That Sunday
★★
Directed by: #PrabhakarPant
Starring: #PayalSingh, #DipeshShah, #RohitPathak, #AmaanShah, #AkshatPrabhakarPant
Film Review by: Alexandra James
That Sunday
That Sunday is a short film portraying the life of a housewife caring for her sick husband and young child alone. The story is filled with lies and deceit, as the husband discovers a tape which shows his wife being brutally raped and attacked by her new boss. Questions run through the husbands mind until he decides to confront his wife for holding onto this secret. However, all is not as it seems as his wife holds onto an even darker secret which could destroy the very core of their family unit.
The opening to the shot is of the husband watching cartoons and being reprimanded by his own child to tidy their home. He is illustrated as a weak character, and the audience later discover that the father is quite ill, meaning the wife takes care of everything within the home and financially. The sound which played in the background was exceptionally exaggerated and didn’t seem to match with the tone of the film, especially when dealing with such a heavy subject. It may have made more of an impact if this sound was removed or toned down, mainly due to the fact that it made the short film a little comical in places. Some of the background sound included echoes of birds cawing but the scene was filmed indoors, this did not really make a lot of sense. However, what worked well was the excellent camera work throughout combined with the smooth transitions, this could not be faulted.
The husband begins to tidy the flat and discovers a video, taped to the back of the vent. Here the story takes a dark turn and the audience just witness the horror upon the husbands face as the tape plays out and the story begins to unfold. The hurt and pain of the husband was clearly portrayed through just facial expressions and this made it a difficult scene to watch. As his wife returns, he confronts her. Questioning why she held onto such a dark and awful secret for so long, and why she never contacted the police. Anger, confusion, pain and trauma fill the scene. However, what the wife does not reveal is that this was all a plot of her own making.
I feel as though this is where the story deteriorated slightly, and became hard to follow and understand the entirety of its concept. The attack between the wife and her new boss was fake, a staged and elaborate plan. She desperately wanted a way out from having her husband’s child and did not want the child to succumb the same illness as the father. This is quite a touchy subject, and could have been handled a lot better. The story could have gone down a different path or even left the story as it was before revealing that it was all staged. The storyline would have been far more gripping if they did not have this ending, as well as the cliff hanger at the end could have been abandoned as this was extremely clichéd.
