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Director's Statement
John Cosgrove |
A Londoner, Dean Craig has written a smart, funny script that is filled with the realistic, witty dialogue and appealing, yet very quirky, characters that one often finds in scripts by British writers.
From its seemingly calm, ordinary beginning, CAFFEINE deftly interweaves 5 stories in real time that soon take surprising, outlandish twists and turns, veering toward farce, but remaining accessible and relatable.
What attracted me to Dean Craig's screenplay -- at once very knowing, piercing and truthful -- is that its stories start where most romantic comedies stop. It begins six months after the boy and girl have the BIG KISS and the screen fades to black.
CAFFEINE looks at relationships after the infatuation period has ended, when well-concealed secrets come out, and both sides are confronted with whom their partner really is...not perfect, not a romanticized ideal..in some ways, less than admirable. Caffeine's characters are faced with the questions: do I really want to commit, can I forgive? Or do I want to cut my losses and run?
With the character of Danny, Dean incisively created a stoner-loser who puts in words the caveman ethic toward women and sex to which many guys, even in today's post feminist world, ascribe, though they'd be loathe to admit it.
When Charlie's relationship with Rachel is sabotaged by his own rampaging libido, he tries to excuse his infidelity by, essentially, falling back on the old saw "boys-will-be-boys" and expects to be forgiven for behavior he can not tolerate in Rachel.
Dean's script skewers these attitudes, but he doesn't spare the girls. Indeed, he pokes equal fun at rigid neo-feminist attitudes and the all-too-frequent tendency of some women to re-mold and feminize their boyfriends in their own image.
I also liked that the cafe is managed by a young black woman (Rachel), clearly the most competent, admirable person in this small matriarchal society. She is becoming truly independent, finding her way to complete self-actualization. Rachel discovers that she is a woman who does not need a man to help forge her identity or make her complete. By the end of the film, Rachel is ready to seek the answer to the question: "Who knows what a woman can be when she is finally free to become herself?"
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