Wet Bum (Lindsay Mackay):2014

Reviewed by Shelby Harris at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015

Wet Bum is a heart felt family film following the difficulties of a insecure awkward young teenager breaching adulthood. Forced into a job Sam (Julia Sarah Stone) mother hires her as a cleaning women at a retirement home, there she builds unlikely friendships with two of the residence teaching her valuable life lessons she never expected to learn so young.

Experiencing body image issues Sam becomes self conscious both of her body and personality, she is outcasted from her previous friend group and humiliated daily by her teammates for not changing in the locker room. While Sam’s peers are experimenting in drugs and focused on boys she is stuck struggling to cope with her identity, trapped in self judgment.

There is a strong theme of lack of communication and freedom throughout the film, Sam wants to be free from her clueless mothers nagging rule, while retired resident Ed (Kenneth Welsh) try’s to escape the retirement home by getting into random vehicles passing by but he is always brought right back to his “prison”. Resident Judith (Diana Leblanc) remains silent and unspoken gazing out on the world from her window taking an interest on the bird motifs. All characters yearning for a different form of freedom.

The director uses cold lighting and the repetitive color blue to symbolize vast emptiness and the feeling of loneliness and isolation, a mood each character experiences until accepting their surrounding situations. The film emphasizes on how each character is interconnected, and how life goes on even after death.