Beard Envy is a surreal journey into an aspirational, envy-ridden day-mare. Based on the spoken-word poetry of Robert Garnham, it tells the story of one person’s dream to have a beard.
The beard envier -Dan A Beard -is played by the wonderfully wide-eyed fresh-faced Jack Allum, who is constantly perplexed, amused, confused but mostly envious of the beards he encounters.
And what a range of beard-based brushes they are! From bumping into the South West’s most famous pirate Cpt’n Blackheart in a historical setting, through a tidal wave of beard competitors, science lab, barber’s shop and a wistful bus journey.
The first beard encounter is at Torquay Museum, and along with the location of Paignton’s The Lucky 7 Club, the settings add a sense of the real to this very other-world adventure, making it even more tangibly bizarre.
What’s lovely too is that the crowd of beardies are real… well… beardies. They combine with a range of actors, who sprout their own sense of ‘odd’. And Robert’s own dryly enthusiastic narration captures a sense of another, slightly off-set consciousness.
Quick-paced, the short film comes in at just over five minutes, and we can’t even guess at the length-of-beard-per-second ratio.
There are strong visuals from the duo of DoPs Jacob Brandon and Julian Kemp, and screenplay by Tom Eastwood has transferred the essence of a live stand-up to the opportunities of a multi-faced media environment.
Beard Envy belongs in that pantheon of engaging off-kilter flicks -it’s a quick excursion into the smile-enducing surreal.
Directed, produced and edited by John Tomkins, Beard Envy is beautifully British, eccentrically English and fittingly hopeful for hirsute heroes and wannabes alike.
Keep up with Beard Envy on Twitter: @beardenvyfilm and Facebook.