Film rating: 2/5 (The Editor); 2.5/5 (J, The)
Walkouts: 0/5
Pretentious clapping at credits: 4/5
BPM sighting: No

A meditation on absence and longing, 4:30 is about a moment - and a young boy’s attempt to cling to it, escaping his drab reality. Told entirely from the perspective of the boy, it concerns his relationship with a listless 30-something year-old tenant who is nursing a broken heart. Seemingly without supervision and longing for human contact, the boy tries all he can to make a connection through physical and metaphorical walls in that hour between night and day.

Filmmaker Royston Tan considers 4:30am to be the loneliest time – “too late to go to sleep yet, at the same time, too late to be awake.” As opposed to language, Tan capitalises on gesture and expression to convey the film’s universal theme of loneliness.

The Editor says: J, The reckons that festival director James Hewison has a bet with himself that he can chuck at least one big word into each film introduction he presents before screenings. The other day he got “maelstrom” out, and before this film he used the words “cacophony”, “ubiquitous”, and the phrase “oasis of calm”. 4:30 certainly was an oasis of calm and it was working really well until about the 55th minute when The Editor started thinking about needing to go to the dentist. Note to all filmmakers: ultra-long shots of face acting are an excellent way of transmitting feelings, moods and thoughts. But why not break it up with a bit of dialogue or movement? And whatever happened to story? The audience worked out that the kid was screwed up but that’s about it. Throw them a few more clues.

J, The says: This film started out well. There was something about the editing of each individual sequence which made it feel like they were the exact right length – for about 30 minutes anyway. Then I started getting a bit restless and the echo of both the film director’s and James Hewison’s voices saying before the film ‘This is a quiet film….” began to ring with ominous clarity in my mind – probably because there was so little going on in the film itself to distract me. I liked the poignant moments and I had a tear in my eye when the Korean “uncle” moved over for the little screwed up boy to sit by him on the stairs – their first moment of contact after about 60 minutes of tiptoeing around each other. But I felt pretty frustrated at the end of the movie and the learned from this movie that a film needs some action, any action, to break it up and make all those long sad shots have an impact. Quiet films can include quiet action and make the quietness even more soulful! And hey – what the hell happened? I don’t think it is too philistine of me to want some story – not a lot, not Spielberg dollops of plot – but some.