Following from Spike Jonze’s Dalarö pseudo-docs for Volvo, Stephen Frears makes a beautifully formed, if more conventional, short film:
Route V50: Website | Campaign site
“It starts in a place called Doubt and ends in a place called Confidence.”
This is a short film as ourobouros, as Robert Downey Jnr’s personalities start splitting into separate characters. Although there’s less of the car in the film than Volvo’s previous slice of nanotainment (the Mystery of Dalarö), here it feels more gratuitous, the brand advertising more overt. This is definitely Old Hollywood compared to the New. Still it’s slick, low key, and nicely surreal. In blurring those moving image/advertising boundaries, it rates as timidly brave. All credit to Volvo, let’s hope they continue to experiment with the form, and get a little more daring.
