Sep 21 2012
Barefoot & Bare Bottoms
At the opening scene of Wasp, you see a barefooted mother carrying her baby boy with his bottom exposed and running down the stairs along with her children. You can see the shakiness of the handheld camera that follows them down the stairs. The first scene entices you to want to learn more about this woman and her family. As the camera shows a scene of their distraught house, its obvious that they live in poverty and she is unable to feed her family. Andrea Arnold’s short film is about real social issues, a very young woman who has made some bad decisions in her life that is trying to take care her children. This short film is just a glimpse of Zoe’s everyday life. I felt as though I was right in there in front of her observing her everyone move. Arnold wants us to see her perspective and sympathize her life because society normally judges and ostracizes someone who was a teenage mother that’s unable to financially provide for her children. Although she has made some bad decisions in this film, such as leaving her children outside of the bar as she tries to rekindle an old flame, in the end, she truly loves her children and wouldn’t want anything bad happen to them.
