Boiling Point

I spent part of yesterday evening watching the movie Boiling Point. This came before the somewhat overrated tv series Adolescence.

They both star Stephen Graeme and feature the same done-in-one–single–shot technique. In Boiling Point the whole 90 minute film unfolds in a single shot caught by one roaming camera.

Since the movie concerns the events in one night in the kitchen of a high powered restaurant, and naturally occurs in tight spaces that people push through it works better, doesn’t seem intrusive or gimmicky, and serves to intensify the web of tensions that the drama uncovers.

This technique works considerably less effectively in the television series where the action switches locations from indoors to outdoors and back again. It feels (to me at least) rather like an extended exercise in bravado and technical skill.