DECEMBER 17, 2024
In the case of this movie, 'don’t judge a book by its covers' has deeper meanings than one may think. Billy, a street sweeper noticed a girl coming everyday on the street he is cleaning and tries to find the courage to ask her out. It is only the unexpected that makes him go and introduce himself. What comes next gravitates around the quote we mentioned previously.
Michael Salmon really wanted to impress us with all the cultural references he inserted in the plot and we can say he did it with ease. Starting from the title, a reinterpretation of Bohemian Like You by The Dandy Warhols, going straight to Rimbaud’s contemporary writer François Coppée, mentioned and even quoted by Billy (Lloyd Sparsi) in French, and also the way Billy was not talking to himself, but rhyming to himself in a rather modernist manner.
The script is good and we think the short wouldn’t be the same with another cast – the four characters that appear in the film share the same mix of emotions and expressivity only to keep the plot in balance. The overall mood of Michael Salmon’s 'Bohemian Like You' is more than…bohemian. The bookish interludes, the background, the fashion style (seen more on Annie), the soundtrack – everything brings back memories of the times when life was different, transposing the viewer in a Britpop-ish environment, as seen in Pulp’s Disco 2000, to be more precise.
Coming back to the poetics of the discourse, in Billy’s dialogue and monologue parts all the words express a supernatural power, stressing on some key phrases that are creating a very good and easy to see image of the character as an individual who can stand out in a crowd. The inner poetry he is projecting alongside with the inner thoughts of Annie proved us that this film is more than a short made to impress... it is a piece of intellectualised schema we really enjoyed watching.
Review written by Vlad A.G