From Omeleto.
A woman survives a shark attack.
MARCIA AND THE SHARK is used with permission from Sam Ferris Bryant. Learn more at https://ferrisfilms.com.
It’s 1963 in Sydney, Australia, and Marcia and her doting fiance Frank are enjoying a holiday by the sea together. But a shark attacks Marcia, putting her in a coma before she passes away.
Miraculously, Marcia comes back from the dead. But to Frank’s growing concern, she’s different now — there’s something wild and untamable inside her, and it just might doom the couple’s romance and future life together.
Directed by Sam Ferris Bryant from a script co-written with Hugo O’Connor, this beautifully eccentric romantic short reimagines the aftermath of a tragic real-life 1963 shark attack in Sydney Harbor that claimed the life of showgirl Marcia Hathaway. Here, the film revises that sad ending into a charmingly off-kilter fable, exploring a fate where Marcia survived, only with the untamed spirit of the wild inside her.
The considerably stylized storytelling lays out an initially magical love story between the charismatic showgirl and the humble janitor who won her heart, rendered in otherworldly and luminous black-and-white. But the shark attack throws a twist into their romance, and though Frank’s love and adoration remain constant, Marcia becomes increasingly erratic, reckless and even dangerous. As their time together becomes darker and progressively worrisome for Frank, the film playfully switches between different styles and genres, touching on everything from film noir to the whimsically offbeat creature B-movies of the 1950s to the dynamic, loose classics of French New Wave.
Despite the stylistic whimsy, the film never loses its sense of emotion, thanks to its gift for characterization. Marcia, as played by actor Tilda Cobham-Hervey, is a shining star of a girl who grows darker and more unpredictable after the attack, both fragile and deeply ferocious. The film’s heart and soul is a rich, funny and deeply affecting performance by actor Eamon Farren, known for his darkly volatile roles in THE WITCHER and TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN. Demonstrating his comedy bona fides, he gives Frank shades of sweet daffiness, but his loyalty, love and devotion to his fiancée are real, enduring and honorable — which makes his heartbreak all the more poignant when he realizes there’s only one solution to Marcia’s dilemma.
Longlisted for the Oscar for Best Live Action Short, MARCIA AND THE SHARK is many things: dreamlike, playful, melancholic, wild, witty and surreal. But above all, it is an unexpectedly complex love story, and a testament to enduring tenderness, loyalty and devotion. It immerses viewers in a winsome romance, catapults them into increasingly sinister misadventures and then leaves them in a fairytale-like reverie, aching like Frank for a love that was lost and a potential that never got to be fulfilled.
