Film review

Sam Baron (2021)

Big Ears and Tall Dark and Handsome (2023) are the two shorts featuring Amit Shah that I was keen to see after watching writer-director Sam Baron’s The Orgy (2018), in which Shah also plays the lead.  Neither is as fully successful as the earlier film but both are well worth viewing on YouTube.

IMDb categorises Big Ears as comedy-drama and Tall Dark and Handsome, like The Orgy, as comedy.  That’s definitely the right label for The Orgy but I’d term Tall Dark and Handsome a comedy-drama; as for Big Ears, there are bleakly funny moments in the course of its thirteen minutes but the story really is far too sad to make you smile.  Amit Shah plays Kaan, a struggling actor currently working in a health foods store.  He carries a torch for Zoe (Amy Green), his colleague there.  It seems they’ve been out together but Kaan is tongue-tied in Zoe’s company and she’s now seeing someone called Pete.  Zoe arrives late for her shift with Kaan and presents him with a cuddly toy that she got at the fair she’s been to with Pete; like Kaan, the toy has big eyes and even bigger ears.  Shortly after receiving dismaying medical news on the phone, Kaan, who lives alone, gets a text from his friend and fellow actor Matt (Mark Weinman), who calls round next day.  Matt gloomily confesses that he got some bad news the day before; Kaan says same here but insists that Matt go first with the gory details.  Matt gloomily explains that he was on the short list for a lead role in an American TV series.  He learned yesterday that … he’d got the part (he was acting crestfallen)!  Kaan’s bad news is testicular cancer, which may already have spread.  Matt is shocked and sympathetic but his mobile keeps pinging; Kaan’s only contact is from his agent telling him his latest audition has resulted in another rejection.  The role was a cancer sufferer but his agent tells Kaan he wasn’t believable as a lead in what was a love story – ‘Probably my big ears’.  While Matt’s taking another call, Kaan eyeballs the cuddly toy.  He then gets angry with Matt and tells him to leave.  Kaan marches round to the health foods store to tell Zoe, to her amazement, that he loves her and why, although ‘I know,’ he admits, ‘my ears are too big’.  ‘I’ve always liked your ears,’ she says sadly, in the film’s closing line.

Big Ears is very neatly constructed.  That’s surely a virtue in a short yet the neatness feels wrong for the portrait of a man whose life is in every sense disintegrating.  The actors are fine, though (it’s a three-hander, save for the momentary appearance of Calvin Dean as the colleague Zoe’s working with when Kaan arrives with his surprise announcement).  Amit Shah’s vulnerable, Bambi-like quality makes him almost too well cast as the protagonist but he’s very affecting – and marvellous at suppressing-expressing Kaan’s feelings.  Shah gets strong support from radiantly natural Amy Green and from Mark Weinman, though the latter is on the receiving end of one of Sam Baron’s rare bits of shaky dialogue.  The details of Matt’s zero-to-hero HBO role are OTT:  he tells Kaan it’s a contract for six series of the drama, in which he’ll be playing Meryl Streep’s son.  Although this elicits splendid reactions from Amit Shah, you half expect Matt’s extravagant claims to be revealed to be a put-on just like his bad-news act.  The dovetailing aspect of Big Ears does pay off poignantly at the very end.  What beleaguered Kaan had decided was the main obstacle to a relationship with Zoe turns out to be a problem that he imagined, unlike his other problems.

It’s a relief to see Amit Shah romantically sitting pretty at the start of Tall Dark and Handsome:  his character, Varun, and his girlfriend Ellie (Laura Aikman) live and are expecting a baby together:  Ellie’s five months pregnant.  Varun is pleased but surprised when she suggests giving the baby an Indian name, though what will Ellie’s parents think?  It’s not up to them, she replies.  The words are hardly out of her mouth when Ellie calls out to a man jogging in the park where she and Varun are walking.  This is Kiran (Sagar Radia), Ellie’s ex-boyfriend.   It’s a chance, brief but pivotal meeting.  When Ellie mentioned this ex previously, Varun thought she was talking about ‘Ciaran’ and he’s instantly disconcerted that Ellie has had another Indian boyfriend.  By the time she admits, under his anxious interrogation, that she’s had relationships with four Indians before him, Varun’s insecurity is running riot.  In the closing scene, which takes place a while after their daughter’s birth, Varun arrives at Ellie’s home, which she’s now sharing with a new man, to collect their baby girl for whatever time Varun is allowed to spend with her.

Sam Baron again wrote the screenplay but this time Amit Shah shares the ‘story’ credit.  Tall Dark and Handsome has a potentially strong premise and its comic aspect plays out very successfully.  Some of the comedy, like the double entendres into which Varun’s obsession turns Indian culinary phrases, is quite basic but no less funny for that.  (Varun and Ellie discuss what kind of takeaway to order, she says, ‘I really fancy an Indian’ and he’s aghast; his parents (Shobu Kapoor and Bhasker Patel) come round for dinner, Ellie tells Varun’s mother ‘I love a bit of spice’ and he’s horrified.)  Later that night, he keeps pushing for reassurance from Ellie.  She can’t see how it matters if she tends to fancy Indian men since she fancies and loves Varun.  He insists, ‘It’s racist!’  Amusing as Varun’s hang-up is, though, it’s too obviously a means of making things happen in the film, and it possesses him too soon.  Immediately after Ellie bumps into Kiran, Varun is googling ‘racial fetish’ and looking at online images of Indian men more physically impressive than he is.  Yet there’s nothing  else in Ellie’s behaviour to reinforce his suspicion.

In the argument between them after the evening with his parents, Ellie asks how many blonde white girlfriends Varun had before her, and the answer is one.  Trying to defend herself, Ellie protests that she’s had relationships with men from different ethnic groups (two Brazilians, a Scot, and so on).  She admits that her tastes may be a reaction against the xenophobic rural home she grew up in – an expression of determination not to turn into her parents.  Varun still isn’t satisfied and the exchange ends with exasperated Ellie asking him, ‘Are you sure you don’t wish you’d ended up with an Indian girl?’  He doesn’t answer before Baron cuts to a scene of them spending Christmas with Ellie’s family.  The couple’s gift to Ellie’s mother (Emma Burdon-Sutton) is an Indian dress; Ellie’s parents’ present for Varun is an air rifle – ‘so you can join us on a shoot’, says her father (Andrew Woodall).  His wife confides to Varun, ‘You never forget your first grouse’.  This is another funny sequence but it feels like a distraction.  Baron then moves straight on to the final scene, when Varun and Ellie are no longer together and she’s with a new, white bloke (Gwilym Lee).  After being introduced to him, Varun tells Ellie, ‘He seems perfect for you’.  ‘So were you,’ she wearily replies.  This bluntly unhappy ending, though strong, leaves you all the more frustrated that the film has used Varun’s paranoia as a device, without exploring it.

Sam Baron might reasonably say he just didn’t have time to do that – and it’s true the shortcomings of Tall Dark and Handsome are ones hard to avoid in a film that runs less than fifteen minutes.  Its strengths are the strengths of all three Baron shorts that I’ve seen in recent days – clever construction, sharp dialogue, excellent acting.  Laura Aikman gets across beautifully Ellie’s increasingly exhausted bafflement with Varun.  In the supporting cast, Gwilym Lee is (as usual) right on target and stands out.  Amit Shah, terrific again here, gets lots of TV work, usually in supporting parts (he recently received a BAFTA Supporting Actor nomination for his work in the last series of Happy Valley).  According to his IMDb entry, Sam Baron has only directed shorts to date.  The cumulative effect of The Orgy, Big Ears and Tall Dark and Handsome is to make you want to see both the writer-director and the lead actor get a chance to use their talents in more extended screen drama – you feel sure they’ve both lots more to show.  For the time being, I can’t overstate how much I’ve enjoyed watching their three collaborations.

15 April 2024