Fifty Pence

Darren is a young man with a history who finds himself in way over his head.  Enigmatically, we aren’t told anything about the lead up to the situation we discover here: Darren, a Londoner, is in a cheap Parisian hotel room with a girl who obviously doesn’t want to be there.

It’s Darren’s job, in fact, to take the girl – the packet – to the Mafioso. Painting a back-story (a hobby of mine), perhaps Darren is a gambler with heavy debts who can have them written off by doing a single job, escorting this mysterious girl to her fate.  Yet the more he is with her the more Darren’s natural integrity kicks in.

Fifty Pence is a short film written, directed and produced by Eric Kolelas.  He also plays the lead alongside Anoushka Ravanshad as the inscrutable Karina.  It’s an excellent performance from Kolelas: you can almost hear the cogs whirring inside Darren’s head as wonders how on earth he got himself in to this situation – and indeed how he is going to extricate himself from it.

Fifty Pence is a short film which trusts the audience to do some work rather than just sit back and take it all in.  We are permitted to write our own back-stories here – as well as, ultimately, to decide what happens to Darren and Karina next.