163 seconds of fantastic work from Conor Lambert is all we get in Emma Brennan’s remarkable Puppet Tears. In less than three minutes, we can explore multiple themes with such wonderful deftness, a short that excites you for its future possibilities.
A lonely puppeteer cares for his lonely puppet child, if only his wife would stop nagging him.
Sounds like a relatively basic synopsis, right? Yet somehow, in a mere 163 seconds, we get a vivid glimpse of a man whose life isn’t what it seems. Brennan eases us in with Puppet Tears as we watch our puppeteer talk and seemingly play with his latest. Yet, it doesn’t take long to notice something very wrong with this scene.
The room is an unorganised mess with toys, puppets and other things strewn about, and the puppet that is in the hands of the puppeteer is simply a ball with cloth sewn onto it. There are no characteristics of it to speak of. However, our puppeteer is talking gently to it, as if it is a pet or child as if it is real. It is an unnerving watch that only increases that unease as the seconds tick by.
Cinematographer Aidan Gault captures the spiral of Conor Lambert’s puppeteer in such a visually gorgeous manner that he has us wanting to look away from the situation’s awkwardness. Still, he positions his camera closer to Lambert as he “acts playful” with his child puppet. It is the stillness and atmosphere within Puppet Tears that affects you; we are just here watching a man’s sanity leave him.
While only a proof of concept, Puppet Tears shows the talent at hand and the possibilities that this team can conjure up. The fact that this team can make what is one scene from a plucked from an existing play and make it work as well as they do here is a testament to the potential that is here with this project.
You could watch this one scene and garner a multitude of ideas of what is being conveyed to us, so if this is all that we get, then that’s grand; it works on its own. But clearly, it isn’t, and how wonderful would it be to see the fully realised film from this team.
★★★★
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