Wasp - Alex Lloyd

'Wasp' was a 2003 short film written and directed by Andrea Arnold, the narrative is about a single mother living with her four children in Dartford. Being poor and not having enough to buy food for her family, we follow her as she comes to a point in her life in getting a chance to be with the man she has wanted.

1. In this film everything from props to make up tells us that it is also a film on social realism. The setting is in a small, gritty looking village of Dartford. With many council flats and appartments as well as dirty clothing and make up we can tell that all our characters are all working class. Other films that have used this iconography for a social realism film are Kidulthood and Red Road for example.

2. One way the film has become unique in my view is by its characterisation, we are used to seeing teens and adults in gritty, gutsy films like this but in 'Wasp' we see four young children with the oldest looking no older than 7, being put in an almost homeless position starving. With a baby being seen in this position it is a very powerful film becoming quite disturbing in places to think that this is a real life situation that is occurring in most places today. Not only do these kids find themselves in a starving position but with bad parenthood as well which is being heard of more and more.

3. This short film starts with no introduction, you are just swept along. It is a cliche of a film. You are given no identity at the beginning by the mothers face not being shown, it is not until the fight at the beginning that you first see her face. Later on she is put in a problem where she finds herself being asked out on a date, she has to figure how she is to say yes and still get around having to look after her kids. It leads to her putting her kids in a position to look after themselves so that she can go on this date alone, the resolution shows the male character taking them away with him. Whether or not live a better life is unanswered leaving us with many questions. There is never a happy part within the film due to the spectator always feeling sorry for the kids who are never put in a good position. It is all in an order of which we can follow being able to catch whats going on within the the first 5 minutes despite its fast introduction. What I am starting to see in all these short films are their similarities, there tends to be a lot of restricted narration with unanswered questions that may be raised throughout, amongst these enigmas tends to be a young cast with children being seen in unfair positions. I will look into these and perhaps use them in my own work in order to produce a powerful social realism film.

4. The use of sound in this film is all diegetic, there is no sound track or non diegetic music being played at any time making it seem more realistic and tense in places that could be interpreted as something else if music was to be played. Another advantage of having no music in a film like this is that it doesn't take our attention away from whats being seen on screen and with such powerful acting and narrative such as that in 'Wasp' it helps. We can tell how rough an area it is due to dialect and diegetic sound, the characters use a lot of slang in their language and curse quite a lot, with the children using this language we can tell they haven't had the best childhood and parenting. There is a lot of diegetic sound used including the baby crying for example making things seem very tense for the mother, with a lot of people around and natural sounds from traffic etc we get the image that so many people are around congesting the area but yet this young mum is alone.

5. The themes and issues raised are conflict, poverty, starvation, bad parenthood, young parents and sex. Our main character is represented as a young, single parent who has no money and can barely look after her children, I believe she is portrayed in a way that we are supposed to feel sorry for her being a single parent but at the same time to dislike her for the way she treats her children. Our sympathy goes mostly to the kids by the way that they are left to bring up themselves and look after themselves, the oldest child is left to look after her siblings whilst her mum goes to the pub on a date. Our male character is Danny Dyer, he is seen as a sterotypical uneducated, working class citizen who is not looking for a long term relationship but more for sex. In the end we find he has a strong interest in our female character by helping her out with the children.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388534/