Pavane
A Dramatic Short Film Written and Directed by Paul Quarrington
June 7, 2008 Credits for the short film based on The Ravine. (PDF)
Every childhood contains at least one “ravine”–one episode where the normal fabric of everyday life rips and the monsters come roaring out. Writer/Director Paul Quarrington brings that moment forward in a short film called PAVANE now in production (May - June 2008) with a July delivery to broadcaster Bravo!FACT.
The Genesis
The short film Pavane is a distillation of Quarrington’s feature film screenplay based on the same storyline he explores in his novel “The Ravine.” Paul refers to “The Ravine” - film and book - as semi-autobiographical, often introducing it with the succinct explanation… “it’s about a writer who squanders his talents in television, drinks too much, screws around and ruins his marriage, and the reason it’s semi-autobiographical? The character’s name is Phil.”
When Phil and his brother Jay—now a musician who once had dreams of the concert stage, but plays in a seedy piano bar—were kids, they were, along with their hapless friend Norman Kitchen, terrorized in a ravine. That incident has had repercussions in their adult life. The story in the feature, book and short film is about how they resolve the incident and its persistent effect on their entire lives.
The Short Film Synopsis
Pavane takes place in Birds of a Feather, a fern bar where Jay is employed as pianist. When the film starts, Jay is playing the piano. Sitting around it are two women who have had a couple of drinks too many, and a brooding man, who we eventually learn is Paul, oh, ah, rather Phil. After a discussion of “requests”— in “quotation marks” because Jay actually has no intention of playing requests—Jay plays a spritely classical piece. During this segment (although we CUT BACK often) there is an ANIMATED sequence that sets up and gets into, briefly, the terrorizing incident. As the film moves towards its conclusion, we are back in the piano bar, where Jay plays Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante defunte.” We realize along with the ladies that all this, the playing, the false call for requests, the brothers playing strangers across the bar, it’s all darkly comic ritual that the broken, non-functioning brothers perform in an attempt to get at their pain.
Spiritually aligned with Mystic River, delivered in his own voice both profound and profoundly funny, Quarrington delivers a jewel of a film with an ending that holds the fragile potential of a new beginning.
A BookShorts / Fizzy Dreams / Crush Inc Production
In Association with Bravo!FACT and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Screenwriter / Director
Paul Quarrington
Producer
Judith Keenan
Animation Producer
Gary Thomas
Animation
Chris Minos
Cast
Geraint Wyn-Davies
Ted Dykstra
Jennifer Podemski
Michelle Latimer
Editor
Ross Turnbull
Music Producer
David Gray
