Based on a story by novelist Yasutaka Tsutsui (Paprika, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time), Standing Woman is the latest short film from director Tony Hipwell.
It presents a solution to climate change more dystopian than anything we’ve heard coming out of COP26 – in this world, criminals are turned into trees. Even a minor breaking of the rules gets you a spot on public display; the slow process of arboreal transformation is torture, as you remain conscious, unable to move. Creepy.
The story follows Tom, a propaganda filmmaker tormented by the fact that his wife has recently been arrested and ‘planted’. He knows the safe thing to do would be to move on, but he can’t resist the urge to visit her in her semi-transformed state.
It’s evident that this is a low-budget, indie effort, and more money would have enabled the team to go a lot further with the gruesome imagery, but the prosthetics work is nevertheless impressive. The combination of actors’ bodies with various sections of tree – we see planted characters at various stages in their transformations – stands in grim contrast to the rural beauty of the Yorkshire locations.
And, as we’re reminded throughout Tom’s encounters, the true horrors lie in what humans do to each other as much as in the physical transformation. Tom’s conversation with his part-tree wife is genuinely chilling, thanks to screenwriter Max Gee’s sharp dialogue and the emotional performances from Anton Thompson and Yuriri Naka.
Standing Woman will screen at the Everyman Leeds on Sunday November 14th, as part of Leeds International Film Festival.
