Here’s a round up of The surprise demise of Francis Cooper’s mother from the 4mations blog:
“Alexei Sayle provides the voice over for this slice of life, as we follow three characters through break ups, accidents and pet death. This is funny and full of well observed details. The moments before and after events are well done. We get a good insight into who these people are from the little things they do. That said, maybe I’m missing something but there doesn’t seem to be any connection between the three characters. I’m left wondering why they share a film.”
Some more nice things. To respond to the wondering: I used three characters because I was trying to show that people quite often react in similar ways to “disasters”. That, often, people look for one specific moment as inspiration to change – which doesn’t always happen and so in this film they each force an epiphany upon themselves and, because it’s contrived, in the end they don’t change at all. Having three characters with different stories, but following one format, where the only link is their “epiphany’s” I thought would draw this out more. I suppose it didn’t work that well.
Glad to see Rabbit Punch by Kristian Andrews was their favourite though. Mine too.
Hi Felix,
Thanks for responding to our post. You might want to add something in the comments on 4mations? I'm sure our readers would like to hear from one of the directors!