Review of 'Hilary Flamingo Rescues Mother From The Palace Ruins' which can be found here on Daily Motion.
Length: 03:25
Logline: A Victorian woman drunk on gin, puts her baby at risk.
This is performance artist, Harriet Fleuroit's response to William Hogarth's 'Gin Lane' (Yes, I had to look it up too) and features reoccurring character Hilary Flamingo. If you're one of those people who gets emails at work containing those hilarious video clips of stupid people, or if you have a drink problem, you'll like this.
It's entirely a character piece containing no plot or arc to really speak off. This woman starts off drunk and she finishes off drunk, with a couple of vomits, bruises and damaged toy doll incidents in between. This isn't the same as looking up any old High Street on a Saturday night, this is historical. Fleuroit performs extremely well for the camera, taking better care of her gin bottle than her baby in true alcoholic style and has drunken staggering down to a tee.
I'm not sure this should be classified as a response to a work of art, this seems to be more of an interpretation or as Hollywood would call it, a re-imagining. As I've read the Wikipedia page about 'Gin Lane' and am now therefore an expert, what's missing from this film is the 'Beer Street' version that goes along side it. What we get here is one perspective, one portrait, one point in time. There is no context for us to put this into. The audience needs the background knowledge of what this piece is about before it is able to attempt to understand the filmmakers vision. Without that information, this is just a good old laugh at a woman, wearing fake tits, falling about out off her tits, so to speak. Nothing wrong with that, I thought it was quite funny and eerily close to home (I've got the phantom bruises to prove it). Ultimately, funny enough to watch but perhaps needs some more references from the original influence in order to fully convey the layers that this potentially contains.
Best Bit: It's a drunk rolling about in the street.
Worst Bit: No plot.
Final thought: It's like looking into a time travelling mirror.
Read a condensed review of this film on Twitter here.
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