http://reviewermagazine.com/dirty-girl-film-review.html

[Short Film Review]

Dirty Girl

Directed by Jennifer Clary

Reviewed by Stephanie Freedman

In this short film, running 5 minutes and 31 seconds long, the director is bringing beauty and art into a typically ugly scenario: cancer. The opening entices the viewer with the sound of a heart monitor in the background and the quote “Cancer is all about war, I am invaded by the enemy.”

This is abruptly erased and replaced by a woman’s body on a cold steel table in a hospital gown shown from the neck down. A pair of hands drop down towards the woman’s body and rips open her gown exposing her left breast in order to draw an incision line. The pen is replaced with a scalpel and it is lowered down toward the line of target. The camera flashes to the woman’s mouth only to catch it gasping in pain. The director chose to symbolize the cancer inside of the woman as clay characters with humanlike characteristics such as mouth, eyes, and teeth. Tweezers come towards the character and removed the cancer, upon removal the scene went from clay back to reality.

After patching the incision the seemingly floating hand rips open the gown at the inner thigh for the second cut. The second incision brings the audience back into the world of clay where the cancer comes alive and is eating away at its host’s insides. This is removed as well and the film ends with a scene over-viewing the doctor’s work. The final image is provocative yet discreet, showing an exposed left breath splattered with blood and a bloody, exposed inner thigh. The beauty in the horror is poetic.

According to her website, Clary made the film after her diagnosis and surgery for breast cancer at the age of 21. This experience left her feeling vulnerable and dirty and led to vivid nightmares about the surgery and the images in this cinematic short.

http://www.dirtygirlthemovie.com/

SBF

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