Opening with a selection of seemingly random slides, including an ape, Yellowstone Park and Britney Spears, it may not be instantly clear, but this is a film about relationships. As the title of the short suggests, this is a story about a couple…but this isn’t your standard love story. Grounded in narrative, but distinctly experimental and abstract, Dylan Stephen Levers’ This is a film about Tom and Maddy is a film that covers some universal themes, but uses some totally unexpected methods to do so.

Quite often when writing about films, there’s an instinctual urge to compare it to past works – to build anticipation in your readers or help them relate to the themes of the piece. However, this just doesn’t seem applicable to Levers’ short. It doesn’t feel like anything else – there’s no this is like X meets Y and no this is like if [insert director’s name here] made [insert film title here].

“This means something. We mean something to each other!”

Whilst narratives revolving around doomed relationships aren’t exactly a new thing in the world of storytelling, presenting one with such individuality and such flare is no easy task. I won’t pretend I understand how everything in TIAFATAM relates to the narrative (I’m still trying to process what the 3 different slides of Britney Spears mean), but it’s this unpredictable and off-kilter approach that makes it such an intriguing film. If this was a short delivered in the standard dramatic way you would expect from storyline centred around a failing relationship, then you would probably be able to guess what’s just around the corner. With Levers’ film, this certainly isn’t the case. Whether it’s impromptu dance routines or unexpected roars instead of dialogue, there’s a certain tension and a certain excitement running through TIAFATAM that can only really be generated by this kind of filmmaking.

“We just need something to hold this together, we need something to feel permanent”

Here at Short of the Week, we see short film as an opportunity for filmmakers to experiment and push boundaries, we see short film as playing a huge role in the future of feature-length storytelling and it’s because of films like Levers’ that we feel this way. Watching TIAFATAM it’s hard to imagine this kind of filmmaking, by a debut director, being given a chance in the world of feature films without some kind of proof of concept existing. It would seem like a huge gamble for feature producers to take, but with a short, it seems like a risk worth taking. Levers’ filmmaking feels unique, his cinematic voice one that deserves to be heard and with This is a film about Tom and Maddy now proof that his brand of filmmaking has an audience, hopefully he’s a director we’ll be hearing a lot more from in the future.