Movie Notes: Cashback
= 3 stars
Starring Sean Biggerstaff, Emilia Fox, Shaun Evans
Directed by Sean Ellis
Synopsis
Art student Ben Willis (Sean Biggerstaff), fresh off a painful breakup, goes to work in a grocery store to fight insomnia. After getting to know the store’s eclectic employees, he develops the ability to “stop time” so he can further work on his art.
The Good
- Former fashion photographer Ellis has a great eye, resulting in cool visuals and imaginatively photographed situations, like the “bullet time” stopping of time or the slowed-down, yet silent moments when Ben isn’t listening to his girlfriend chewing him out.
- Despite a basically boy-loses-girl, boy-meets-girl plot, there are enough slick visuals and random plot elements that make the inner simplicity a lot less obvious. It’s refreshingly unpredictable.
- “Stopping time” could be a visual metaphor for the photographer’s art, in that a moment is literally frozen for posterity. I find that interpretation more satisfying than believing Ben has developed some super power.
The Bad
- There’s a whole subplot of Ben discovering his sexuality which results in a lot of nudity and sexual situations, some not entirely warranted (the acquisition of a stripper for a birthday party). There’s a worrisome feeling that Ben feels objectifying women is okay in the name of art. Without his artistic talent, he’d just be a pervert, and even so, the ending is a bit disconcerting regarding what we know about Ben and the sort of boyfriend he’ll make.
Conclusion
Cashback’s biggest flaw is having a lot of glossy surface over not much much substance — but that seems to be the way Bill sees the world, so the film’s style is ultimately in service of the story. I liked Cashback enough to keep an eye on Ellis for the future, and hopefully future work will explore the witty visuals and not as much the softcore porn. If heavy doses of “artsy” nudity, don’t bother you (only in America would I make that disclaimer) it’s worth a rental.
IMDB: Cashback
Wikipedia: Cashback
Rotten Tomatoes: Cashback 46%
I’ll be completely honest here: I downloaded this months ago because I read about the complaints about the nudity — I like boobs, sue me. But after seeing the whole film, they’ve become almost completely non-sexual to me. Sure, there are some attractive, curvaceous women, but loving the film as much as I do puts them into a different context.
And the musical score? Simply fantastic and, for me at least, is on a par with The Shawshank Redmeption for perfection.
Yeah I had kind of mixed feelings about this flick (as you can tell by the review) — I like looking at pretty women too, but this flick seemed like the pretty women came first and the story was built up around it? Still, I’d say it’s worth a rental. The director’s visual sense is really good and I look forward to his next film.