The Shortround: The Sweet Hand of the White Rose (Review)

We haven't had an edition of The Shortround in a while. But thanks to director Davide Melini, I was able to view his newest short The Sweet Hand of the White Rose. I previously reviewed Melini's short The Puzzle which I said "...compacts alot of eeriness in it's 4 min+ runtime."

Melini, a former assistant director of giallo auteur Dario Argento brings a different theme and style from his previous effort. White Rose has lives intertwining with a tint of ghost and the supernatural in its 16 min run time.

Here's a quick synopsis.

"How many times have you had a bad day? How many times have you thought you would run away from everyone and everything? That is exactly what happens to Mark. In order to forget about a heated discussion with his girlfriend, he decides to get in the car and go far away. But a little mistake will change his reality forever...".

So what's the final prognosis on The Sweet Hand of the White Rose?

the jaded viewer says: In nutshell sort of way, I can best describe it as a supernatural PSA. Melini establishes two characters Mark who recently had a fight with his GF and is driving on the road to get away from her bickering and Mary, a 10 yr old blonde haired girl who is on her way home after playing at the park.

These 2 seemed destined to meet in a most unfortunate way. First let's start off with the good. The cinematography is quite outstanding with daytime scenes framed nicely and an ominous background of a cemetery at night. You feel warmth and dread during the day and night scenes and its highly effective.

The ghostly presence towards the end is slickly done with a good amount of eerie. The twist ending is predictable as a B/W reveal shows an auto accident has no happy endings.

The short was dubbed in English which kind of distracted me as I prefer watching any foreign film with subtitles. But there isn't much in actual dialogue but more character narration about their stories which lead to their eventual meeting.

The Sweet Hand of the White Rose is an effective, styilized short PSA that probably should be shown to teenagers to see the dangers of texting while on the road. It happens more than you think. It's a bit cheesy with it's message but the message is important.

Melini made White Rose for a mere $2,000 Euros and the quality of the short is detailed with production values rivaling a Hollywood production. I'm eager for him to try a feature length film, possibly even a Italian giallo film (yeah I know that's kinda stereotypical of me). After the Adrien Brody lawsuit and the controversy from Dario Argento's Giallo, we may need some new blood into this genre.

Davide Melini has the talent to do it.

Check out the trailer below.

For more information check out the links below.

• Davide Melini's Blog