Behind the Couch

2009 Dir. Paul Synnott A woman hurts herself in the bathroom, but seems to show no signs of pain. How long will it take before the damage catches up with her? Shot on Super-8 film, Paul Synnott’s short film is a haunting and quietly upsetting rumination on the horror of human psychology. While the narrative is akin to peering into someone else’s nightmare, it is vaguely linear in form, and as it progresses, feelings of dread and unease reach out from dark, dank depths... Up close and personal camerawork proves very unsettling, disarming even, as we’re privy to a very private and painful moment. The lasting effect is a lingering, creepy one, as though we’ve intruded somewhere we shouldn’t have. Shades of early Polanski (think Repulsion ) and even a touch of Hooper (some of the editing calls to mind the opening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre ) hint at Synnott’s influences, while the Super 8 film gives it the look and feel of something we shouldn’t be witnessing. Something un...

A young man (Grzegorz Golaszewski) has moody visions/flashbacks to a series of increasingly macabre and downright bizarre incidents that may be his interpretation of a love affair gone wrong. Adopting the role of Charon-like driver, he chauffeurs another man to some sort of private club where people sit around immaculately laid tables and seemingly indulge their dark fantasies. A young woman (Marta Szumiel) reappears fleetingly throughout his visions and the introduction of a mysterious Dictaphone seems to threaten him with truths he’d rather not hear… Meanwhile, people stare pensively and longingly at one another and writer/director Grzegorz Cisiecki, who hails from Minsk, Belarus, rummages through themes and concepts such as paranoia, desire and longing with myriad beautiful images that waft about each other like some spectral puzzle slotting into place. Are these dreams? Cryptically significant moments blurred by the skewed logic of memory? A languid cacophony of striking ima...