User Reviews

A young woman bored and lonely surfs a video chat room on the internet . Bored by the creeps and freaks online she is about to disconnect then suddenly she is hit on by a Russian cosmonaut who is circling the Earth in a space station

I recently saw a short film by Ben Aston called DINNER AND A MOVIE which was set in the United States featuring the trouble that desperate loneliness can cause . Loneliness seems to be a theme that interests Aston greatly and was able to develop and deliver DINNER AND A MOVIE to its greatest potential . Here however the story is much more slight and inconsequential as two people talk over the internet separated by thousands of miles . It probably has that ring of truth as to the difference between the male and female psyche in the internet era . The female is fascinated by the whole endeavor of travelling in space while the male is a bit more interested in the science of biology . Make up your own mind about this short but I felt it was a bit too short and slight for its own good

I had seen a short from the maker of this one before; Dinner and a Movie, which was a rather unusual way to make a sweet film and in a different vein, so too is Russian Roulette. Apparently made by Aston as a mini-break from doing other work, the film is very small in physical scale, since we find ourselves entirely in the London bedroom of Lucy, who is living alone in London, struggling to make connections with people and has taken to the dread Chatroulette to find people to talk to. She is ready to give up on that when she connects to a cosmonaut in the International Space Station; she wants to talk about space, he wants to see her boobs, but somehow a connection forms.

The short running time and the very sparse production means that more weight is put on the characters to deliver. This is increased by the fact that the plot is pretty slim and that the goals for the film is to be sweet, not to deliver too much more than that. Fortunately this works well and the film mixes Chatroulette comedy with a core of sweet truth so that what you get is a short scene where it is amusing but also has an element of charm which has sentiment but is not sentimental. The performances are a big part of this since Hill is engagingly real but sweet while Lock is a bit lusty but still a person (which is not particularly normal on that website).

It doesn't amount to much but I did still like it for what it did well – it amused me and made me smile, which for a few minutes of my time and very little money to make, is a very nice return on investment.