The Wide World of Shorts: Wasp (2003, dir. by Andrea Arnold, UK)
by Matt Olsen
For the final installment in this series highlighting/recommending short films I’ve seen and enjoyed, I’ve selected another relatively widely known short, Andrea Arnold’s Academy Award-winning, Wasp. My original thesis was that short films exist separately from what is generally considered “movies” because they can take a much broader variety of form. The first several selections were examples of this; experiments, monologues, goofs, et al. Black Girl and The Adventure, on the other hand, were complete stories told using typical filmic techniques and constructs. Wasp is an example of a different but still common form for shorts: the character study. Centered around one lead and never leaving the immediacy of her world, Wasp exists as its own complete piece but could also easily be an excised segment from a feature film.
Andrea Arnold followed this 2003 short with four features that cemented her status as one of this era’s more interesting and accomplished filmmakers: Red Road, Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights, and American Honey. Any one of these are well worth seeing but I especially recommend the thrillingly discomfiting Fish Tank. There is a common thread throughout her work that might be dismissed as bleakness. To which, I’d argue, “so what?” Hard times are certainly present to some degree in the vast majority of people’s lives and absolutely as worthy of exploration as cops and robbers.
If that didn’t make clear the tone of Wasp, then, yes, it’s sort of a downer. The action takes place entirely in and around a Council Estate. By itself, it doesn’t look existentially dismal. There’s plenty of green, open space and no obvious signs of depredation but it’s also completely devoid of any landmarks or discernible signs of enthusiasm. It’s a lifeless space on a bright, sunny day onto which explodes the main character, Zoë, played with a hoarse intensity by the excellent Natalie Press. Zoë is in her twenties, unemployed, broke, and a single mother of four children, the youngest of whom is only an infant. She bursts out of her home at 100%, barefoot in a nightgown, pants-less baby on her hip, and making an angry beeline across the field toward a fight. Her three primary-school age daughters trail alongside and shout epithets at the neighboring mother who is the target of Zoë’s rage. Within only a few minutes, all the necessary exposition is done. The audience has a clear, if not comprehensive, view of this character.
Zöe is defiantly not a hero. She’s wildly irresponsible and an aggressively “bad mother” by any standard. The film doesn’t ever make any overt attempt to redeem her. She dips a dirty pacifier in sugar to appease a crying baby, routinely lies to her children, and unreservedly puts her own needs/desires first. “And, yet…” Somehow, in spite of everything, the film evinces compassion for Zoë. Though the audience isn’t given anything resembling an origin story for her, there are enough general assumptions that can be made to place her in a context of still being a human. Which means she can be forgiven for her flaws. Though it’s an UPHILL CLIMB.
Lastly, it would be a huge omission to not mention the children. This is simply some of the best, most naturalistic and grounded acting I’ve seen from kids in any film. There is an indomitable optimism and light in them that defies their miserable situation. Watching these single-digit year old sisters care for each other in the absence of their mother is the kind of heartbreaking sweetness that can pierce the most cynicism-hardened armor. I know this from experience.
I have to admit to an inexplicable attraction to this general setting in films. There’s something about stories of the poverty-adjacent to working classes of the UK that are endlessly compelling to me. To my weird fortune, there are dozens of films to choose from in this genre. Ken Loach has made (and continues to make) several of the best including Ladybird, Ladybird, Riff Raff, and Kes. Others that I would herald are Rocks (2019), All or Nothing (2008), The Arbor (2010), The Selfish Giant (2013), Ratcatcher (1999), and even comedies like That Sinking Feeling (1979). Why not have a bad time every once in a while?
Matt Olsen is a largely unemployed part-time writer and even more part-time commercial actor living once again in Seattle after escaping from Los Angeles like Kurt Russell in that movie about the guy who escapes from Los Angeles.