Dog (2001) - Andrea Arnold

Thematically linked in a few ways to Arnold's later Fish Tank, this short is her finding her artistic feet and paving the way for what would become her Oscar winning short Wasp. Leah is a council estate teen, her mum screams abuse at her when she leaves the flat instead of waving tutty bye. You've all seen Ken Loach and Mike Leigh films even if you haven't ventured into the wilds of East London, so you know the type of people I mean. She meets up with her boyfriend John, and they go and buy some gear. Romance not being dead he leads her off onto some waste ground and starts to get frisky. A stray dog eats his dope, so John kicks the dog to death. Leah sees him for the idiot he is and goes home to a receive a beating from her mum. Who is the dog of the title? Well it's not as subtle as one would hope, but when Leah starts barking at her mum, all becomes obvious. There are far worse ways to spend nine minutes of your life than watching this. It looks lovely and is stylistically obviously Arnold, Joanne Hill is great as Leah, shame she hasn't been in anything since.

Milk (1998) - Andrea Arnold

   What a confident debut this is, taking in as it does several different locations, car interiors and even night shoots. It's not instantly identifiable as being by Arnold until the darkness of the film comes to the fore. Short films are so gratifying to watch when they are good, and it's a good film discipline to have under your belt before moving onto features. Having to convey a whole story within the space of ten minutes, leaves little or no time to tell back stories or any of that other stuff that often pushes modern films running times up and over the two hour mark. Instead the director has to use every image to tell the audience everything, so things like set dressing and costumes become extremely important.
   Here we have a couple that conceive and then lose a child within the first few minutes of the film. So while the dad (Stephen McGann) attends the funeral of his stillborn child, the mother (Lynda Steadman) goes off with a substitute child in the form of a joyriding teen (Lee Oakes) who she meets in the high street. Not a lot happens after the initial set up but it does show that people deal with grief in their own way, and leads to a bizarre unexpected ending. On the whole this was a decent little film, that hints at the greatness to come in future films by Arnold.