“A Quiet Drink” was probably the most straightforward of all the short films I saw at MUFF. Shot-on-video and no flashy aesthetics, this brief little film just encapsulated the typical Aussie bloke way of life that consists of complaining about the wife, pot bellies, no dancing and lots of beer drinking.
Two friends share a quiet drink in an unpopulated bar where they grumble about their relationships in an effort to preserve the quality drinking time that they enjoy sharing with their friends. Now several drinks down, the conversation has hardly shifted as the two are still complaining about nothing. An Old Guy in the bar overhears their whining and decides to interrupt with a much bigger problem that could maybe put their trivial bitching into perspective in a short that starts off as simple but then takes a clever little turn when the Old Guy tells them about a woman who took his house and his child along with almost everything else …and he then says “there was no sex involved”. The two guys are intrigued as to what happened to this man, and the film ends with a one line explanation in biting wit from the Old Guy.
I didn’t mind this short, I guess it was a good break in between a whole program of very involving shorts. Very Aussie style humour, which is simple with a funny ending. The piece wasn’t overacted which better suited the relaxed drink between friends environment and I think that Darren Clark’s short could be a hit if it toured the more rural areas of Australia.
