point of contact

DOSSIER 2006
The official online publication of the
Syracuse International Film Festival, Vol.3
A Point of Contact Production

A Cigar at the Beach - USA
Stephen Keep Mills, Director
15 minutes, fiction)

Faced with the demanding responsibilities of being a son to a father hospitalized for depression, a husband to a pregnant wife, and a father to an I-pod addicted boy, the Smoker leaves his family in a motel and comes to an empty beach to remove himself from anyone who needs him and from “the expense of living” through his fantasies. As he smokes his cigar in front of the stormy sea, his day dreaming conjures up, first, a pair of very sexy Asian tourists who want to “keep” him. Obviously embarrassed by their attention, when the young women begin to undress him, the Smoker breaks the spell. He moves on to a mysterious Woman in White, more his own age, who understands his situation and his desires and is willing to “pursue her senses” with him. As he finally touches her, she dissolves into water, and he finds himself transported to a passing freighter where he joins a poker game with four sailors from exotic lands who share his obsession with women. However, the realization that they are going mad, pulled by the opposing forces of their desire and their rejection of women, drives the Smoker from the game and into another fantasy. This time, he goes back to what he knows: his family, but in a perfected vision, with his wife and stepson doting on him, nurturing him psychically and emotionally. However, he can only sustain the fantasy for a brief moment and then it disappears, as he notices a huge wave about to hit the beach. Enthralled by the power of eternal sea, the man offers himself to the giant wave which crashes over him and takes him away.

The film is very effective in satirizing the angst of middle-aged, middle-class male mid life crisis. In trying to balance the demands of family relations and work—his ambition--with the yearnings of unfulfilled adolescent dreams, the Smoker does what he does best: pretend. However, the sex fantasies he constructs, whether those in which he is a passive object of desire for teen-agers, or the ones in which he becomes the more aggressive seducer of the ultimate female, prove equally incapable of satisfying his deep longing. Even the unrealistic idealization of the family situation fails to meet his needs and becomes in fact the briefest of his fantasies. In the end, the tempting solution to the crisis—and the threat of ending up like his father--is left to the promise of ultimate release and rebirth. -