The Most Beautiful Man in the World

The short film ‘The Most Beautiful Man in the World’ is written & directed by Alicia Duffy & is about a young girl called Lacey who is bored of being trapped inside, so she ventures outside & has an encounter with a man, whose identity we do not know, before being beckoned back inside by her mother & becoming bored again.
The film raises a lot of issues; the one I will be looking at is neglect. The binary ideologies of neglect are that children shouldn’t watch too much television & that children should be left alone outside. Other ideologies are that the mother should spend more time with the child & that children should be allowed to experience things for themselves.
In the first & last few shots, Lacey is watching television & is yawning & becoming restless which shows that she is bored & needs some stimulation other than watching television. The lighting is dark & the only source of light is the television, this is not healthy for the child’s eyesight & could be seen as child neglect as the mother is having a conversation with another woman about a haircut & not paying the child any attention.
When Lacey is riding her bike outside, she stops & looks out onto the field, she then looks back to see if her mother is watching her & because no one is there, Lacey makes her decision to go into the field. Most of the shots in that scene are wide shots, this makes Lacey seem vulnerable as she is alone with no one looking out for her.
The mother is not completely present in this film, we only see her face in one shot at the end when she beckons Lacey back inside, and the rest of the time we only hear her voice or see her legs. This supports the point that she should spend more time with her daughter. However, when we do hear the mother’s voice, it is weak; this could point to her being depressed or being a weak character in general. This could bring up the point that social services should be more involved as the mother is not able to cope, but the contrasting ideology to that is that social services are over worked already as they have a lot of cases to deal with.
In the field, Lacey’s senses are finally stimulated. The first shot of her in the field is one with her arms outstretched & a smile on her face, this shows that she is free & happy. There is a lot of jump cutting in this sequence which exemplifies that Lacey is awake & full of energy whereas in the house, the shots are long because she is tired. Outside the lighting is bright, which contrasts with the darkness when she goes back inside.
The film can be perceived in different ways, depending mainly on how you view the man in the field. There is a loss of innocence in society which may make the audience presume that the man is a negative figure, for instance the ‘stranger danger’ issue that we were all told about, when it would more likely be someone who you know that will do you wrong. The point the director is trying to make is that different people view things in different ways & that just because you are older, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are wiser.