Two Blue Lines

Director – Robin Forsythe

After milling around Odeon’s Screen 8 for long enough to slurp two glasses of Champagne, Robyn Forsythe took to the floor.

Robyn, a Life Sciences with French student at the University of Manchester, is the Director/Producer of Two Blue Lines, a short film dealing with teenage relationships, rape and regret. After introducing the film and bidding us an enjoyable watch, the lights went low and the screen lit up.

Two Blue Lines is a tale of how Alice’s (Marie Giraud) nightmare comes back to haunt her. Supposedly, Alice is raped, at the age of 15, by an unnamed guy at a drunken house party (Louis Hartshorn). A few years later and after an abortion the unnamed guy comes back in the role of Steve her flatmate Kim’s (Tori Longdon) new boyfriend. Steve doesn’t remember Alice but Alice remembers him all too well.

Teaming delicate subject matter with first time performances and direction wouldn’t normally result in a watchable film, but the team pull it off. The result is a charmingly rough student film that evokes thought and debate from the audience.

The audience’s comments tended to focus on the elements of abortion and rape in the film, some found it realistic, others found it clumsy but most found Two Blue Lines to have been a worthy watch that opened their minds to sex within today’s youth culture.

Within 30 minutes the audience endure an uncomfortable rape scene, two abortions and references to “getting plastered” accompanied by a rather beautiful soundtrack. The startling part of the story is its realism. The taboos included aren’t superfluous as they form a huge part of today’s youth culture, thus making Two Blue Lines in many ways a hard hitting, albeit amateur, piece of social commentary.

Talking with the cast and crew after the showing it became evident that Two Blue Lines was the product of exceedingly hard work by a group of friends. During production the team had to reshoot the entire film after it was completely wiped off DOP (Director of Photography) Matt’s computer and only finishing it off the Sunday before the Thursday premiere.

I managed to quiz Robyn at the after party, she is already well into her next filming project. Robyn will be directing a new television show for Channel M written by Two Blue Lines assistant director Beth Minors. A rather tipsy but beautifully dressed Beth told me of her anxieties surrounding her next project but is never-the-less excited to pursue the task after the success of Two Blue Lines.

Two Blue Lines the film and film’s soundtrack are available at www.twobluelinesthemovie.co.uk