Lay Me by the Shore

With most of the class celebrating on the beach after their final examinations, "Noah" (Isla Pouliot) seems distracted. For some of the time his is playful enough with his girlfriend (Kai Smith) but every now and again he seems to find himself in one of Churchill's black fogs. Nobody seems to be able to reach him when he hits these lows, and usually he is just left to cycle off into the distance and calm himself down. Towards the end of this film, we see the purpose of the letter he has been writing and his behaviour starts to make more sense, but just what did happen and can he find the closure he needs to be able to get on with the rest of his life? This is a curiously empty film to watch. Clearly emotions are running very high for "Noah" but we aren't really read into the cause of his predicament and at times I found that sufficiently exasperating to begin not to care. When you've only got eighteen minutes to tell a story, then a quick does of context usually helps to put and keep the characters in some sort of perspective. Here, I did wonder if the thrust of this was that "Noah" suffered from some form of schizophrenia, or perhaps that he had had a clandestine relationship with one of his male friends? The end does clear things up to a degree, but by then it was a little to late. Smith turns in quite a personable effort, though and it is quite neatly photgraphed.