Paco

  • 90'
  • Australia
  • 2023

Tim Carlier's low-key absurdist comedy Paco opens with a stretch of precisely orchestrated chaos that gives the film its tuning note. In a long, unbroken shot, we witness a movie crew shoot a conversation scene over and over as actor Hebe finds newer ways of muddling her lines. Unnerved by her mistakes, Hebe walks off the set without returning her lapel mic to soundman Manny, who must now undertake an epic voyage across the city to retrieve the gadget.

A lovechild of Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot and Peter Sellers' Hrundi Bakshi, the taciturn Manny gropes his way through Adelaide's cultural scene, encountering an assortment of eccentrics, including a time-traveller and a union mafioso, in nightmarishly tautological situations. As he drifts in and out of diverse landscapes and buildings, Manny is filmed with a mock hidden camera while his trusty boom mic provides the soundtrack, punctuated by sporadic transmissions from the errant device.

In its comic, confusing disjunction between sound and image, and with the reflexive simplicity of a Kiarostami film, Paco demonstrates the indispensable role that sound plays in mentally orienting us within the space represented in movies. Either a metaphysical journey into the mind of a monomaniac or a monumental shaggy dog story, Paco is anything but ordinary.

 

Srikanth Srinivasan

  • 90'
  • Australia
  • 2023
Director
Tim Carlier
Premiere
World premiere
Country of production
Australia
Year
2023
Festival Edition
IFFR 2023
Length
90'
Medium
DCP
Language
English
Producers
Tim Carlier, Tim Hodgson
Sales
Tim Carlier
Screenplay
Tim Carlier
Cinematography
Tim Carlier
Editor
Tim Carlier
Production Design
Paul Howe
Sound Design
Nick Steele
Cast
Manuel Ashman, Hebe Sayce, Lyn Pike
Director
Tim Carlier
Premiere
World premiere
Country of production
Australia
Year
2023
Festival Edition
IFFR 2023
Length
90'
Medium
DCP
Language
English
Producers
Tim Carlier, Tim Hodgson
Sales
Tim Carlier
Screenplay
Tim Carlier
Cinematography
Tim Carlier
Editor
Tim Carlier
Production Design
Paul Howe
Sound Design
Nick Steele
Cast
Manuel Ashman, Hebe Sayce, Lyn Pike