Lessons From The Night

This is an odd but touching little short, a slice of the life of a cleaning lady in one of Australia's business districts. In truth it could be anywhere, the generic landscape of cubicles, PCs, network telephones, futher anonymised by fluorescent striplights and the dark of unseen skies.

What makes this nocturnal landscape is its sole occupant. Her backpack vacuum cleaner whirring, she has, as she puts it, "a lot of time to be philosophical". Maia was a translator, attached to the embassy of a country that didn't exist after the Iron Curtain fell, at least not such that she could go home. In this limbo she found herself in a new state of inbetween: offices at night dreaming of the next day's business, waiting to be cleaned of the traces of the one before.

It is full of ephemeral achievements, this twilight existence, "If you have a diamond, 20 years later you have a diamond. When I clean a floor, one pair of dirty shoes and it's gone." On the basis of this outing, it is likely that writer/director Adrian Francis' career will tend more towards the former. This is a little gem.