Short films at Festival Central (6) - Friend Request Pending (2011)

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3 December

* Contains spoilers *

Director : Chris Foggin ; Writer / Producer : Chris Croucher

Friend Request Pending (2011) – the clue is in the title – brought together two of my least favourite things about life, Judi Dench’s acting and Arsebook, the former through too much exposure to dire situation comedies (which, for me, have also wasted the talents of Zoë Wanamaker, Geoffrey Palmer and Robert Lindsay), the latter on account of the tales of bad experiences from those known to me, which make sound anything that happens on Pratter / Splatter benign.

(I know that one should divorce oneself from such influences, but I didn’t, although I have somehow managed to shut off the Dench detectors for the latest Bond films.)

The premise, then, was not one that appealed: that I was to witness Dame Judi (ably assisted by Penny Rider*) employing her rudimentary keyboard skills in seeking to be a friend on Arsebook with a man whom she had just met, and Penny’s and her ideas of dating and of chatting him up on instant messaging (that all sounded a bit drunkenly implausible – not that they should have been drunk, but gravitating to a cocktail bar, where, one must infer, they must have managed to swap quite a means or two of contact** for her to be doing this messaging).

I grant you, translate the things of youth to someone of Victor Meldrew’s age, and the hilarity and japes in him getting it all wrong are an endless mirth factory. We are not in dissimilar territory here, for me, and it was where two noisy older women in the audience became raucuous, as if given permission, when Tim Healy (as the sergeant in Man in Fear (2011) had not.

What can I say, save that the ending had a J. R. Hartley quality to it, or of one of those good old British Telecom adverts (before they became BT, and more hard nosed), of warm, homely good-feeling? No, it couldn’t have preceded anything else in the bill of fare, and, yes, I did phase out a little, though all credit to Chris Croucher, who reported how he had pounced on Chris Foggin when the latter had let slip that Dame Judi had said that she wanted to be in a short, if he made one, and who showed how he had earned wings in the usual job of Assistant Director.


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End-notes

* Chris Croucher told us afterwards that Penny is a long-time mate of hers, who goes through lines for her and stands in when they are getting the shot and the lights right on set.

** Why do we talk about contact details ? The details are not of the contact that we have had, or will have, but the wherewithal to make it.



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