transition from a space without love to a space bursting with love in a very heartwarming way and visually engaging alive. This short corroborates McCurtain’s promise as a director and screenwriter – his future looks bright and colourful.