LOVE | A Short Film about Fathers, Sons, and Tennis.

A film about fathers, sons, and tennis.
A selection of Short of the Week, the web's leading curators of quality short films.
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LOVE
Written and Directed by James Gallagher
www.jamesgallagher.info/
"A gorgeous and frequently emotional rumination on the “big things” in life, James Gallagher’s new short film, Love, poses questions on what we love, why we love it, and what happens when the desire to win becomes detrimental to our experience of ourselves and other people. While that description seems preachy, the film is not didactic-on the contrary, its plot is extremely loose and impressionistic, requiring the viewer some effort to construct its fast-moving snippets into a coherent narrative.
Of course, a viewer can choose not to do that work-the film works splendidly as an exercise in affect as well. Powered by wonderful compositions, lovely cinematography, and a dreamy, montage structure, Love is a very satisfying film when experienced purely as a tone poem. This liberatory instinct from the confines of the traditional narrative will feel frustrating to some, but it is the film’s most unique and notable quality and jives well with its themes of emotional interrogation and self-knowledge. Possessing a visual and tonal rhythm that evokes Malick, Love skips between time and place to highlight momentous interactions between its characters and highlight portentous lines of dialogue like a Cliff’s Note version of a longer film (in the most flattering way possible).
As the logline suggests, it is a film about fathers, sons, and yes, tennis, but it is also a sneaky deconstruction of masculinity. Its archetypes are not unfamiliar-an up and coming sports star discovers his passion for the game is being crushed by his overbearing father. What is the source of his love for the sport? Is it in the game itself, or is it solely in the outcome? The father himself must reckon with this same question late in his life, as a serious event forces him to reconsider the wisdom of the lessons he tried to impart and which, for years, ordered his relationships with the most important people in his life.
In communicating with us, Gallagher expressed serious thinking around the modern state of masculinity, noting that, “A lot of what I felt like I was taught growing up about manhood feels brutish and unkind. I think we’re finding that the older paradigms of masculinity are vitally damaging but we don’t have much consensus on how masculinity ought to function in the world.”
Sport serves as a proxy for this interrogation. Being an artist, it is somewhat cliché to imagine Gallagher as antagonistic to athletics, but he doesn’t reject them. Indeed he finds aesthetic value in their pursuit. Instead, he finds something pernicious in competition, noting, “I don’t think there’s much value in feeling better than another person and I think it’s damaging to view life through competitive terms. We all have different starting lines, strengths, weaknesses, proclivities, and desires while competition requires the assumption of false equivalencies for the sake of comparison.”
Sports, in Gallagher’s reasoning, are representative of an all-too-common problem in one’s approach to life, a theme that is highlighted via the overlapping, and contrasting narratives of the father and son. The beauty of both is in the doing-in being present and attuned to the experience of now, rather than hinging one’s joy on potential future experience, i.e., the retrospective satisfaction of victory. It’s timeless wisdom, and no less vital because of its familiarity-Love encourages us to not wait to find meaning until the end, after all, in the end, we’re all dead." - S/W Curator, Jason Sondhi
CREDITS
Written and Directed by James Gallagher
Starring Boris McGiver, Will Hochman, Elise Kibler, and Susan Sarandon. With Jonny Rios, Gary Perez, and Michael Vasquez.
Produced by Andrew Swett, Claire Macdonald, Emily McEvoy, and Renee Willett
Executive Produced by David Carrico, Claire McDonald, Kevin Hayden, David Brody, Lucy King
Co-Produced by Katy Hallowell and Zachary Luke Kislevitz
Cinematography by Michael Belcher
Music Composed by Ernst Reijseger
Production design by April Lasky
Costumes and make up by Emily Schubert
Casting by Rebecca Dealy
Edited by Drigan Lee and Arielle Zakowski
Titles Designed by Emma Berliner
1st AD: Michelle Maffeo
SIM Digital Producer: Clare Movshon
Colorist: Rob Sciarratta
Re-Recording Mixer: Keith Hodne
Art Director: Natalie Nareau Hoffman
Compositor: David Russo
Gaffer: Dan DeBray
Key Grip: Ben Potter
1st AC: Jason Dirnberger
Tennis Consultant: Nick Nemeroff

[@imagineer99]

Such an interesting tone poem of a film -- I like how you can view it as either a disjointed narrative or a "mood piece." Both interpretations have their own rewards.

[@lory3371]

Will Hochman it's marvelous!

[@SusanAmberBruce]

Awesome story and the film quality is superb.

[@benaaronmusic]

love-love

[@TheVeganButcher]

Beautiful

[@doronron7323]

You'll find the true meaning of love, when you loose it.

[@desertsage7]

This 0ne made me fall asleep. What'd I miss?

[@jeffmorton3664]

Many are called but few are Chosen..Every good and perfect gift comes from the father of lights..Your not defined by the gift..Manifesting love by acknowledging the gift giver..Perfect love cast out all FEAR.....Pride comes before a fall...Oprah !!!! Wow thanks to Susan Sarandon......................STOP KEEPING SCORE PEOPLE,OR YOUR FIND YOURSELF PLAYING ALL BY YOURSELF...WHO WINS THEN !?!?!

[@missylou82]

Confusing. I just watch it, cause Will Hochman was in this short film.

[@eminguven8015]

English sub?

[@williamjoyner3759]

If I get three shorts of the week, then it no longer is THE short of the week, but like, one of them, say.

[@shortoftheweek]

Over at www.shortoftheweek.com it's been 4-5 a week for many years, but unfortunately by then the name had stuck and it was too late to change!

[@williamjoyner3759]

Uh huh?!

[@gabmoro1228]

boring

[@michaeljefferson4898]

Hated it.