Changing Tune

A couple facing difficulties in their relationship hash it out at the kitchen table in order to reset the boundaries and lay bare the unfairly weighted imbalance within.

Phil (Goymer) is a musician. At least that’s what he calls himself, even if he doesn’t have a recording contract or seemingly play his songs live. When we meet Phil, he has just crashed his car, shown to us by some pretty basic shaky-cam footage to suggest the impact. We later find out that the only thing Phil was interested in after the crash was his external hard drive which he had kept beside him on the front seat. This was because his hard drive had everything on it relating to his music, including videos and other media he had paid for, because he was trying to get his music out there by himself.

A flashback scene then gives us the lowdown on why Phil finds himself in the situation he’s in, as we watch a cringe inducing interview that he has with a testy record company exec. This bruising interview was never going to get anywhere as the exec (Smith) has no time for Phil or his music, and in his best Alan Sugar manner, the exec says pretty much everything derogatory that he could say apart from the immortal words, ‘You’re Fired.’ To top it all off, Phil’s partner Becky (Dowd) has just been informed by the bank that he’s spent all of their money, well actually, all of her money, and she wants to know just what the hell has been going on.

So, for the large part of writer/director Nick Fuller’s, Changing Tune we sit down with Phil and Becky and get into the nuts and bolts of their relationship. Then, half way through the focus shifts, and we get another point of view as Becky shares some wine with her best friend, Melanie (Pillay) and the two of them talk it out together, still at the kitchen table. This two-handed narrative gives us important information from both Phil and Becky’s perspectives and helps us dig down into the feelings that underpinned their relationship in the first place.

Unfortunately though, this is as far as we go, and none of the story ever moves very far away from that kitchen table. The location is set, the lighting is placed, the camera moves to its designated positions, and the dialogue is spoken, just with a change of character half way through. The dialogue, also, just like the eerily spotless kitchen, comes across as very clinical at times, even as the characters express what are supposed to be deep seated emotions. They say the words, but there’s very little feeling behind them, as though they’re trotting out standard lines which we would expect any troubled partners to say to each other, before moving on to the next part of their conversation.

This is not to say that the performances are not good, because they are, and both Freddy Goymer and Olivia Dowd do their characters justice in their presentation of the narrative. It’s just that’s there’s not a lot of depth behind the words they are saying and the surface level conversation is as far as things go. This also gets evidenced in the denouement of the story, where an ending is offered that seems to buck the trend of the direction of travel, and most of what was discussed is seemingly thrown in the bin.

While Changing Tune has its moments and is a well put together short film, it never really takes off in terms of its narrative and the inner turmoil of the characters is never really explored. Writer/director, Nick Fuller has obviously also intended the piece to be a showcase for his own musical talents, as he wrote or co-wrote almost all of the songs which appear in the film. However, the music doesn’t play as big a role in the film as you might expect, and judging by what’s on offer, it’s no real surprise that Phil wasn’t getting any traction with what he was producing.

For its thirteen-minute runtime, Changing Tune offers a brief insight into a broken relationship, and by swapping out Phil’s passion for music for something else, many people will be able to relate to the scenario displayed on screen. Sadly, there’s not much else going on beneath the surface and the characters and scenario could have benefitted from a more orchestral background rather than the one-man band that we get.