Reflective Encounters

““Going bald is the most manly thing that I’m ever gonna do,” once sang the ever brilliant singer-songwriter Jeffrey Lewis.

Luke Bather’s silly and endearing dark comedy with a folically challenged protagonist is – ultimately – about masculinity. Rather than tread the obvious route of testosterone-tinged self-loathing, the film is a gentle satire about how many men of a certain age need something to anchor themselves and find something to share with others. Sometimes it’s cars. At other times it’s sports. Here it’s the world’s baldest man talking to the moon and sharing the results of the conversation and almost starting a quasi-religion. Each to their own.

Ostensibly Bald is a fun piece of whimsy. But for all its gentle absurdity there is also a vein of the profound that runs throughout the film, as our protagonists and his friends all search for meaning in the face of an unexplainable – and hairless – existence. With crisp black-and-white photography that strikes a fine line between realism and the cartoonish, Bald is a film that – even if it’s initially hair today and gone tomorrow – will still linger in the mind.”

— Laurence Boyce