Category Archives: Oscar Shorts

Oh my goodness, this film was completely baffling. I was very shocked and disgusted; the lack o care the mother had for her children was horrible. Despite the fact that I just hopped on the wagon and became aware of these world-wide shorts.

“Wasp” has no filter; i felt like the director was all over the place and that most of the scene did not flow together. The plot in this film was not well-developed; it was very difficult to understand what was taking place. The mother was wacky; she had four kids and cold not take care of them in the least. i felt for the oldest daughter because she was the only one able to look out for her sisters and baby brother.

Trying hard to follow her mother’s instructions and watch over her baby brother. The title of the movie, became slightly understanding when the wasp landed on the baby’s face and flew into his mouth. all the while the mother is trying to seduce and flirt with a gawky, fake looking David Beckhman. All I could think about is that poor baby, and pratically scream, “Get that bee out of that baby’s mouth”!!

And those girls were so unaware of how neglecting their mother was being to them. When you have kids, they do take over your life. it was clear that she was struggling to take care of them and it was very disturbing to watch. What kind of mother leaves her kids in a parking lot alone? A mother who had kids when she was not grown up enough to have them. this film was straight up awful! and for the record, abandoning your kids and giving them fish and chips does not make up for the terrible treatment to them.

Andrea Arnold’s 2005 short film Wasp, follows the lives of a mother and her four young children as they struggle to survive the brutal conditions of poverty and hunger.

Arnold’s film stands out from other short films with the same theme by leaving viewers with an impact so powerful, they actually feel as if they are witnessing Zoe and her children’s existence first hand.

What made Arnold’s film as exceptional as it is, was its reality. Children forced to watch their mother fight and curse, having to eat crisps and coke for dinner, forced to sit outside of a rundown bar as their mother attempts to seduce the man inside, and more tragic and heartbreaking scenes that are unfortunately not that uncommon.

As I watched this film I could not help but feel bad for these children and their situation. Each scene progressed with a feeling of suspense as to what will happen next. Would one of the children die from starvation? Get kidnapped? Hit by a car? Or, as the film suggested, die due to a wasp sting?

What intrigued me most about the film was the ending. The mother and her children driving away in a car listening to an upbeat song and singing to it, as if they had no problems at all. This song was a symbol of hope, that this family took a horrible situation, and proceeded to see the good.

Well, I’ve just had enough English white trash to last me an entire semester.

The 2005 Academy Award-winning live-action short film “Wasp” was unpalatable to me for a number of reasons.

First, those cockney accents! My God, they’re grating, especially when issuing from the mouths of high-pitched children.

Speaking of children, they were a big part of what made this movie hard to swallow. See, when I was younger, I didn’t give a gosh darn about children in peril on film. They could be killed or kidnapped and it wouldn’t bother me. However, now that I have two nephews, one of them only five years old, I become uneasy whenever kids are in any kind of danger in movies.

Even if I watch a film I’ve already seen, it bothers me when children are in trouble. In George Miller’s pioneering Mad Max, the titular character – a cop in a post-apocalyptic Australia – exacts a bloody revenge afters his family is slaughtered. Years ago, I was all about Max’s vengeance. Now, not only am I bothered by his dead kid, but I also realize that revenge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, as it won’t bring his murdered family back.

This isn’t an overblown comparison. The children in “Wasp” are in as much trouble as the baby that was turned into roadkill by a motorcycle gang in Mad Max. Make no mistake: sooner or later they will face mortal danger and not survive, all because of that slut-mother.

You know, there’s this slop-metal band out there called “W.A.S.P.” For decades – honestly, since its inception in the early eighties – debate has raged about why the name is an acronym, and what it stands for. Frontman Blackie Lawless has never given the same answer twice when asked this question, but when it comes to the short film of the same name, I’m sure it stands for “We Are Socially Piteous.”

However, like the film, I’ll try to end on a happy note. The one good thing about “Wasp” was its viscerally effective portrayal of English white trash. The mise-en-scene was so absorbing – suffocating, actually – that I’m forced, against my better judgment, to give it the highest compliment I can think of: it reminded me of “The Wire” –  through its brutally frank portrayal of the projects.

I’m a firm believer that all people should be psychologically evaluated before being deemed fit to be parents, not once the children are old enough to have faced the effects of those who would not have passed in the first place. Andrea Arnold’s short film, Wasp, only strengthens this belief.

In a mere twenty-six minute time frame, Arnold packed this film with emotional turmoil and controversial issues. As Zoë, a young and obviously unfit mother, faces the struggle many single parents face, the loss of their social lives, I could only hold myself back from jumping through the screen and shaking her for making her four young children, one only an infant, pay the price for her needs.

Early in the film, it’s almost as if Zoë herself is trying to prove to the audience that she is a good mother by defending her daughter against the woman that harmed her. Noble? I think not. While it’s obviously not acceptable for a grown woman to physically harm a child, that act is nothing compared to the harm Zoë has done to her own children. Emotional and psychological pains are real, and last longer than any physical scar.

The trail of events leading up to Zoë finally realizing that a good mother is not one that leaves her children outside of a bar while she attempts to recapture her youth left me with my own little emotional scar. To see children, actors or not, in such a dangerous situation and knowing that they will be in the care of such a lowlife in this fictional world even once the credits roll is torture.

Right back 'atcha, Zoe.

The film was so real, so tragically believable, that I couldn’t help but accept it as reality and worry for the safety of the children (and shed a tear for children who aren’t just playing the part in a film). While it ended on a note of calm relief, which for the children was simply the fact that they were given a meal and a ride home, I was left with an extremely unsettling, even queasy feeling; a feeling very few films have been able to draw out of me.

I can’t help but feel that the audience was meant to feel sorry for this young woman, or at least pity her plight as a single mother who has hit rock bottom and applaud her as her maternal instincts kicked in, but I could not have felt less sympathy for her. Rather, I applaud Arnold for being able to so accurately portray such a dreary world that is sadly not far from reality for many people.

Wasp, Andrea Arnold’s 2005 Oscar winning short from the UK, was perhaps one of the most gut wrenching experiences I’ve ever had viewing anything. Visual images transformed into physical responses and I watched with my mouth hanging open for a great part of it, squirming in anxiety for what tragedy might befall the characters next. It was that intense.

From the very first scene, I was queasy. The director’s angled shots were partly to blame for this; they followed the characters down the stairs like an eyeball constantly circling its surroundings. But the next, clearer, images of the children in tattered, dirty clothing and unkempt hair, and the baby without diapers in the arms of his barefoot mother made me just as unsettled. The fierce wrestle between her and another woman in the neighborhood was making it worse. But, lo and behold, I found that I was already rooting for someone.

I had barely “met” this woman and yet I was invested. The neighbor was pinning her down, and since I hadn’t been able to focus on the initial mother due to the frazzled nature of the filming, I started rooting for the wrong side and was hopeful that she was “winning.” But,  I quickly recalled that she wore a distinct blue nighty, the only piece of her I could recognize, and realized, “Oh, no…she’s not,” simultaneously feeling silly that I was reacting this way in the first place.

It’s like that thing they say about pets, like chicks, that they call whoever they meet first their mother. I saw her first and had faith in her. With every scene, that faith was slipping, but I didn’t give up. I just wanted to know more. I just wanted to know her story, the who’s, what’s, where’s, why’s, and how’s? Who was Mark? Did he really leave her? And for what? Where did he go? Why is she in this position? How does she still afford a home? These were left unanswered but I’m not dissatisfied with the short, I think I can choose my own “alternate ending,” so glad that it’s fiction and not documentary and I have that mental option.

I’m also so glad those children are “fine.” I kept jumping to conclusions that one would suffer a car accident, be molested, or something worse that I couldn’t predict. These children were in the worse possible, broken family situation as it were, and yet they loved their mother with every ounce of their light and fragile bodies. But sometimes, like a wasp, love stings.