By: debbie lynn elias
A man. A corporate conglomerate. A suspicious probing executive. A little girl. An angry wife. A blank slate for an office. A blank slate for an apartment. Surveillance. Video cameras. GPS tracking devices. Windows everywhere. Eyes of the world watching everyone and everything. This is SHADOWPLAY. Written and directed by Ed Osghian, SHADOWPLAY makes its Los Angeles debut at Dances with Films 2013. SHADOWPLAY reels you in and makes you stop, look, listen and think.
David is your average guy. Divorced, or at a minimum separated from a very unforgiving and resentful wife, he is father to a beautiful little girl who loves her daddy to the moon and back. His love for her is equally as great. Time spent with her is idyllic. But then David returns to his apartment. With the barest of furnishings there is nary a picture or knick knack in site. By day, he heads up a highly classified research and development team at E-Global in a glass tower overlooking the world. Like his home, his office is bare. Not even a picture of his beloved daughter.
Overseeing David is company VP Grey. A tough, no nonsense woman who has her own agenda and her own suspicions about David; suspicions that prompt her to have him tailed 24/7 with every nook and cranny of his life surreptitiously investigated. Everything comes up blank. Clean as a whistle. Too clean, perhaps. But Grey isn’t convinced that cleanliness is next to godliness. Keep on him. Follow him. Stop him. But stop him from what?
At first frame, SHADOWPLAY is crisp, sharp, hard, polished. I am in love with Michael Balfry’s cinematography. Angular POV and denatured lighting and tone capture the sharp edges and icy cold steel of the corporate dynamic that in and of itself creates tension, excitement and unrest as to what evil deeds are going on behind the myriad of windows; what evil lurks beneath that which we see. Starting with the visual of the windowed steel building, director Osghian sets the stage, likening things to being viewed under a microscope. Then toss in surveillance cameras, computers and an actual tail on David and the intensity ramps up exponentially with everything and everyone seeming to be under a microscope. Setting the film in winter adds an icy edge to the proceedings.
Character development is quick but effectively solid. David Lewis is ideal as David. An average Joe with a youthful earnest yet boyish look, through visuals alone, we see that David is divorced or at a minimum separated and that it is a contentious situation. Thanks to a sweet scene on the park bench by the lake, we learn David is a devoted dad whose daughter loves him very much. Knowing that VP Grey’s “henchman” Sloan is lurking in the bushes, draws the audience in like a fly on the wall, also hiding in the bushes, seeing something very private, very personal and not for the eyes of the world. Again, this amps up the tension and “thriller” aspect raising the question and expectation of “what’s coming next?”
Through Ingrid Torrance’s dynamic and chilling performance as Grey, the audience follows her lead with suspicion and guilt, but then Kurt Max Runte’s Sloan seamlessly tosses a wrinkle in the mix, questioning Torrance’s adamance and conviction of David’s guilt at something. Surprising is that all of this happens in a matter of minutes on screen, but Osghian is so adept at his storytelling and Ozan Biron so skillful in his editing, that tension ratchets up almost immediately but we feel the passage of time and the depth of investigate and intrigue.
Visual tone continues throughout SHADOWPLAY with a beautiful contrast between David’s corporate world and that of he and his daughter. The former, cold and icy. The latter, warm and colorful even on a cold winter’s day.
Specific subtle and nuanced elements of production design in a train station sequence with the yellow signage that says “ROGUE” on it propels the suspense farther. Is David “rogue”? Has Sloan “gone rogue” on Grey? Yellow = Caution + ROGUE = fantastic subtlety. Shortly thereafter we see bright red blood on Grey’s pale icy fingers and white/grey color palette – nothing says “blood on your hands” like blood on the hands.
And just when you think Osghian is done, he zings us with yet another twist. A foreshadowing of excellence – SHADOWPLAY.
Written and Directed by Ed Osghian.
Cast: David Lewis, Ingrid Torrance, Kurt Max Runte
