A teenager learns to disconnect.
Elodie is a teenage girl on her way to visit her grandfather at his remote cabin in Iceland. Like many other teens, she'd rather be spending time with her friends and isn't thrilled about being shipped off to a faraway place with only an elderly relative for company. But luckily, she can stay connected, thanks to her smartphone and social media.
But when the wi-fi dies at her grandfather's cabin, she must put her phone down and deal with the world in front of her. Surly and annoyed at first, she soon opens up to the world, and the loving grandpa, in front of her.
Directed by Jessica Hughes, this compelling short family drama about reconnecting in the age of social media has little spoken dialogue. Instead, for Elodie, most communication happens on her smartphone screen, via little bubbles of text she sends and receives assiduously. She's so glued to her phone that she barely notices the stunning Icelandic landscape around her, nor the overtures of connection extended to her by her taciturn grandfather.
As a drama focused on themes of family and togetherness, the film has a marked visual emphasis, highlighting wide, stunning vistas and the remoteness of location. Its visuals render both the raw, dramatic natural environs of Iceland and the rustic quaintness of the granddad's cabin with clear, luminous cinematography, as if highlighting the beauty of the world that Elodie is missing when her attention is riveted on her phone. The storytelling is simple and focused on small, ordinary developments: a car ride to the cabin, a stilted dinner and losing wi-fi. But these have heavy import to a teenager whose social lifeline is via mobile, and actor Eloise Middleton-Comfort portrays Elodie's rebelliousness and sulkiness with pitch-perfect precision.
Elodie seems to withdraw into herself, but with the patient efforts of her grandfather, played with stoic knowingness and compassion by actor Richard Franklin, she soon opens up to the world around her. These small moments are laid out with great delicacy, as befitting their quiet nature, but Elodie slowly becomes aware of her grandfather as a person, from his past to his current travails. Soon these small moments add up to something warmhearted and gently expansive, as if the storytelling in SAVING ELODIE knows these are the kind of memories that make for a beautiful life but are missed when we put our focus on our online lives, instead of our real ones. Elodie remembers to look up -- and realize there is a whole world out there to explore, and loved ones at our side to share in those experiences.
SAVING ELODIE. Courtesy of Jessica Hughes at https://noscofilms.com.
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