Farewell

I'm not sure which they made first but after watching the short film Trainspotting, I then watched this other short from the pairing of Andrew Sykes and Allan O'Keefe. It stuck in my mind because the film is on a similar theme of loss and O'Keefe plays a similar character of one reflecting and struggling after the loss of a partner. Here we have a solo shot of O'Keefe as he talks to himself or an unseen person of his feelings and while the camera moves around in front of him, we have gentle oboe or cello music playing underneath. The effect is that we have the same problems as we had with Trainspotting, which is that emotions are forced rather than natural, that the film works too hard, too fast for what it wants.

O'Keefe himself is good but the film asks too much of him so he has to say more than he gets to show and the material moves him too quickly. A slower pace and a lot more subtlety would have helped a lot – and dropping the obvious soundtrack would also have been a big improvement. It is a shame because at its core there is a feeling here, but the development and delivery of the film seems to have pushed too hard to get at it, ending up making it feel overly sentimental and lacking in real heart.