British documentary and ad director Oscar Hudson makes his feature debut in the Venice critics week sidebar with this high-concept anti-war satire, a through-the-looking-glass absurdist nightmare about realising that the otherness of your enemy is an illusion. There are some bold and ambitious images here, and some interesting split-screen work. Maybe there’s an issue about the style and substance ratio and perhaps the running time is indulgent, but this is a strong piece of work.
Twins Elliott and Luke Tittensor play two soldiers of equal rank in opposing armies, called Pte Warne and Pte Arthur. They represent two nations of fictional Ruritanian weirdness, formerly at war but who have evidently concluded a tensely unstable peace treaty. Warne has a resplendent white uniform and, like the rest of his country, shaves his head, while Arthur has shaggy hair and a looser uniform. These two men have been chosen by their respective countries to be the sole guards at the border in the middle of a vast and featureless desert. They face off every day, notionally co-operating and sharing a station straddling the border, but suspicious, carrying out their various patriotic rituals to reassert their identity.
