The Cure is a short film that captures the intensity of emotions that often accompanies the end of a romantic relationship. The film runs about six minutes in length but says a lot in that short amount of time.

Done completely in a voice-over narration with a score, The Cure details one woman’s solution for stopping herself from obsessing over an ex-boyfriend. The director chooses to display the events leading up to and following the woman’s decision both in black and white and color, creating the desired dramatic effects. Liberty is also taken with the score. Instead of the usual piano and violin score, it is a strong guitar arrangement.

The choice to have the film narrated lends a deeper look inside the mind of the woman, letting us perhaps better understand her decision. Had the film been characters acting out the events through dialogue, I feel a lot of the intensity of The Cure would be lost.

I really enjoyed the cinematography. There are some daring angles and then the back and forth between color and black and white. I liked that the score used guitar, rather than piano and violin. But at times, it does tend to distract from the story since it is such a heavy score. Still, I found The Cure to be a really strong, intriguing film.

The Cure was inspired by an article about people’s obsession with lost loves and how that can lead to rage and despair. Finished in January 2006, the film traveled the festival circuit for the next year and a half. It won two awards from The New York International Independent Film & Video Festival: Best Short Film-Romance, Genre Award and Best Short Film, Screencraft Award.

See the whole film online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSSrHFCGxQM.

For more on the film, visit www.jafripictures.com. The Contact Us section has links to IMDB and to a MySpace page. Writer/Director Ryan Jafri is working on his next project, No Man’s Land, which he hopes to begin production on within a year. If you’d like to contact him, you may do so at ryjafri@jafripictures.com