|
|
|
|
SYNOPSIS |
|||
Essex Dogs is essentially a two hander, a psychological mind game between two men. One is Corbis, a working class motor mouth seemingly an authority on anything you would care to mention, but with an underlying vulnerability and traumas under his confident façade. The second is Richmond, dark, sinister, a man addicted to the art of encryption and wealthy due to the rewards the underworld is prepared to pay to someone with such talents. They’re not colleagues, they’re not friends, they’ve never even met, but at 2 o’clock in the morning of a Friday night Corbis arrives at Richmond’s house. Why does Richmond even let him in? It might have something to do with the heavy black case Corbis is carrying. It might have something to do with the fact that the Police have cordoned off the entirety of Southend. It might have something to do with a man who died in the back of a minicab earlier that evening. It might even have something to do with his final words to the dishevelled cabbie as he clutched the heavy black case chained to his wrist: “One hundred million”. Corbis starts the film relating the story of the case’s first appearance in the minicab to the brooding Richmond. His motive being to establish the case’s worth through a series of flashbacks. There is another series of flashbacks in Corbis’ mind though that Richmond is not party to, these involve a third games player Colette. One who inspires an addiction equal to Richmond’s. Sociable, enigmatic and beautiful, she is the woman Corbis loves. She is also Richmond’s wife and by proving the value of the case he intends to exchange her for it. Unbeknown to Corbis, Richmond is more that aware of his affection for Colette. His possessive domination of her is matched only by her psychological cruelty to him. She doesn’t just have numerous extra marital encounters she records each and presents them to him. Laughing perhaps at his ineffectuality or maybe forcing his rejection and her release. Money is not enough to do that but perhaps to a master addicted to encryption the lure of a puzzle that can’t be solved can and that is precisely what has just dropped into Corbis’ lap, an unopenable case, with the promise of riches within. These then are the central players and their motives. The entire film takes place over one evening or rather night through the mouth and reality of Corbis. It follows the case from the hands of the dying fat man, to the downtrodden cabbie, Shorty, who sees it as something that has given him the confidence to free himself from his estranged wife’s bullying into the arms of an unnaturally tall prostitute who is the only person he has ever loved; a feeling reciprocated. In the eyes of the lover the loved defining beauty. It tracks Corbis’ complex character’s accidental killing of Shorty, his imagination crossing the lines of reality. It follows him as he escapes Police bound Southend into the nightmare world of Richmond, pursued by men in silver suits and frummers in the middle of the night. It all must mean something, but are both combatants making rather too many assumptions as they move towards understanding and striking a deal?
|
|||
| SCRIPT CRITIQUE (pdf) | |||
| BACK | |||
|
|||
