Bad Therapy

Really nice film, I hated the therapists big ego, obnoxious and gaslighting personality. It was so irritating and which was great to garner more compassion for the protagonist. Cute ending and it’s very unfortunate for it to be disqualified. Good work though!

A really nice message at the heart of the film, and a stand-out performance from the Conscience character.

Once again though, and this isn't through the fault of the filmmakers, we're finding ourselves trapped in a 21st century post-quake townhouse with white walls and clinical lighting - which, to be fair, is what therapists offices look like, but at the same time, we got one-too-many films which were essentially just people talking in rooms exactly like this one this year, and through the fickle hand of fate and the alphabet, Upshot ends up being one of the final films we watched in the whole city, so suffice to say by this point I was a little exhausted.

This exhaustion didn't help with a film which was literally the longest one in the comp this year by a full disqualified minute.

In a way, I've always felt stories about a character literally just going to therapy are narratively cheating a bit - so often stories serve to take us on an emotional journey wherein a character undergoes a sort of thematic therapy - having a character just visit a therapist and unload their woes is maybe the only acceptable use of telling instead of showing?

Apologies for the harshness, I think part of the problem is Upshot have made some awesome stuff in the past - 2018's delightful shadow dance film AURORA comes to mind in particular - and so seeing something without any of the visual flair I know the team to be capable of was a little disappointing. The emotional journey of the protagonist also shows the storytellers here have an understanding of character development - I think it would have been nice to see that as subtext instead of just THE text.

Challenge for next year: Get back into your crunchy scrappy filmmakery corner and make something that pops visually and narratively - and get your film in on time ;)

The idea of an inner critic was actually a good one but having it all play out in a therapy session did get a little tiresome. I think this is mostly because we got the same medium close-ups for a big chunk of the film so it just felt repetitive and not so interesting.

Full marks for the dialogue-driven script though and the overall message delivered about how much we should or shouldn't listen to our inner voices. A question I'm left with is whether you intended the therapist to be actually helpful or not - he clearly was irritating in his approach but ultimately it was a successful session and worth the money!

A solid enough 48HR short just not very ambitious in its delivery.