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CASHBACK
Written & Directed by: Sean Ellis.
Produced by: Lene Bausager & Sean Ellis.
Director of Photography: Angus Hudson.
Edited by: Carlos Domeque & Scott Thomas.
Music by: Guy Farley.
Released by: Magnolia Pictures.
Country of Origin: UK. 102 min. Rated R.
With: Sean Biggerstaff, Emilia Fox, Shaun Evans, Stuart Goodwin, Michael Dixon, Michael Lambourne, & Marc Pickering.
DVD Features: Featurette. Original short (2004).

Art student Ben (Sean Biggerstaff) has had insomnia ever since his girlfriend dumped him. It was his first real relationship, and now that he can’t sleep, he’s putting his extra eight hours to use, working the nightshift at a supermarket. In a departure from reality, he passes the time in his dull, menial job by stopping it.

There are some beautiful segments as a result of this. In the first instance when he suspends time, everyone stops still in the supermarket. Then, he strips off the beautiful women’s clothes (apparently twenty-something Caucasian women with shapely breasts, and no one else, shop in the middle of the night) and sketches them, imagining his still, artistic gaze can see more than any man has ever known about these women, physically and emotionally.

But on the whole, the movie seems to have been a good idea gone awry. After winning an Oscar for best short, British director Sean Ellis turned what was a fantastic short into a tedious film that leaves you wondering, “Was that really the end? Has it really been only an hour and a half?”

The apathetic Ben only freezes his landscape a handful of times. The supernatural is used to support the psychological, showing how Ben grapples with his despair in isolation. But eventually, he slowly and awkwardly begins flirting with a checkout girl, Sharon (Emilia Fox), and uses his special ability to humiliate his boorish boss.

Flashbacks to Ben’s childhood sexual curiosity provide the only real fun. One features an uninhibited foreign-exchange student from Sweden (where else?) The similarly too-few segments feel both whimsical and honest at the same time, imbuing the otherwise dull film with an occasional spurt of humor. But for the most part, the introspective drama has too little depth and much too much droll piano music.

DVD Extras: The featurette is a fluff piece, but it does include the full, unedited, and audible version of the opening scene in which we see the monstrous anger that erupts from Ben’s girlfriend as she breaks up with him. The original 18-minute short is noteworthy even with the low-budget restrictions and the resulting time constraints (no beleaguered passages of aimless, piano-backed self-pity). Zachary Jones
July 20, 2007