The Most Beautiful Man in the World
Live-action drama, UK, 2002
Director: Alicia Duffy
Writer: Alicia Duffy
Language: English
Colour:Colour
Runtime: 5 minutes
Short synopsis
This film examines an encounter between a young girl and a man. As the small girl searches for something to do on a hot day, she meets a stranger. It may be a sexual awakening for the girl or an encounter of a potentially more sinister nature.
Long synopsis
This film is deliberately ambiguous. It begins with a close-up of a little girl. Images of her yawning, lying next to her dog on the floor, watching TV, fade in and out as though to the rhythm of a slow heart beat. The noise of the television that the girl is watching is muted. When the telephone rings, someone - probably her mother - walks out of the room to answer it and talks in a hushed voice. The girl gets up slowly and looks out of the window. The drowsy day is bathed in yellow sunlight.
The girl rides her bike outside. Behind her house are large fields and a flyover. The sound of thunder can be heard in the distance, adding to the sultry atmosphere of the summer day. The girl, now behind the fence of her house, looks longingly across the fields. Edging along the fence, she walks - first tentatively, then quickly - into the fields, running her hands through the long grass. As she plays with a stick in a patch of water - the scene is shot from the perspective of the water - she notices something and turns. There is a man, shirtless and tanned, playing with her dog.
The only spoken dialogue in the film comes from the girl as she tells him, "that's my dog" and smiles at him shyly. He looks at her silently with the hint of a smile, carefully removes a black beetle from her shoulder and hands it to her. His movements are slow and purposeful, and she smiles at him. He bows down to her eye level and they smile openly at one another. A long shot of the two standing in the field cuts from the man's face to a close-up of the mother's face looking out for the girl. As the girl looks back at the man, he turns away and she runs home. The mother bangs the door shut behind the girl and walks away without a word. While the man remains in the field, the girl sits inside on a staircase - no sound can be heard. She looks at the camera intently and then turns her head, looking very serious.
After the credits, the last scene of the film shows the face of the girl lit by the television screen. A man's voice mixes with that of children shouting excitedly, while the girl looks on longingly.
Background information
About the film
The Most Beautiful Man in the World was originally commissioned as part of The Short Channel, a project funded by the UK Film Council and France's national film body CNC, which paired up a young British director and a young French director to make two films from the same script, to contrast approaches of British and French film-makers. Duffy's version, which is semi-autobiographical, follows a girl's encounter with a mystery stranger. The French version L'homme le plus beau au monde was directed by Alix Barbey.
Duffy has delivered a delicate, dreamlike film, full of light and warmth, about a simple moment of human contact. Only five minutes long, and with almost no dialogue, it has a powerfully resonant charge. Duffy believes that short films should be seen as a valid, vital form in themselves, and not just as a calling card for would-be feature film-makers. "With short films, you have to tell quite big things with tiny gestures," says Duffy. "But small moments collectively can add up to something greater."
The film has earned several nominations and won several awards including:
- BAFTA nomination - Best Short Film 2003;
- Official Selection - Cannes Film Festival 2003;
- First Prize - Turner Classic Movies;
- Short Film Prize - London Film Festival 2003.
About the film-maker
Alicia Duffy has lived in and around the South-East of England all her life. Between the ages of nine and 22 she trained as a classical singer, but couldn't quite bring herself to sign up for music school. "I decided to read Maths and History of Art at Cambridge. I started directing productions that involved music and theatre and ended up singing on a soundtrack for someone's film. I suddenly realised it was far more interesting to make the story yourself." In 1997, Duffy won a place at the National Film and Television School. Her graduation film Crow Stone won numerous festival awards. She is currently writing on a script for her first feature film.
The best thing, Duffy says, is meeting other film-makers. "I feel a real affinity with female directors like Claire Denis, Carine Adler and Lynne Ramsay - all women making sensual but humanistic and quite pantheistic films." A tough critic, Duffy says, "I like imagining films rather than actually seeing them, because they're so often a disappointment." One she does recommend is Victor Erice's 1973 Spanish Civil War masterpiece, Spirit of the Beehive. "I tell everyone to see it. I mainly return to films that make me feel things."
Teaching materials and additional materials
The teaching materials have been developed by practising teachers to provide a springboard for your own work with your students. Feel free to use and adapt them appropriate to your students' needs.
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