Midlands Review of Out on the Field
midlandsmovies • August 30, 2020
Out on the Field
The French Director (Idi Assoumanou)
2020
NFX Films
Written and directed by Idriss Assoumanou (aka the French Director) Out on the Field is a new short with a mysterious premise that throws up a lot more questions than answers.
The film comes hot off the heels from the director’s recent effort In the Midst (our review) and the short begins with a man (Shaiek Ahmed Rana) awaking suddenly in a corn field with a look of confusion on his face.
His heavy breathing leads to panic and he questions how he could have ended up here. To add to his woes, his arm appears to be bandaged up owing to an injury, causing him pain and further hardship.
On the horizon however appear two men (Fattah Ahmed and Joshmaine Joseph) who our protagonist calls to get their attention. Meeting up together, the man asks for help but the two men are unable to understand him because of the language he’s speaking.
Although the film opens with a strange and mysterious set-up, the two men joke between them about Asian languages and cultural stereotypes which keeps the tone lighter than the introduction suggests.
Attempting to converse with the man, they joke how he looks like a “tramp” and could be a “crackhead”. In broken chat, the man explains how he’s from a small village from Bangladesh but doesn’t know how he got there.
There’s increasing frustration owing to the language barrier and the man insinuates that the two men somehow played a part in his predicament. So he decides to run away across the field and the audience become intrigued as to whether the two men are who they claim to be.
And the short adds a twist at the film’s conclusion, where language and accents once again come in to play as maybe there’s more than meets the eye in this situation.
With a dash of Looper and a helping of Old Boy, the film doesn’t explore too much of the background within its sparse narrative. It felt like it could work best as a short pilot to a longer and more intriguing set of stories involving the characters owing to its many loose ends.
However, Out on the Field is certainly an interesting short. Mixing two styles of comedy and drama shouldn’t work but it’s mostly successful here. And it’s hugely helped by the three lead actors bouncing amusing dialogue off each other in a pleasingly cryptic short.
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