Stepping Out

Saxon Logan, the director of the odd British horror film Sleepwalker (1984) made his directorial debut here. It is a short film shot over the course of one day on 16mm. In it we watch a young couple get ready for the working day, as they progress through their routine their dress and makeup reveal unexpected gender roles. It is a very minimalistic bit of work, too short to qualify as a drama. It's really about the presentation of non-straight sexuality in a matter-of-fact way. Which it certainly achieves with its humdrum presentation, depicting people who would have been considered abnormal by some people at the time in a mundane manner which emphasises their normality. It's a mood piece with a message, with a delicate piano accompaniment on the soundtrack capturing the feel. Like most films of comparable length, it is pretty limited though, as there simply is not enough time for it to do much more than capture a tone. Still, it achieves what it sets out to do nevertheless. It opened for Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976) when it played in UK theatres, a movie which also featured a transvestite in a lead role, albeit in a manner that played up the sinister element and offered a somewhat contrasting image of cross-dressers to this one!