There is a message in here somewhere. Philip Cole is an under-appreciated worker who feels like he isn't noticed or valued. He returns home after a typically unfulfilling day only to find that his flat appears to have become a restaurant and even to get a table he'll have to wait his turn.
It is a nice idea, I gotta say and even from the basic concept I was quite looking forward to this film to see what it did with the idea. It looks very good as a film and I appreciated the way the film captured the "feel" of the restaurant, the look of an office and all the other locations – anyone with a camera will know it is hard to get the shot to look right and although my knowledge of lighting, cinematography and such is basically zero, I do appreciate when film get the look and feel of something just right for the material and place. So on that level it works well and it is a real shame then that the film lacks substance.
There is something in here – there really must be. A character tells Philip how proud of him he is, the restaurant is named after him, the woman at the front desk says some very meaningful and deliberate lines and other little things like this that make you think "right, you're saying something about life with all of this", but yet even on the second viewing I really was at a loss about what it was trying to do with this idea. If there is a message or a moral then it really is lost in the telling of the story because it all feels disconnected from anything else and any meaning in there is more likely to be brought by the viewer and show-horned in. Performances are decent enough and, as I say, it is very professionally made, but in terms of substance it is really lacking and it is a terrible shame that such good technical delivery from Coane is let down by a lack of anything memorable in the substance.
