pre-teen boy is lying on the floor of a house that is being constructed. The workmen are not around and the reason for boy’s presence is not known. A fat girl finds him, applies lipstick, and hopes he will gain an instant carnal appetite. He does not. The girl shows him a pair of blue-tongued lizards she found. The boy takes one lizard and begins playing with it. That the boy prefers the lizard to the girl is no surprise, since the lizard is cuter and thinner than the girl. The girl takes the other lizard and kills it, then hangs it on a barbed wire fence. She then threatens the life of the other lizard with a broken bottle. The boy holds the surviving lizard in his protective grasp.
And that, in six minutes and 48 seconds of artsy/blurry film, is Justin Kurzel’s “Blue Tongue.” This Australian short was made at Melbourne University and turned up at Cannes and the New York Film Festival. Hopefully, it will go away. The film is dull, badly made and pointless. How lousy short films like this can get into major festivals is beyond my comprehension.
Also…no animals were actually killed in the making of the film. The only thing killed is the audience’s endurance.
