A mother and son escape.
After she is hit, Cian and his mother flee their home in desperation, running as far as possible and scrounging enough change for the bus.
They land at a women's shelter, but when they come up against complications in the system, they realize violence is not so easily escaped from.
Directed by Lorna Fitzsimons and written by Ben Conway, this tense, unsettling short is set within the environs of a working-class neighborhood in Ireland, as a mother and her teenage son Cian grapple with the immediate aftermath of a volatile situation. Both fast-moving in pace and intimate in its eye, it follows the pair after they have reached a breaking point of abuse and desperation and are figuring out where to go and what to do.
The storytelling exists in a gritty, realistic register, with a camera that roves about, trying to keep up with Cian and his desperate mother as they literally flee their home and neighborhood after the latest incident of violence in their home. It feels documentary-like, almost suffocatingly authentic, as what should feel comforting and familiar becomes imbued with danger. Cian and his mother don't know where to go or who to turn to, but they know they need to leave, lending an air of urgency to the narrative. They head to a women's shelter, but with a teenage son in tow, they encounter complications with the system's bureaucracy.
We only glimpse in passing the father figure that inflicted pain and suffering on them; instead, the storytelling winnows in on the emotional undercurrents: the realization that the situation is untenable, the difficulty of trying to think clearly when emotions are running high. As Cian and his mother, respectively, actors Dane Whyte O'Hara and Maura Foley convey both the build-up of years of anxiety and fear and the bond that connects them. When their difficulties in keeping their emotions in check arise, they both realize that despite the physical distance, emotional violence is not a cycle they can easily leave behind.
With its unnerving ending, WHALE's realism and emotional precision make it a powerful contribution to conversations about coercion and fear in the home, demonstrating how it bleeds into the overall emotional makeup of each person in the family system, even if they aren't the direct target of it. Cian clearly feels an urge to protect his mother, but he's still a product of his environment, from the kids who insult him in the street to the terror of his home. Though we only fleetingly glimpse the patriarch of the family, but he exerts a shadow anyway, one that won't be so easily evaded.
WHALE. Courtesy of Lorna Fitzsimons at https://lornafitzsimons.com.
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