• Indie Short Mag TV
Indie Shorts Mag
  • Home
  • Interviews
  • News
    • Film Festival News
    • Short Film News
  • Reviews
    • Short Film
    • Documentary
    • Web Series
  • Hall of Fame
  • Short Film Festival – 2025Accepting Films
  • Tutorials
    • Pre-Production
    • Post-Production
  • Submit Short Film
    • Submit Short Film for Review
    • Submit Web Series for Review
    • Interview Submission Form
No Result
View All Result
Indie Shorts Mag
  • Home
  • Interviews
  • News
    • Film Festival News
    • Short Film News
  • Reviews
    • Short Film
    • Documentary
    • Web Series
  • Hall of Fame
  • Short Film Festival – 2025Accepting Films
  • Tutorials
    • Pre-Production
    • Post-Production
  • Submit Short Film
    • Submit Short Film for Review
    • Submit Web Series for Review
    • Interview Submission Form
No Result
View All Result
Indie Shorts Mag
No Result
View All Result

Petit Four: Slow-Paced Love Story Of An Elderly Couple

Nimisha Menon by Nimisha Menon
28 Dec 2019
in Reviews
0
Petit Four - Short Film Review - Indie Shorts Mag

Writer-Director Kalainithan Kalaichelvan’s Petit Four is a 12:48 minutes long saga of love that was once deeply cherished, but eventually lost in time. Beautifully poised in its cinematic appeal and pace, the film pays homage to deep, rich love stories that don’t need youth or its effervescent charm to be impactful and hitting.

Peter Higginson plays Wilfred, husband to JoAnn Nordstrom’s Agnes. In the grand, empty spaces of their home, these two come across as souls lost in space and time. Their silences filling the dinner table, they sit across one another with limited dialogues to recover the time lost, but enough glances to outlive one another’s thoughts. Written also by Kalaichelvan, the script gives enough room for the characters to explore each other’s mental state while slowly unravelling their own.

Petit Four - Short Film Review - Indie Shorts Mag

Cinematographer Christopher Lew’s lens captures the couple, their silent retreats from one another, longing despairs, the long shots across solemn benches and close-ups as the couple cranks each other’s spaces. If anything, it only makes Petit Four more engaging and raw. As Kalaichelvan’s background score soulfully pulsates through, it’s impossible to overlook the film’s nuanced narrative style.

Love stories have their own charm, but the ripe old ones carry an added weight to them – they ring in the nostalgia understandably missing in the young ones. But what Kalaichelvan does here is, twist it and serve you a cocktail of suspense, thriller and drama. What makes Petit Four is the fact that the movie can be enjoyed individually through any of its mediums and it can yet bring you to the same melting point. Whether it’s the music or the cinematography or acting, the story carries with it the same impact, hitting the same notes, parallelly running through invisible crossroads to meet at the destined point.

Petit Four - Short Film Review - Indie Shorts Mag

Reserving the true suspense of the film, when one of the characters begins to grow suspicious of the other, the range of emotions displayed is spectacular – ranging all the way from disbelief to resentment to resignation. Enabling to sustain the film’s set theme, is the lighting which is just brilliant. Lew knows his craft well, playing it to the fullest advantage. The soft hues representing the warmth of companionship and the sombre shades, the grimness of the times – we get what it means to have lived a full life and shared it with someone you deeply, deeply care about.

The casting is perfect as is the makeup and hair. Both Higginson and Nordstrom bring Wilfred and Agnes to life. We can very well imagine them as a couple we’d have seen in the passing. Such strong is their conviction that as the film nears its climax, we are unprepared for the outcome, while all the way knowing where it is heading to.

Petit Four is unusual, in the sense that it opts for a cyclic narrative while offering no closure to the sequence of events. Instead of answers, it raises more questions, which only a skilled filmmaker could have done. Be it its music or cinematography, each department adds layers to the sublime story that is being put together here – that of love, resentment and profound loss.

#ShortFilmReview: Petit Four: It was a ghostly affair, a ménage à trois of the strangest order. Share on X

Watch Petit Four Short Film Trailer

Tags: ReviewShort Film Reviews
Previous Post

Silhouette: A Woman’s Challenging Journey To Accepting Herself

Next Post

Joyeux Noël: A Love Letter For Someone Lost

Nimisha Menon

Nimisha Menon

Related Posts

Viaticum - Short Film Review - Indie Shorts Mag
Reviews

Viaticum: A Comedy on the Things We Take (Down) With Us on the Way Out

5th October 2024
A Good Day Will Come - Short Film Review - Indie Shorts Mag
Reviews

A Good Day Will Come: Relentless Optimism in the Face of the Tyrannical State

2nd October 2024
Next Post
Joyeux Noël - Short Film Review - Indie Shorts Mag

Joyeux Noël: A Love Letter For Someone Lost

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Sponsored

Advertise Here

Featured Post

Announcing Short Of The Year Awards 2023

Announcing Short Of The Year Awards 2023

Latest Podcast

  • Recent Reviews

About Indie Shorts Mag

Indie Shorts Mag is a publishing agency that works within the ‘short film circuit’. We review short films, documentaries, music videos and web series, amongst others. We stand out amongst the short film review sites for being multi-diverse & global in our platform and reach.
Our team works tirelessly to help promote, publicize and market your short films that deserve the shout-out! Besides reviews, we host film festival news as it’s a known fact that the film festival buzz is unmissable and we ensure you aren’t left behind!
We aspire to form a niche for ourselves as the ‘short film magazine’ that remains the hub for filmmakers & their audience.

Popular Topics

  • Announcements
  • Articles
  • Crowdfunding
  • Editorial
  • Film Festival News
  • Film Festivals
  • India Edition
  • Interviews
  • Marketing
  • Marketing
  • News
  • Online Premiere
  • Post-Production
  • Pre-Production
  • Reviews
  • Short Film
  • Short Film Competition
  • Short Film News
  • Tutorials
  • Web Series

Indie Shorts Mag on Instagram

Follow Us On Instagram

  • #ShortFilmReview: Viaticum: God probably understands, he’s an understanding sort.

Read our review. Link in bio.

#ShortFilm #Review #IndieFilmReview #FilmReview #SupportIndieFilm
  • #ShortFilmReview: A Good Day Will Come: Horrors are nurtured with silence.

Read our review. Link in bio.

#ShortFilm #Review #IndieFilmReview #FilmReview #SupportIndieFilm
  • #ShortFilmTrailer: Our Home Here: Paying The Cost Of Having A Dream. 

Read our review & watch the short, link in bio. 

#ShortFilm #ShortFilmReview #SupportindieFilm #Trailer #FilmTrailer  #shortfilms
  • #ShortFilmReview: Enough for you: Love and fear amidst the march of time.

Read our review. Link in bio.

#ShortFilm #Review #IndieFilmReview #FilmReview #SupportIndieFilm
  • #ShortFilmTrailer: Reparations: On Empathy And The Legitimacy Of Being. 

Read our review & watch the short, link in bio.

#ShortFilm #ShortFilmReview #SupportindieFilm #Trailer #FilmTrailer #ShortFilms
  • #ShortFilmTrailer: How I’ve Met God: A Coming Into Form. 

Read our review & watch the short, link in bio. 

#ShortFilm #ShortFilmReview #SupportindieFilm #Trailer #FilmTrailer #ShortFilms
  • #ShortFilmReview: Lemon: Nobody is getting away.

Read our review. Link in bio.

#ShortFilm #Review #IndieFilmReview #FilmReview #SupportIndieFilm
  • #ShortFilmReview: Kotsuage: Grains of rice and drops of blood change little children forever.

Read our review. Link in bio.

#ShortFilm #Review #IndieFilmReview #FilmReview #SupportIndieFilm
  • #ShortFilmTrailer: Grace: Examining A Loss Of Faith. 

Read our review & watch the short, link in bio.

#ShortFilm #ShortFilmReview #SupportindieFilm #Trailer #FilmTrailer #ShortFilms
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Advertise With Us
  • Contact Us
  • Submit Article
  • Write for Us
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy

© 2015-2024 Indie Shorts Mag.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Interviews
  • News
    • Film Festival News
    • Short Film News
  • Reviews
    • Short Film
    • Documentary
    • Web Series
  • Hall of Fame
  • Short Film Festival – 2025
  • Tutorials
    • Pre-Production
    • Post-Production
  • Submit Short Film
    • Submit Short Film for Review
    • Submit Web Series for Review
    • Interview Submission Form

© 2015-2024 Indie Shorts Mag.