Luchi is a "painter", although she does spend her time digging into garbage to find cans on which she can get the deposit back – which she then buys lottery tickets with. On one night she chances upon a tagger spraying the side of the shop – she helps him flee the police and learns his name is Sembene and that he has a very interesting story and problem.
Tiny Ocean is technically a very well made film. It looks great, it has a great sound track, the lighting and sound are really well done, and generally it feels like a very well rounded and professional product made by people all skilled in whatever area they worked. The tone of the film itself is also well established, and I quite liked the Jim Jarmusch tone it had at times, but yet there seemed to be something missing. And this is the heart – not only of the matter, but also meaning the core of the film itself. The two central characters did not engage me or work particularly well; they seemed too "designed" and too "performed" in their quirks. Okay part of this added to the tone of the film, but it seemed like they are nothing more than this, and I felt distant from them rather than drawn in – they never felt "real", not even within the internal world of the film.
The performances add to this feeling. Strez did not do it for me; she looked the part, but her character lacked grounding; a difficult task for her to find that in this story, but she struggles. Fishburne (son of) has an easier job in some ways since he is more of the cipher of the piece, but while he is good at that, he ultimately adds to the film being odder from an early stage. These problems may been less of an issue if the short had not run to a comparatively long running time, but as it there is too much time for the story for their to be so much of it that didn't hook me my heart – for someone without many technical skill like me to spend so much of the film thinking about the technical aspects then it either means they stand out because they are bad, or because there is nothing to stop me thinking about them.
Tiny Ocean is a very well made film for sure, and the quality of the work and the control of tone makes it worth a look – but personally I found the lack of heart to be an issue, and one that the strengths never totally overcame.
