To honor the hard work and creativity of the short movie makers on our platform, Sofy.tv has decided to pay homage to their work.
We will review many of the top-rated movies in our Sofy.tv catalog to bring them to the attention of any of you who have not yet seen them.
With more than 1,000 great shorts currently in our catalog, it won’t be possible to review all of them. It is for this reason that we have picked our personal favorites as well as the ones that score highest with our members.
We are going to start this week with the cinematic debut of short movie maker Sami Arpa, who is also the co-founder of Sofy.tv
The Patters (Les Bruits Des Pas)
Before he was starting a short film revolution with Sofy.tv and Largo, Sami Arpa was making short films.
His 16-minute long directorial debut, Les Bruits Des Pas (English title The Patters) is a stylistic and thematic triumph.
The Patters touches on a theme that is still relatively unexplored within cinema, but is one that many of us face in our lives – maintaining a relationship with our parents as they grow old.
Inevitably, the passage of time also results in the passage of responsibility for care from parent to child.
As our parents grow old, we as caring children are forced to assume the responsibility for their welfare.
While their job caring for us as children was made easier by their authority as elders, the challenge of caring for them when the roles are reversed is infinitely more difficult.
Unwilling to yield responsibility, and often too proud to accept help, an almost inevitable alienation and resentment develop.
This coupled with other life pressures, often results in very complex relationships.
It is this theme that underlies Sami Arpa’s The Patters.
Trying To Solve An Unsolvable Problem
The movie opens on a seemingly nondescript shot of the countryside. The lush green hills and buildings could easily be any central or northern European landscape.
Immediately, this cinematic device familiarizes the movie’s theme to most of us Europeans. This is a powerful tool that ensures a high degree of viewer engagement with what is to come.
The calming sound of a cowbell is interrupted by a narrator who informs the audience that bizarrely, he is lying on the floor. As he engages the audience by asking them whether they have ever lied on the floor, a car is seen driving up the hill.
A sad classical score begins as the film cuts to the car pulling into a simple countryside home.
Inside the car is a young woman call Dominique, who we soon discover has come to visit her father.
And so begins The Patters.
Exploring Estrangement And Hope
Arpa’s opening creates a powerful and intriguing canvas from which the film will explore themes that we can all identify with – love, death, faith, frustration, estrangement, and hope.
We soon become aware that Dominique is grappling with her estrangement from her father who lives on his own with his cats.
From his narration, we discover that her father has chosen to withdraw into his own world with just his cats as companions.
Quite why he has chosen to do this is unclear, however, it has led to a void developing between him and Dominique.
While he seems comfortable with this situation, Dominique is extremely troubled and conflicted.
Her love and care for her father push her to try to overcome his boundaries. At the same time, their unexplained history and her frustrations towards him pull her away.
For every frame that she is on screen, Dominique’s internal battle seems as though it will tear her apart.
Her hope at being able to reach her father to establish a relationship before it is too late keep her trying to find a way to get into his locked house to reach him.
Despite her efforts, fate seems to have plotted against her.
It soon becomes apparent that The Platters is a modern Greek tragedy.
Dominique, as the young hero, is trying to overcome forces that ultimately are beyond her control.
As she sits in her car agonizing over whether or not to leave or to try one more time, the audience can’t help feeling all of her frustrations and sadness at the situation.
Arpa’s haunting juxtaposition of her father lying dead on the floor as Dominique finally gives up and decides to go home is a powerful moment in short film.
The last we see of Dominique is her trying to hold back her anger and tears before she turns the car and heads for home.
Perhaps most eerily, the audience is left with an underlying sadness knowing that Dominique will soon be forced to come to terms with her father’s death and the knowledge that she had given up without trying one last time to reach him.
How she will deal with the trauma of this realization and the certain guilt is left to the audience to ponder.
With The Patters, director Sami Arpa has created a movie that typifies all the qualities of a great short.
The film’s introduction grabs the audience attention and immediately involves them emotionally in the movie via the use of suspense and raising a set of questions. Onto this canvas, Arpa pours in emotion and themes that are instantly recognizable to us all.
Resisting the conventional need for a happy ending, Arpa instead leaves the audience emotionally charged by providing no positive resolution, but rather setting up an even bigger trauma for the main character Dominique to deal with after the movie has ended.
The Patters is a powerful short movie that if you have not yet watched you should.
While he is now onto the bigger mission of revitalizing the short movie industry, this movie demonstrates Arpa’s enormous ability as a director.
Hopefully, he will one day return to short films and delight us all with another great movie.
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