“Remains,” by Mark Allen Villaluz
San Diego Short Film Festival

Genre: Musical / Drama
Total Run Time 6:35

A recent widower (Jay Anthony) silently comes to terms with the loss of his wife (Jessie Pettit, only appearing via voice). He goes through the motions of his day, mostly without color and with very little success.

There are basically three sections of the film. The first section takes up a little more than half of the movie, and is set to “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Beck, and almost plays like the saddest music video you’ve seen.

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Everything is black and white, the camera captures all of the action from a series of fixed positions, and there is no dialog. This fly-on-the-wall perspective is an interesting choice – it’s detached, mirroring the widower’s broken emotional state. But it also lacks intimacy, which could have helped the viewer better sympathize with him.

The second section, after the music ends, involves the widower watching a video that his wife had recorded in which she relates the story of how they met and courted. Here we get the dialog and the first camera movements. The camera quickly settles to another fixed position while the widower watches the video. The performances here are mixed – Pettit’s voiceover is mostly effective, but sometimes has that read-off-a-page quality that may take the viewer out of the scene. Anthony emotes well, crying as necessary, but his expressions and eye movements sometimes left me wondering what he was actually watching – especially since we can’t see what it is.

The last section brings in color and a new song, “Nightingale” by Save the Day. It’s very short – consisting of the widower hanging a painting and leaving the house. The camera is moving again, and between that and the color we’re visually told that the widower is on the mend. Then credits.

A laudable first-time film! There are some technical glitches, such as the camera occasionally shifting focus when it seems like Villaluz was intentionally going for perfect stillness. The actors sometimes feel like they’ve been given perfunctory direction. But the weighty subject matter feels appropriately personal and the conveyed emotion of projects like this is what ultimately makes or breaks them.