Review: Stocking Stuffers
Student film 'Stocking Stuffers' by Angel Connell is an older short, produced in 2001. But when you pop the DVD in and watch the video, it carries a quality more equitable to 1991 both in production value and its actors characterizations. At first I thought this was a glaringly awkward student video shot on 3/4" tape, but after a moment or so I realized this may have been intentional. The actors chew on the dialogue as a man tries to get into a woman's pantyhose by following her vague verbal cues.
The two come off as 80's softcore porn stars, and given the sexual overtone of the entire short it strangely fits. It still makes the whole thing a little cheesy. Just as our 'hero', and I use the term loosely, finds the right words to warm up his conquest we cut to a series of psuedo-commercials for the pantyhose that give the film it's topic. In three 80's style commercials the two extort the qualities of the stockings.
And that's it. As a student short, yes, Stuffers explores the objectification and sale of sexuality through a woman's erotic fixation on her pantyhose. It's shot in a generic manner, edited in a generic manner, and is basically a textbook example of A-B-C video production. My only real question is what has Connell done since this short? This kind of video is a good practice round, but the development of a filmmaker comes through a body of work. I'm curious to see if the style of this movie was in fact clever direction or just a would-be film critic reading into something that isn't there.
As far the film itself goes, I could take it or leave it. And when presented with those two options, I usually go for the latter.
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Jon Ashby
