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Ladybug

average rating is 2 out of 5

Critic:

William Hemingway

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Posted on:

Oct 7, 2024

Film Reviews
Ladybug
Directed by:
Jason Galea
Written by:
Jason Galea
Starring:
Corinne Irving, Dani May Cook

Ladybug is a nine-minute arthouse film from writer/director Jason Galea depicting, according to the tagline, ‘a haunted woman’. With this being an arthouse film, the subject matter is somewhat hidden in amongst the imagery on display and in truth it’s pretty difficult to identify just what on Earth is actually going on at all. For fans of Galea’s earlier work this should, however, not come as much of a surprise. His time with the band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, animating a lot of their music videos, especially highlights a tendency towards the absurd and the sublimely ridiculous which Galea injects into his visual style. (Particularly impressive examples of this would be for the songs ‘Robot Stop’ and ‘The River’ which I would encourage everyone to have a look at.)

 

Here in Ladybug though, there is no preconceived lyrical storyline to follow and so no basis for Galea to match his visuals to. Instead he’s doing it all himself, creating his own narrative, building a structure for a visual story, and then using all of his creative knowhow to express that to the viewer through his own visual techniques. The result, as you would expect, is really quite visually impressive, with a lot of striking shots of things coming together and breaking apart, exploding like stars and coalescing into eye like substances, or something like that, because it’s still not entirely clear what’s going on.

 

The parts of the film which move away from the visual techniques and which include the characters are by far the poorest. It’s unclear what the two women are doing or what they represent, just that one comes into a dark apartment and switches on a few dimly lit lightbulbs then walks through the dark woods, while the other stares out at the camera from behind a warped glass window. There’s no dialogue to help the viewer understand what’s going on, so we’re just left to our own devices to try and unlock the mysteries behind what Galea is trying to say. The title, Ladybug, may well represent a lot to do with the dots flying about on the screen, as well as the colour scheme, but otherwise again we’re left at a loss as to just what is being represented throughout the film.

 

As an arthouse piece, Ladybug works well enough, with it being enigmatic and metaphorical in its expression, and visually stunning in parts to boot. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer enough for the audience to hold onto to get very much from the narrative or characterisation. In fairness, it’s obvious that something’s going on, that one woman is haunted by something, which is likely represented by the other woman in the frame, but in terms of finding out what that actually is, we’re all pretty much left in the dark. Jason Galea’s talent as an animator and visual expressive is undeniable, but a story writer he is not, and that lets him down when creating his own vision for his own narrative. My only hope is that this will get better with time and practise.

About the Film Critic
William Hemingway
William Hemingway
Digital / DVD Release, Short Film
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