This budget time-travelling romance boggles with sheer ingenuity

REVIEW: The confidence with which debut writer-director Cris Jones executes this creative highwire act suggests a talent to watch.

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF OTTO BLOOM

Three stars

Director Cris Jones

S tarring Xavier Samuel, Matilda Brown, Rachel Ward

Rating M

Running time 82 minutes

Verdict A time-travelling romance

A LOVE story that employs Einstein’s theory of relativity as a road map ... no one could accuse Cris Jones of playing it safe with this, his feature film debut.

The confidence with which the Melbourne writer-director executes this creative highwire act, on a budget of just $1.3 million, suggests a talent to watch.

Xavier Samuel is handsomely cast in the role of Otto Bloom, a mysterious character who experiences time in reverse.

The Life and Death of Otto Bloom employs Einstein’s theory of relativity as a road map.

But it’s the pairing of mother/daughter actors Rachel Ward and Matilda Brown — who play Ada, the love of Bloom’s life, at different stages in her life — that gives the faux-documentary its emotional core.

Xavier Samuel and Matilda Brown experience romance with a twist in Otto Bloom.

The layers Ward gives to what is essentially a talking head performance almost makes one regret her decision to spend more time behind the camera in recent years.

And the grainy, Super-8 home movie footage of Brown as the younger Ada seems especially poignant given both their shared DNA and the way actors age so publicly on screen.

David Fincher explored similar subject matter in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with more focus on prosthetics and make-up.

Denis Villeneuve’s alien sci-fi flick Arrival touched upon the heart of the matter.

The Death and Life of Otto Bloom stands alongside such Hollywood heavy-hitters on the basis of its sheer ingenuity.

Found footage, audio recordings, narrative ellipsis ... since he doesn’t have the money to visually transform his characters, Jones uses the conventions of the faux-documentary format to his advantage.

Matilda Brown and her mother, Rachel Ward, play the same character in the film. Picture: Suzy Wood

The title character’s art work adds another visual and narrative layer.

The metaphysical aspects of Bloom’s journey might be a little shaky — some of the “explanatory” flashbacks, for instance, which attempt to show his backwards perspective on time, are truly mind-boggling.

But the restraint and discipline with which Jones tells the extraordinary story allows his audience to suspend their disbelief right up until the very end.

The Death and Life of Otto Bloom screens at the Dendy Newtown from Thursday (March 16\ Cris Jones and Rachel Ward will attend a special Q & A screening tomorrow night (Monday)

Originally published as This budget time-travelling romance boggles with sheer ingenuity