Lloyd Newson's The Cost of Living was screened at Dot Dot Dash Dot, presented by Artsadmin Youth Board, alongside three shorts from new filmmakers.
The Cost of Living (2005) is based on a stage production by Lloyd Newson and DVD8 Physical Theatre. The film combines various choreographic techniques, from slapstick, pantomime, ballet, human puppetry, to natural rhythms of sexual intercourse. Through them, it succeeds at creating a language of gestures that is more expressive than the verbal commentary offered by various characters. On the side of words, we have a crude one-sided interview with Phoebe, the legless dancer, by a man with a video camera whose lens gets intrusively close to the interviewee's body, questioning the lump on the back of his head, his stumps, his view of life. The answer is an [imagined] group dance in which other dancers imitate the legless leader's movements. This vision is inaccessible to the video cameraman who expected a mere freak show. . . .
