Sometimes a crime can start … a great comedy. Yes, there are not many such cases, but when the British (or Scottish) humour comes in, success is guaranteed. We just surprised the mainstay of one of the most cynical and funny short films in our festival – ‘The Lost Scot‘ – which pushes the adventures of the characters to the limit of an accident that analyses not only their morality but also their self-preservation instinct. Obviously, from such a narrative formula, it is almost impossible for black humour not to emerge. We talk, however, about a sort of black humour that attacks not only an unfortunate context created around an accidental death but also a subtle form of irony that synthesizes in a micro-social critique the more or less wrong and hilarious prejudices defining inter-human and “interregional” relations of the United Kingdom. Director Julien Cornwall thus subtly builds with an acute critical sense around a seemingly simplistic narrative thread an incursion into a Scottish middle-of-nowhere that tests the mental endurance of three men confronted with the spontaneous experience of death, to successively attack a generous palette of temperaments sarcastically illustrating the boundaries of fraternity.
During a clay shoot, an accident shatters the silence of three men, who were looking for a way to disconnect from the city’s routine. They must make the right decision quickly. But what is the right decision to make when you are far from civilization… when the phone is out of signal… when the dead body is lost on the road …?
Far from creating a conventional comedy, Julien Cornwall professionally orchestrates a disastrous odyssey whose protagonists defined by a somewhat cartoonish dimension, both shock and amuse, creating, in fact, a restrained panorama of the human reactivity faced with a crisis. Thus, despite the local determinism that activates the behavioural and language specificities of the English culture, this short film goes beyond the spatial and temporal limits of the fictional universe, proposing a cynical perspective on human relations in general, codifying in the chosen typologies a universally valid human interaction. ‘The Lost Scot’ is, therefore, an incisive tragicomic project that, beyond the undeniable technical qualities that reveal the vision of a mature director, accurately captures a micro-scale “Commedia” intended for any moviegoer looking for a sarcastic and refreshing short film.
For the cynicism that captures the human reactivity faced with a crisis situation through various typologies specific to our society and for the professionalism with which the director constructs both at a narrative and at a technical level, a tragicomic magnetic experience, ‘The Lost Scot’ was awarded with the Film of the Month distinction in the November 2019 edition of TMFF.
