UK Premiere / Best Debut Feature Nominee

Short Synopsis

Oscar walks into a bar. The bar's walls are covered in photographs. The pictures are the door to the lives of people that could be any one of us.

Review

There is more to any photograph than first meets the eye. Behind each still image there is a story waiting to be told and a life to be revealed. This is the premise behind director Mario Iglesias’ highly original film.

A young man becomes a regular in a local Spanish bar. Intrigued by a collection of photos which cover the walls of the establishment, he gradually allows his curiosity along with that of other customers to instill the pictures with life. Over the course of ten stories, each an expertly crafted vignette, we encounter a range of characters including an unlikely participant in a drug deal, a woman with a guilty secret which she chooses to disclose to a total stranger and a group of inebriates involved in a rowdy debate over where exactly the horizon can be found.

Lively bar culture is everywhere in Drink Up and indeed the woozy close-up camera work imparts a feeling of disorientation in the viewer as though one is watching the film whilst intoxicated. This, by no means unpleasant sensation, adds to the dream like nature of some of the film’s stories, which range from the funny to the plain disturbing. Their brevity ensures that none outstay their welcome and each slips down as smoothly as a shot of fine vodka.

Alan Diment