Art

It’s difficult to describe Jesper Just’s short films without digging into the depths of cinematic history. Just seems to have taken obscure elements of notable classics – from Ingmar Bergman to Hammer horror – and boiled them down to joyfully surreal dream sequences. Comparisons alone don’t do his films justice. They have a distinct style of their own, marked by clever editing, effective soundtracks and a rich atmosphere. The poetic ‘Some Draughty Window’ features an old man floating weightlessly through a futuristic washroom interspersed with stunning close-ups of his eyes, set to the sounds of a theremin and rustling leaves. Suppressed sexual tension marks ‘A Vicious Undertow’ starring Danish actress Benedikte Hansen sitting in a chair in an empty bar seductively stroking the armrest while whistling ‘Nights in White Satin’. It all goes a bit ‘Vertigo’ when we see her climbing a spiral staircase on the outside of a tall building.

Hansen also moonlights in ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (a nice pun on the feminist classic, but here not referring to intellectual pondering but sexual day-dreaming) and the Bergman-esque ‘A Voyage of Dwelling’ in which she wades gracefully along the shores of an idyllic island, entering an empty house which then turns into the interior of a ship. ‘A Question of Silence’ features a ventriloquist dummy miming Baby Dee’s ‘Morning Holds a Star’ during which one of Hansen’s legs falls off – amusingly macabre, but only if ‘Chucky’ is your kind of thing. What any of this means remains a mystery, but as with a good David Lynch film, eventually you stop wondering and give in to the bold weirdness.