Welcome to “Your Weekly Short,” a LakeFrontRow.com feature that showcases one short from a Wisconsin filmmaker all while stretching the definition of “weekly.” Brace thy face.
Through its title alone, “Prone” telegraphs its interest in the vulnerability of its two core characters. One, a starving artist (Kristin Anderson) faces a shot at her own gallery should she give in to a dealer’s advances, while Sean Foran’s recovering drug addict must avoid substituting pills for emotional neediness. At the whims of their peers and elders, their subsequent lives ultimately rest on their own emotional states — and the decisions they make within them.
In a recent profile at OnMilwaukee.com, Milwaukee native Christopher Carson Emmons describes his short as a “farewell” to Cream City, a final project before moving to the sunny perpetuity of the West Coast. Emmons includes cultural landmarks like the Summerfest lighthouse but “Prone’s” sense of place is, like the qualities of its characters, dictated more by mood than detail. Fallen snow provides an excuse for characters to remain inside apartments or half-empty bars, and behind lonely, dampened photography, there’s a self-destructive power at work. Emmons hyperbolizes pill-popping, using its effects to blend into an editing style usually reserved for lighthearted romances and comedies. The choppiness of an intimate conversation practically breaks under the crippling determination of Anderson’s painter, ready to sacrifice every ounce of her being over to Mark Metcalf’s invasive art broker. She might not know it yet, but we do. We can feel it.