Film Review:
The Third Annual Montauk Film Festival, Part 1
Women In Film Night, July 24, 2022
It's exciting to note there are two film festivals taking place in the East End of Long Island this summer (the Montauk Film Festival this week in July, and the Hampton Film Festival offering select movies in August). We were invited to attend the third annual Montauk Film Festival which runs from July 22-31. The Festival (which is a registered 501(c)(3) non profit) is a small and niche event with unique film offerings. They suggest their film selections aim to inspire on awareness about the local environment through themes of athleticism, humanity and sustainability. The venues hosting the Festival are unique and taking advantage of the beauty here in Montauk (commonly referred to as "The End"), including films showing in the iconic Montauk Lighthouse. Please see below Miles' Stephenson's movie review of his favorite film on July 24.
Montauk Film Festival, Part 1
Women In Film Night at Sole East, July 24, 2022.
Film Review: Five Hundred Calories (2020), written and directed by Cristina Spina, produced by Oliva Serafini-Sauli, and distributed by Zen Movie
by Miles Stephenson
about Miles Stephenson: Miles is a screenwriter, film critic and recent graduate of Columbia University current working as a production assistant in NYC. He watches and reviews a new film daily at The Vernon Show. At the 3rd annual Montauk Film Festival on Sunday night, I attended the director's panel and screenings of four inventive and sharp shorts: Me Against the World, Monkey Bars, 500 Calories, and Nā Kama Kai (Children of the Ocean). The following is a review of my favorite short from the evening: Five Hundred Calories (2020), written and directed by Cristina Spina, produced by Oliva Serafini-Sauli, and distributed by Zen Movie:
Cristina Spina, an Italian filmmaker based in New York City and Rome, delivered the most visually striking experience of the night with Five Hundred Calories, a 2020 short about a woman who travels to confront her former ballet teacher for childhood abuse.
Teodoro Maniaci's photography of a shepherd and his flock traversing a country road and a brick villa on a pond serve as the serene backdrop for an existential crisis where protagonist Theresa (played with smoldering tension by Yvonne Woods) delivers a soliloquy about how she was starved down to 500 calories a day at the age of 13 to look the part of a dancer. We also learn that a strangely inappropriate doctor was employed, who furthered her abuse. The resentments are set; now the audience waits for the big confrontation as the teacher hides upstairs.
In a performance that could have so easily embraced cliché or melodrama, Woods brings a reserved but poignant realism to her abused character; she embodies the tiny emotional inflections of the character, the wrinkles in the brow, the aching voice. Spina and Stefano Mariotti shoot and edit the sequences before the confrontation with such strong composition and timing (like the utensil drop shot transition and the broken picture frame scene) that the pace propels the drama of the story, climbing the tension until the final conflict between Theresa and her teacher. After the police are sent away, the ending is ambiguous, and although I wanted to learn more, perhaps, like Theresa, there's no satisfying conclusion to this tale of wrongdoing and emotional pain.
Beautifully shot, well-acted, and powerfully written (especially the confessional soliloquy) I'm looking forward to seeing what Cristina Spina brings us in the future. A strong display of technical and narrative skills, 3.5/5 stars.
