The Most Beautiful Man in the World

A young girl is playing in the field outside her house on an hot summer’s day as her mum chats to a friend about spending £95 to get her hair braided. There, she encounters a shirtless man who takes a beetle from her shoulder and gently puts it into her hand. When her mother espies them the girl immediately takes flight for her home, yet once behind the door she sits on the stairs contemplating their brief meeting. I couldn’t decide whether this was some sort of public information film about approaching strangers or whether the man could be a friend, her father even, whom she didn’t know or did but was still unsure of? Is it a warning or is it something altogether more benign? I hadn’t much clue and as such I finished this as unsatisfied as it was inconclusive. Perhaps it is just inviting us to consider our own prejudices, but using a pre-teen girl as the subject didn’t sit easy. It’s provocative, so see what you think.