East of Kensington

Not the familiar version of Peter Pan but a useful, for reflection, remind of small details resulted after the clash between reality and special reality. From painful experiences to intense nostalgia. From fall to a lost world.

A mature Michael Darling.

A Peter Pan decides to do his duty.

And the clash reveling the borders between them. Well acted, it is , in essence, a precise crafted question to viewer about imposible old refuges and the bitterness of life , about illusions as frontier and the sad truth of a profound too late.

In some measure, a very profound message. With more than inspired end.

The film starts out on familiar territory – Peter Pan with his Lost Boys in Neverland playing their games and having fun. Peter decides he will go to bring Wendy back to give his boys a mother figure but, when he arrives back in London, an encounter with an adult makes him face the bigger picture of the life he lives with others.

The idea behind the short film is reasonably simple and can be arrived at if you have a cynical edge to the basic details of who Peter is and what the rules of his world would mean to real people. This is not arrived at instantly but is developed very nicely across the film so that we come to understand the stranger and ultimately feel for him, which is the journey that Peter is on too. It is nicely dark and I liked very much that it did it in a realistic manner while still keeping in connection with the character and the world so that it never felt like an overly modern take but rather just a truth that hadn't been said before. The direction keeps close to the action in atmospheric sets, with good performances from Griffo, Winters and Smith; they convince and bring out the darkness well.

Overall this is an engagingly dark film that doesn't ever stretch to make it that way. It is a twisted view on a famous story but it is one that rings true and plays the tragic aspect out really well.