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THE MERCILESS BEAUTY

By Michael GROOM

Drama - Completed 2017

Johnny is a farmhand in the splendour of the English Lake District: he leads a life of introspection, until the strange appearance of a mysterious beautiful woman. Unsure if she's a figment of his imagination or an actual physical being, Johnny succumbs to obsession.

Festivals
& Awards

Leeds International Film Festival 2016

Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2017

Short Film Market

Keswick Film Festival 2017

Sunderland Shorts Film Festival 2017

Cannes 2017

Short Film Corner

Palm Springs International Shortfest 2017

Short Film Market

Calcutta Cult International Film Festival 2017

Festival Tous Courts 2017

Short Film Market

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- Year of production
- 2017
- Genres
- Drama, Horror, Fantasy
- Countries
- UNITED KINGDOM
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 14 mn
- Director(s)
- Michael GROOM
- Writer(s)
- Michael GROOM
- Cast
- Richard RIDDELL, Daisy HUGHES, Samuel EDWARD-COOK, James SPEAKMAN
- Producer(s)
- David GROOM (LAAL BLUE DOT LTD), Michael GROOM (LAAL BLUE DOT LTD)
- Synopsis
- Johnny Longthwaite is an introspective farmhand, who works largely in solace amongst the beautiful mountains and meres of the Lake District, in northwest England.
  It's a place steeped in tradition, full of legend and myth, and a valid contender for the lost land of Camelot. Johnny immerses himself in nature, but longs for some sort of kinship.
  One morning on the point overlooking a lake, Johnny is alone and palely loitering. A mysterious woman in white appears. As Johnny goes about his work on the farm, he twice more encounters her, but each time she disappears.
  He's berated by the farmer (who speaks in a broad Cumbrian dialect), and wonders why the farmer did not also see the beautiful lass.
  Another brief encounter happens in the mundane world of Johnny's local pub, but the next sighting is considerably fruitful. This time The Beauty does not disappear, but leads Johnny through some timeless vistas to a strange hilltop where they share their first kiss in the snow.
  Johnny then finds himself in The Beauty's 'elfin grot', a green bower of joy and happiness, where they make love, before she lulls him to sleep.
  His sleep is fitful, and he awakens on the cold hillside, alone. Time passes, and he sees her no more, but he becomes increasingly obsessed and desirous of her.
  She returns one day, when he’s at his lowest ebb. She recognises his obsession where she hoped truly for love. She lures him to a cavernous cave. Johnny Longthwaite disappears. Did he become doomed by his own invention, perhaps falling in the depths of the cave; or was she indeed an actual being from another realm, and there she took him, away from this earthly plane?
  The Merciless Beauty is a loose modern-day adaptation of John Keats’ poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In the original, an errant knight encounters a lady in the meads, ‘full beautiful—a faery’s child’, who declares her love for him. They make love and the knight dreams: a nightmarish vision of dead kings, princes and warriors, who cry: ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci hath thee in thrall!’ It’s a warning; the knight is doomed by this lady without mercy.

THE MERCILESS BEAUTY

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
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