Animals (Treatment)
Feature length comedy/drama
Logline: Three people, all with disastrous love lives, have a wedding to go to... and one of them is the bride.
This is an ensemble black comedy charting the events of three people as they prepare for a lavish wedding tomorrow and a memorable party tonight. There relationship to each other and the groom, Kevin.
Think Richard Curtis movie without the rose-tinted glasses.
The Wedding
Kevin stands at the alter of a packed church, paralysed with fear. The entire congregation stare at him expectantly. A bead of sweat runs down the side of his face. “
I can explain everything.”Chapter 1 - The Friend
The alarm clock screams 10:03am, the noise drills deep into JOE’S skull. This isn’t good. Tomorrow an old friend is getting married, he’s got a 300 mile journey ahead of him and the mother of all hangovers. It’s Shaping up to be one of those days.
So after tripping over his inebriated flat mate SIMON and eventually finding his car keys the two of them set off. But the actual wedding isn’t the only thing playing on his mind. Joe recollects the last time he saw Kevin was the night he caught him in bed with his fiancee. Now the guy’s getting married himself, to some woman they’ve never met.
“Of course you’ve met her. She was at that party last year.”
Realisation hits Joe like a lightning bolt. Vague memories of a one night stand he had and a girl he’s pined for ever since. What are the chances, eh?
Just then the car stalls and dies. Leaving the two friends stranded in the middle of nowhere. With no phone and no clue how they are going to get in touch with Kevin they can only come up with one plan - Crash the hen party.
Chapter 2 - The Lover
KATE thinks this is it, she can finally be happy. Kevin is the perfect man. He has a good job, good prospects and he treats her like a princess. Surely she could be happy with him.
Surely.She sits at the end of her bed and looks longingly at a picture of herself and Kevin. Just then there is a knock at her door. She drops the photo -
“Just a minute!”. She picks up a pile of clothes off the floor and throws them out of the window, then she grabs the naked man in her bed and pushes him out of the window.Behind the door is the father of the bride and today is rehearsal day. So at the church in between the flowers and seating arrangements Kate makes a promise to herself to change her ways and be faithful to her perfect man. Then the photographer turns up - and he looks amazingly like the naked guy from earlier.
Kate receives a phone call from an apologetic Kevin telling her he is snowed under at work and he won’t be able to make the rehearsal but promises to see her later. But Kate has plans for later, its her hen party and she is never one to turn down a good party.
So many drinks later and the “girls” find themselves discussing the men in their lives and telling Kate to enjoy her last night of freedom. Kate looks around the club at all the men and starts to recognise a lot of familiar faces.
Lots & lots of familiar faces. Overcome by guilt she escape to the one last sanctuary in the world - the ladies toilet.Chapter 3 - The Hater
LOUISE hates most of what life has to offer, especially her job and is desperate for a way out. But, like always, she gets up, puts on her “happy face” and goes to work as normal. Tomorrow she has to sit through the farce that is her best friends wedding but before that there is the dreaded hen party.
At least at work shes got a few hours to think up an excuse and all she has to worry about is her boss keeping his hands to himself. But this is Kevin we’re talking about. The guy who makes Peter Stringfellow look like a saint. That’s when she receives an email. It’s the publishers she sent her manuscript to. They like it. They want to give her a book deal. But now that means she has to tell her friends what she has been writing about - them.
First things first, deal with Kevin. She turns the tables and starts flirting with him. She leads him back to her flat and insists they play a little game. A length of rope & a pair of handcuffs later and Kevin finds himself half naked, blindfolded and strapped to the bed. Its a pity Louise has a party to get to.
Leaving the bondage bride groom behind she heads to the club to tell her friends their lives are about to make it into print. But when she gets there she finds out Kate has just run off to the bathroom. She discovers her crying and racked with guilt. Louise decides its time she knows the truth about Kevin. So one revelation later (enough gossip to silence the entire ladies’ room) and Kate decides to follow her heart.
Just then Joe bursts into the room (followed by a dazed & confused Simon) ready to confess his feelings to Kate. The only problem is the person he thinks is Kate isn’t the woman that’s just run out of the room but the girl stood infront of him, Louise. A bit of mistaken identity and confusion from 12 months ago have led a guy she had a one night stand with (whilst on a business trip with her boss) into believing she was Kevin’s fiance.
The Wedding?
Kevin stands at the alter of a packed church, paralysed with fear. The entire congregation stare at him expectantly. A bead of sweat runs down the side of his face. “
I can explain everything.” Joe and Louise rush through the back door and try to sneak in inconspicuously. They freeze when they see Kevin. Louise remembers - “I knew I forgot something!” Kevin is stood there at the alter, still semi naked and strapped to a bed stead looking like a poor imitation of Christ. It’s a good job Kate’s runaway with the photographer.To his friends, KEVIN is somewhat of a pathetic loser who is finally get his life on track; to his fiance, the perfect gentleman who can do no wrong; and to his work colleague, a slimy, arrogant prick.
JOE is the guilt ridden, slightly neurotic friend who is trying to pluck up the courage to tell the truth when he thinks he slept with his best friends fiance.
SIMON doesn’t worry about anyone or anything, normally because he’s too stoned to care (but mainly because he’s worth about £3.5m after selling his web engine in the “dot-com” boom).
KATE is the wild child who has suddenly found herself settling down and getting married. But recently she has started to reevaluate her life, not so much cold feet as a realisation that she never wanted this, everything just sort of happened.
LOUISE hates most things in life but mainly her boss. And all that bile and hatred eventually finds it’s way into the book she is writing “PEOPLE: WHERE MOTHER NATURE SCREWED UP”.
This is Kevin’s story, only its told three times from three very different perspectives, with each of the protagonists
seeing him in a different way. The film carries on the tradition of telling a multi strand story in a non-linear style. Similar to Tarantino in Pulp Fiction or Doug Liman with Go or even Kurosawa’s classic Rashomon. First you see Joe’s side of the story, then Kate’s and then finally Louise has her say.[ all Flickernow stories ]