ON THE LINE BY SILVIA DE LEONARDIS
Directed by Silvia De Leonardis/ Reviewed by Riya Saha
ON THE LINE is a Short Film directed by Munich based director Silvia de Leonardis. In this award-winning 23-minute film the director portrayed the culture’s and social attitude towards common human life. This film serves a great message, which the audience can relate to.
The film is set on the background of mourning where, after the death of her husband 15 years ago, Caroline Nowak started drinking to ease her pain and loneliness. Having left her ten year old son Raphael emotionally alone resulted in him looking for ways to cope with his pain and anger.
Unnoticed by his mother, a burgeoning path into the world of drugs only made the two drift further apart emotionally.
Things get worse when Rapha (25) moves in his mother's apartment after breaking up with his girlfriend. Caroline unable to express her love, tries to act like a mother only resulting in Raphael becoming increasingly angry with her.
At Caroline´s brother´s birthday, she catches Rapha using Cocain and tries unsuccessfully to convince him to go get therapy. The situation is becoming critical when Raphael lies and steals from his mother.
Touching on themes of loneliness, broken hearts, addiction, and relationships, “On the Line” shows the paths that lead to pain if you are unable to get help and take responsibility for one's actions.
This film is about a mother and a son, both suffering about the loss of their beloved husband or father. They are easing their pain in different ways and are captured in isolation and a hard heart.
Films on addiction and it's consequences not only makes people understand the real picture and co-relate them with their personal life but in actual they can become aware and save themselves if necessary.
Whether it's on the line where you get to see the pain of the mother and her child or any other creative depiction of pain, I believe you get to learn something new.
As for the actors, amongst the most important difficult roles to play are being an alcoholic along with sad roles.
You can get real acting only when you feel the difficulty by placing you in that scenario. While watching the movie for not a single second I felt diverted or there was distortion in their acting.
It was all real acting with real pain. Love can make people do anything. It can actually help you grow or destroy yourself. The love for her husband made Catherine become an alcoholic and her son a drug addict? But don't we think Catherine could have handled pain in a different way?
Yes, she could have. But she chose a path which has a negative impact. Silvia de Leonardis could successfully touch the hearts of people with her film and in the coming years she may entertain all the audiences with more emotional and challenging films.
I felt the film was well shot and if you see through creative perspective surely the film has a fine mix of good acting, great cinematography, a well written script, fine tones and background music.
Surely a must watch film.
