For Ellen at Sundance London

For Ellen at Sundance London

29 April, 2012
by: Naima Khan

Calling all feckless fathers trying to gain access to your kids! This one's for you, but you probably won't have the patience for it.

Sheesh! Whoever told writer-director So Yong Kim her notion of a deadbeat dad trying to gain access to his daughter was enough to justify a 94 minute-long film is responsible for about 75 minutes worth of wasted celluloid. That's really all there is to this story and it's the lack of drama and an unsympathetic central character that make this film so very boring.

The odd thing is, you can't really fault Yong Kim's writing or her directing, just her terrible decision to try and flesh this out into a feature when it would do much better as an effective short. Her writing is incredibly streamlined and no one says more than they need to which gives For Ellen, a wonderfully naturalistic feel and some poignantly difficult moments.

She modulates the tone between warmth and sadness as barely sober musician Joby (Paul Dano) grows increasingly frustrated with his sensible, hopeful wife Clare. To Joby, she and everyone else stand between him and his daughter Ellen. Though at first he has little sense of his own faults, he slowly, very slowly, begins to realise them. Riveting stuff.

The story begins in a solicitor's office where Jon Heder (how the hell did she get him?) is doing his poorest best to get the barely sober musician (Paul Dano) a win. Heder's buttoned up square of a solicitor is the polar opposite of the indie band front-man and the contrast makes room for some humour but this is where more conversation would be great, instead Yong Kim gives us well-acted awkward silences.

Silent too, is Joby's eventual interaction with his daughter, well most of it. Sheylena Mandigo as little Ellen is a spark of light among all this dreariness but her part is small in the vast expanse of this largely empty film.

Image by Carolyn Drake

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Naima Khan