Lily has returned home but she is haunted by a deed that makes her relationship with her parents very cold and distant. She is really trying to obtain their forgiveness but it looks like they are still caught in the past.
Mabille Pauline’s short film ‘Right Here or Over There’ focuses on the psychological intensity between the trio: Lily and her parents. Dedicating the entire duration of her film to analysing the psychologies of her characters, the young director makes the biopsy of a true ‘psychosis’ developed by the parents. What Lily did was unforgivable and this obviously makes it hard for the parents to forget. Caught in between a mother who is concerned about her daughter but still furious on her and a father who refuses to acknowledge Lily as his own child, the main character tries to find a way in which she could reach to her parents’ hearts again and hopefully find redemption.
Mabille Pauline’s story is about a trauma so profound that changes people’s character. The parents’ coldness is cruel and torturing: a father that almost doesn’t want his returned daughter around and chooses to ignore her presence, and a mother who is caught in between keeping the father’s side and trying to get close to her daughter again show the director’s ability to refine her film project by fine-tune-working with psychologies.
‘Right Here or Over There’ emanates an acute feeling of lack of parental love and the emotional alienation it produces to a child. Lily is trying to fight the bitter taste of being unwanted by her own family. She is an orphan and as much as she would try, things will never be the same again.
It is memorable the scene when she talks to her mother on the edge of the swimming pool asking for a hug – like her mother used to once hug her – as a proof of affection and a search for a sign that she still has hope. Her mother’s introversion when the daughter starts to speak about the old issue is very telling.
‘Right Here or Over There’ was awarded the first prize for Best Short Film Of November 2016 at The Monthly Film Festival for its powerful social plot and the director’s ability to ‘handle’ familial psychologies.
TMFF RATING:
Share:
