Hird can say so much with so few words. Not one to be obsequious but to my eyes she is one of the greatest writers of that form, the short story.

Jonas Govaerts adaptation �Of Cats�� strips the story of much of its macabre humour, moments like Ariel hiding in her ex-lovers yard while his mistress shouts �you ugly whore� did however make me smile. The conversation between Ariel and her ex made me feel extremely uneasy in a sort of Matthew-Stokoe-Inducing uneasiness. Her pathetic mumblings are intercut with clever editing of her making pulp of the poor moggy.

Visually it is reminiscent of quite a bit of Takashi Miike�s work (particularly �Audition� � a girl alone in a room or is she?), every shot is carefully thought out. The cinematography and lighting are splendid, claustrophobic. The story is self-contained with very little dialogue and Govaerts has done an extremely good job on what I can only assume is a small budget. The relocation of story from Edinburgh to Antwerp is a neat one, lending a certain Germanic coldness to the tale (am I allowed say that?)

Marijke Pinoy�s performance is nothing short of terrifying. She never becomes less than human, despite how brutalised she is, you understand implicitly what motivates her actions. Someone has caused her damage and consequently she has been broken in a very fundamental way. But you can�t hate her because of that.

OCAW has won only the M�li�s D�or award, the M�li�s D'or for the Best European Short 2008, which Govaerts collected in Sitges about a month ago. He has directed four shorts so far: OCAW, MOBIUS (2004, based on a short story by Richard Christian Matheson, which can be found on YouTube) and FOREVER (2005, based on a comic by Uli Oesterle and winner of the Jozef Plateauprice for Best Belgian Short).

A melange of instrumentals rackets up the tension, an operatic swell that mirrors Ariel�s descent into sublime nihilism. Screaming and wounded one second and paving the way to an eerie Kieslowskiesque quiet the next. Beautiful, informed filmmaking that will leave me looking over my shoulder for weeks�.Jonas Govaerts is really something --- I am eager to see more of this kind of horror.

Serious, Ridiculous, Overblown, Pretentious, Warped. Alan K was born in 1983 and has contributed to Film Ireland, Pretty Scary, GCN, Penny Blood and ButcherQueers. His fiction has appeared in Dogmatika (contributing editor next issue), Beat the Dust, Parasitic, The Beat, Lit Up Magazine, Gold Dust and is forthcoming in Sein and Werden, Six Sentences and Shoots and Vines ---- He resides in Wicklow.

© 2009 Laura Hird All rights reserved.