Bonobo

I saw 'Bonobo' at the 2018 Melbourne International Film Festival and thought it a cleverly interwoven story of intersecting lives, all influenced by the spasmodic behaviour of the elevator. It was all the more impressive on a second viewing. It winds up the audience with all the frustrations of modern life: bureaucrats who don't listen, companies with no service, social injustice. It's a universal slice of life in 2018 we all can recognise.

One advantage of making a short film is you only need to present an incident or an idea well. Things like keeping an intact plot, narrative structure and character development... well, let those making feature films to worry about! No such problem for Bonobo, which is totally satisfactory on all layers and brilliantly realised in a short film format.

Three characters with no relations to each other but connected through their residency in the same housing estate, have their lives changed because of an elevator. The film brutally depicts the urban decay of our modern society and the multitude of social predicaments arises.

Bonobo presents a look into the issue of living together. We see people who are brought together by necessity, as a result of the urban life. The events that cause the rising tension of these people have been depicted in a realistic language. This realistic language draws us into the film, and also makes us think about the topic of living together.

What happens when you live in the hood, in a high-rise block, and your elevator strikes? It happens nothing. No one cares. No money, no elevator. This thrilling short film portrays three residents of the high-rise block as they struggle in different ways with the damaged elevator and as they are left alone by the persons responsible and the society itself. In the disturbing finale of the film, the elevator leads to more problems and struggles and the viewer is left with the question: what would have been happened if society were fair? BONOBO is a well-composed, fast and fascinating short film that raises issues.

Reading the gushing reviews on IMDb, I must admit I do feel a certain pressure to adore this film in the way others seem to have done. I do not love it as much, but I certainly enjoyed what it did with its trio of socially-aware narratives, and how well it fused them together around a system failure to then demonstrate the pressures and entrapment on the individuals. This it does very well. In terms of the individual narratives, I didn't think any one of them really broke out of the specifics of their scenario, which is to say that I found them to be their scene rather than people. However, despite this, the film makes them work well, because ultimately the viewer is caught up in the pressure that is on them, and it carried me along with it as it seemed to increase its pace and tension in time with the musical score which plays unobtrusively in the back.

The locations and performances are well delivered, and the social message resonates because of how it draws the viewer into the pressure and the feeling of being trapped by situations that simply having more money and more access would solve. I had some reservations with some of its simplicity, but it more than compensates for these to make a strong whole.