By Anne Rutherford
Idol did not get my vote for best short film for the AACTA awards – it was hard to look past the historical scope and technical virtuosity of Karen Perlman’s I Want to Make a Film about Women – but this was a tough decision.
Idol is an accomplished film, as much for its purity of concept as for its seamless realisation.
In one single 18-minute shot, after a brief setup in a slightly wider frame, the camera holds uncompromisingly tight on a close-up of a very young pretty boy Chinese popstar as he is excoriated, emotionally crushed and manipulated by his ruthless and domineering manager.
A teenage girl fan has suicided after learning that the singer has a girlfriend and, after starting out in a calm, almost maternal caring voice, the executive ratchets up the pressure, from cajoling to coercing to cruelly exerting total control over every aspect of the singer’s life, forcing him to choose between sacrificing his relationship and relinquishing his principles or giving up his career.
The constant slight reframing of the handheld camera gives an edgy quality to what is a perfect unity between camera eye and voice and the relentless, unflinching persecution of the singer by both.
A virtuoso emotional performance by the actor Kyle Chen complements the unforgiving execution of and by the camera.
The courage of conviction to stay with this extended long take, holding an actor ruthlessly in the grip of the lens, is reminiscent of the sustained interrogation of the silent face of a woman similarly skewered by an impossible choice in The Man from London, directed by long take director Béla Tarr, but in Tarr’s film the camera’s hold on the face is released after only five minutes. In Idol the actor rarely speaks, mostly sitting silent, tears streaming down his face, as the manager’s voice alternately manipulates, threatens and castigates him.
Curiously, in Idol the subtitles contribute to the way we are positioned as witnesses, both drawn into the position of the manager by the merciless camera boring into the boy through the lens, and as empathetic viewers, scanning his silent, grief-stricken face in the attempt to understand what is happening for him emotionally. In many films, subtitles can act as a distraction, the momentary interruption as the eyes read the words breaking into the immersive flow of camera movement and editing. For a non-Chinese-speaking viewer watching Idol, the subtitling here is an asset rather than a distraction, as this saccadic rhythm of flickering eye movements back and forward seems to perfectly match the unsteady handheld camera in constructing our ambivalent position as viewers, constantly searching the image to try to place ourselves somewhere between the vulnerability of the singer and the brutal tirade of the manager.
Just as the film opens with a brief phone conversation between the boy and his mother, it returns at the close to him seeking maternal solace, these bookends driving home the youth and powerlessness of the star losing his innocence in the harsh unethical realpolitik of the music industry.
This is a very polished short film by writer/director Alex Wu, a recent graduate from VCA in Melbourne; a filmmaker to look out for.
