Osijek during summer. A man is mowing the lawn in his backyard... A couple of kids want to play hide-and-seek, but tell the boy to count to 3,000 until he starts looking for them... A couple wants to go to the sea for the vacation, but their teenage son doesn't want to, so they leave in the car without him with two little kids. When the car stops, one of the kids is thirsty and runs away in the field... The teenage guy and his friend bathe in an inflatable pool in the back yard... A man is having a barbecue... A car leaves a trail of smoke behind, spraying against mosquitoes in the suburbs.
David Gaso's 25-minute short film "Short Cut Grass" is an amusing and oddball depiction of his hometown Osijek from which he escaped from, but is still a step below all the critical hype that surrounded it. Constructed like Andersson's "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence", "Short Cut Grass" features the concept of rigid "one scene-one sequence" mise-en-scene, without cross-cutting, showing weird or unusual episodes of people in a suburb filmed in static wide shots. Not all of them are equally as interesting, though. It has three good jokes, the rest is standard depiction of summer boredom. One of those good jokes is when the kids want to play hide-and-seek, and as a joke tell the boy to lean his head on the pole and count to 3,000—which he actually does (!), so he counts on the street all until evening. In another, two teenage guys are in an inflatable pool in the back yard, and later sit on chairs, having this exchange: "How big is it?" - "What?" - "You know. Yours. How big is it?" - "Well, it's good, for me." - "But did you ever measure it? How big is it?" - "3." - "3 centimeters?" - "No. A 3/5, meaning it's good, for me." Later on, the said guy even stands up and lowers his underwear to show it to him. In one scene, two little kids argue: "You're stupid." - "I'm older than you! I can't be stupid!" Gaso paints a larger picture of this milieu and how he felt somewhat empty there, filmed in crystal-clear cinematography, not caring so much for conjuring up a clear point as much as creating an eccentric set of vignettes that document all these characteristics and quirks in Osijek.
Grade:++
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