Film Reviews:

Flo Rounds A Corner

(Ken Jacobs, US, 1999)

I caught this as part of a "Ken Jacobs Masterclass on Failure" as part of last year's (2003) London Film Festival. Flo… runs for approximately 6 minutes and consists of a woman walking around a street corner in very slow motion. It's an art-house thing, an exercise in experimentation.

Shot on digital, this isn't actually as gruelling as it sounds. Mainly because what Jacobs is experimenting with is the perception of movement and how working with digital equipment easily lets the director play with that. So, you have Flo jittering within an otherwise still image; or you have a guy on a motorbike suddenly appearing around the oncoming bend and juddering past, almost ghostlike.

The result is never much more than what it literally is and is unlikely to appear as a support feature at your next visit to your local multiplex. However, if some of the moments from this were suddenly dropped into a conventional film then the effect could be quite startling.

Rob Dyer