FEBRUARY 22, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 3

Being obtuse or enigmatic does not make a story charming or cute. Bloating people up into exaggerated, obnoxious caricatures of tired clichés is neither insightful nor interesting. Constant, over-choreographed movement of actors across the screen does not mean there’s anything actually going on in a scene. These are probably the most insufferable crimes of Il Supplente, an Italian live-action short that tries so very, very hard, and wants you to know it.

A high school class finds itself under the tutelage of a bizarre, hyperkinetic substitute teacher. As the man displays less and less decorum and more and more madness, the students gleefully comply with his frenetic commanding that they act like animals or terrorize fellow students. It’s all played for laughs, although the effect is more perplexing and discomfiting than anything else.

The substitute teacher is revealed as a fraud: an important attorney who bluffed his way into the classroom, apparently, as a lark. His subsequent important meeting with “The President of China” is disrupted by one of the students, come to act like a goofy fat kid in a pathetic pantomime of a class clown who craves love and attention. Or, maybe the director just likes seeing fat kids act silly. The problem is that we can’t really know, because the epilogue is merely the attorney giving a voice-over espousing the value of acknowledging the inner child. Or . . . something. Despite all its heavy-handedness and passionate devotion to being “quirky,” I had thought I detected some weak message coming through as I suffered through the middle minutes: maybe something about this impromptu substitute teaching some kids about the value of doubting authority. Ha ha, no, I was wrong. The final voice-over corrected me. Which is what I love, being told that what I’ve just seen was all lies, or a mistake, or just non-sequitur.