Short Film Review Two

WASP

Wasp was written and directed by Andrea Arnold in 2003.

Reviewing Wasp

Wasp, a compelling story about a mother and her four children living in poverty was very extremely interesting to watch and the first thing that I realised was that every shot was hand held and this reflected the story as everything felt very unstable. The locations used such as a rough council estate and a pub car park also reflect that it is a low-income neighbourhood. The use of diegetic sound in Wasp is a factor that suggests it is a social realism film, as there is a scene outside the pub where the mum is dancing with her daughters to the song '5,6,7,8' and the song is playing from the pub rather than being added on in post production. This technique does give the film more more emotional depth.



How did Wasp impact my work?

The first way that Wasp majorly impacted my screenwriting was the way that the mum (Zoe) interacts with her five children throughout the film. She starts off by taking them outside to have a fight with one of their neighbours with dirty clothes on and uses bad language in front of her children, we then see a wide shot of her and her children holding up their middle fingers to the neighbour they are in the fight with. This instantly suggests that she does care for her children as she does not leave them at home however she does not care in the right way that a parent should. This constantly comes up throughout the film, there is another scene where she feeds them a bag of sugar for dinner, and then another near the end outside the pub where she gives the a bag of crisps for dinner and leaves them alone outside so that she can meet a romantic interest inside, however she is constantly checking on them out the window which suggests that she again does care but not enough until it's too late. This definitely inspired my screenplay as Tracy the mum in my screenplay does care for her daughter however her mind is on other things so she is not answering her daughter May. In Wasp Zoe replies to her children with replies to her children with throw away comments such as "shut up"and "alright" to most things that they say, this shows that she is not really listening and thinking about other things, therefore I used this in my own script and had many of Tracys replies as one word through away comments such as "what" and "okay". This made it seem that Tracy was there in body but not in mind.

It is clear in the film that Zoe is frustrated as she knows that she is not a great mother as we see a close up of her telling her four year old child "thats not fucking true are you thick" to then straight after saying "I'll get you a bowl of chips now last one to the bottom of the hill is a plonker." She takes her daughters hand and runs down the hill. This quick flip in attitude is something that I also used in my screenplay as one minute Tracy is ignoring May and not looking at her and then ten minutes later she is hugging her telling her she can have a Mcdonalds, so I definitely took inspiration from Arnolds character Zoe for my main character May.

Finally Wasp inspired me with some of Mays personality. Zoes oldest daughter Kelly is 10 years old and seems very mature, one minute she is singing 'wheels on the bus' with her younger sisters in a wide shot and the next she is asking her mum "are you gonna have sex?" which portrays how mature she is for a 10 year old and this left a large impact on me. This influenced me to create similar traits in May, I show her mischievous side by having her pretend to fall over, then I show her infantile side by having her continuously ask her mum for an ice cream with sprinkles, finally I show her mature side like Kelly by having her tell her mum she will be a teacher as she is good at telling people what to do. I have clearly taken a lot of inspiration from Wasp as there are lots of parallels between it and my screenplay from camera angles to character traits and dialogue.