Pass the Parcel

Great performances by the two leads. The drunken scenes were extremely well shot and cut. Sincere themes and emotional closes are rare, so it was great to see a good one this heat. However it's difficult to watch a film that's entirely montage and not expect it to be an ad.

Over the course of a year, a father tries sending monthly gifts to his son and keeps having them returned by his boy's mum, leading him to drink before some hard truths lead him to really think about what it means to be a father. This was effectively done given how much of a timespan the team covered, with barely any dialogue outside of the written letters so the performers really had to work hard to show us their development through facial and body emotions. They did just that by and large, and I liked that you really threw in some variety in terms of your coverage. I think there were a couple of times were the seasonal timing didn't quite match up with what we were seeing on screen but kind of irrelevant given most of the film was based indoors. I appreciated that the mum in particular was shown running quite a range of emotions from resentment to anger to sadness as the time passed.

I appreciate you were trying to do something a bit different from most of the teams with a straight drama but I think the whole combination of the score instead of dialogue and the gift continually being returned to sender with no explanation until the end didn't really do anything for me, was a bit like an ad showing the importance of being there for your kids and that gifts can't substitute for that which would be fine if it was being made for that purpose but as a film it's a miss for me.

An interesting take on a holiday movie, an absent father with a drinking problem wishing he was there for all the holidays he has missed and sending parcels which symbolise his feelings. I found the montage hard to follow without some dialogue to help explain and the soundtrack that went right through, while it was well done, it dominated the film rather than enhanced it. Well done to the actors though, for carrying a film with they showed a real range of emotions without dialogue.