Turpe

“Turpi” is about a priest shitting or cumming - it’s never made clear. It takes nerves of steel to submit this to a film competition so kudos in that department “Olax”. Absolutely unconcerned with being liked, laughed at or even understood, and yet somehow people seemed to. The lead actor gives a galvanising performance as a priest who either shits or cums and seems on the edge of genuine fury at having to do presumably 500 takes.

Awesome pacing, really well done

I loved this! It is mesmerizing, can't look away.
The colour, the slow move in on the priest, the sound.
so arty, so neat!
Thanks!

What I liked:
It is strangely absorbing as the static shot for most of the film really does force you to watch and listen. Charlie’s performance is great – he sells “a loss of faith” or “shame” really well. Some of the subtle touches are also well played, notably him being forced to restart a line of his sermon when someone coughed and his frustration at that. I also liked that, as an audience, we are kind of placed within the congregation – kind of.

Take it or leave it:
Look, anything can be a film, and this one-shot takes the genre to its almost absolute minimum with its static camera and belated slow zoom. It’s certainly been done before – one of my favourites was 2014’s “BALLSED UP” from UNE in Auckland. What that film did so well (and it only had a 90-second run time) was establish a number of conflict points and then nail an ending for good value. “Turpe” doesn’t manage that and really is just a poo joke. Despite his confessional, shameful sermon, our minister is no different from beginning to end, so not sure what the meaning is here.

Final hot air:
This is quite rewatchable, only if to try and pick up on things you may have missed, but the two-minute sermon and then the remainder of the run time devoted to singing is pretty grim viewing, because nothing really happens at all. In the shortlist and naturally highly likely to be in the CHCH final. Great job once more, Olax.

Thank you, I have just learned a new Latin and Italian word!

I imagine Turpe – like Hi Santa, It's Charlie last year – will be divisive. There is no rhyme nor reason to my own reactions. I disliked last year's Olax film but I like this year's. I found last year's indulgent but this year's amusing. Probably last year I was just jealous that it wasn't me doing the long drawn-out character piece.

Anyway, enough musing on my own personality defects. What do I love about Turpe? It's the fact that the naughty child sitting at the back of church, who really doesn't want to be there, has somehow become the priest standing at the front. He doesn't know the words to the hymn and he really can't be arsed with it all. Organised religion can't help but make a mockery of him and it just isn't fair.

The attention to detail in this piece is striking. A carefully written script. A carefully executed 4:3 greyscale one-shot. Careful little touches in the interaction between the congregation and the priest, with a cough. The mind boggles trying to imagine what foul incident is being hinted at – let alone how it could impact on the entire rural environ and the sheep within it.

At first I assumed this was a POV, but then I wondered why the camera didn't move up and down in sync with the congregation standing and sitting. Then I realised it must be a "found footage" church recording, almost Songs of Praise in its style. But this made me think the footage was too crisp for the era many decades ago in which this footage was presumably captured. Anyway, turns out that wasn't even your assigned genre, but well done for covering off more than one 2026 genre in the film.

Olax is the master of character vignettes, beautiful in their simplicity, that perfectly suit the 48Hours five-minute time limit.

I can't believe you were actually given the One Take genre, it is so perfect for you! To be honest I have the opposite opinion to Mark - I prefer "Hi Santa it's Charlie" - but this film is excellent also.

What I found impressive was that not only did you do a one take film, you did a one take film from a fixed tripod camera. And the only reason you zoomed in at the end was because you technically had to do something like this in order to have the "extreme close up" element (you could alternatively have done this by a late-coming audience member walking in front of the camera to her pew and the camera momentarily focusing on something in her hair, but either way you were forced into some sort of added gimmick). If it wasn't for this element we'd probably have had a single fixed shot the whole way.

What I didn't like so much was that the story was too simple. Simple is good but can be taken too far. I think the monologue could have had more than the one core joke, and that would have engaged the audience more (think Rowan Atkinson pretending to be a preacher as an alternative similar skit example). This seemed to run out of content in my opinion. Hi Santa it's Charlie just gave us a bit more.

But what was very good was the complete mystery about what the preacher was actually apologising for. The imagination can fill in the blanks more entertainingly than whatever you could have said. And the choice of black and white also allowed the set to look more formal, and subtly shifted us into a time when more of the community would have been listening to the preacher, making the whole situation that much more embarrassing and heightening the joke through a simple colour choice. Every detail here was carefully and intentionally chosen.

I can't think of any other team who could pull off an engaging one take without moving the camera at all. Well done.