The Only Person in the World

(Ben Chessell, Australia, 2001)

The Only Person in the World, a thirteen-minute short, is a jazzy, ironic vignette of love gone wrong, written and directed by Ben Chessell under the auspices of the film-training department of Victorian College of the Arts.

Many shorts, especially those from Australian film schools, overreach themselves in striving to be either a condensed feature narrative, or a blazing, virtuosic compendium of every cinematic trick in the book.

Chessell plays with a range of standard, show-off devices, like changing location mid-sentence and inserting outlandish mental images, but he never loses control of the story's light, ironic tone.

Best of all, the virtues of The Only Person in the World are cinematic, rather than literary or theatrical. The lines are witty enough, but the grabs of music, weaving in and out of the fiction, are much funnier.

Certainly, the actors could have been, in some cases, better cast or directed, but in the lead role Hamish Michael has an appealing, hang-dog personality that holds all of the pieces together.

© Adrian Martin June 2002