 | MOVIE #1,439 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 03.13.24 ᴾᵃʳᵗ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ᴬᴺᴰᴿᴱᴬ ᴬᴿᴺᴼᴸᴰ ᴰⁱʳᵉᶜᵗᵒʳ ᶠᵒᶜᵘˢ I watched British director Andrea Arnold’s 2021 cinéma vérité doc Cow as part of a barnyard-themed quadruple feature episode back in 2021. Then I randomly watched her short Wasp last year when I was getting into seeing more short films. (She loves one-word and animal-centric titles, as we’ll see, continuing right up to the present day with her forthcoming Barry Keoghan drama Bird due later this year.) In my continued effort to showcase female (and really any other non white guy) directors on this site, I thought she would be a good fit as I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far. And her debut work, Milk (1998), is no exception. It’s very good. This does most everything I'm looking for in a narrative short, telling a concise story with style (in just ten minutes, no less). |
A couple has sex, she gets pregnant, and the baby is a stillborn. We spend the rest of our brief time with these characters in the aftermath of that: the mother is too distraught and lost to go to the funeral, the father sadly trudges onward. She meets a degenerate guy wandering the street and goes for a drive with him as he’s guzzling vodka behind the wheel. The joy ride is juxtaposed with the impossibly sad funeral scene with dad carrying the tiny casket. Back at home we see him drinking wine while she screws the young punk in his car. The movie ends with him suckling her breast like a baby as she finally cries.
What it’s about and the human emotions it evokes are not difficult to parse. But it’s not pandering either. It’s a simple, small story about big ideas, and it’s definitely worth a watch.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,438 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,440 ⫸
⫷ MOVIE #1,438 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,440 ⫸
From the get-go, Arnold was fascinated by the careless, seemingly simple choices people make in their day-to-day lives that lead to unintended, complicated consequences.It was released on April 1, 1998.
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