Jamie Travis’ The Armoire

Jamie Travis is the first of four Canadian short filmmakers we’ve featured in issue#61

The Armoire is the final instalment in Jamie Travis’ Saddest Children in the World trilogy. Like the other films in the trilogy, Why the Anderson Children Didn’t Come to Dinner and The Saddest Boy in the World, it highlights the lives of what the filmmaker refers to as “disenfranchised children.” Jamie is perhaps better known for another trifecta of short films he’s made, The Patterns Trilogy. With The Armoire, he builds on his unmistakable style in which environment and dress are married to create a calming and aesthetically pleasing backdrop. The more you watch, the more you appreciate the care he puts into every layer of detail.

The Armoire tells the story of a young boy named Aaron whose friend Tony goes missing during a game of hide and seek. The events leading up to Tony’s disappearance are uncovered when Aaron undergoes a session of hypnosis revealing an array of hyper-symbolic elements teetering over the line between tragedy and comedy.

Though the film deals with the development of a young child’s sexual identity, it also pokes fun at the fact that parents and adults alike tend to ignore and underestimate the degree to which children are comfortably self-aware. For Jamie, this film is particularly important as young Aaron pays homage to his own childhood—he says the two “share a sense of displacement” and a “vulnerability waiting to be squashed.” Though he has always seen his craft as a form of therapy, Jamie says The Armoire is his “crispest case study yet,” outlining his first sexual relationship and its “painful and yet joyous series of power struggles that I can’t deny has affected all of my adult relationships.”

Jamie Travis’ films have earned him some serious credit in the film community. In 2008, the Toronto International Film Festival Group honoured his work by placing him in Canada’s Top Ten, a yearly event held to recognize excellence in Canadian cinema. In addition to this, he has also been referred to as “one of the most original voices in Canadian cinema” (The Toronto Sun). Jamie believes these accolades stem from the fact that his “emphasis is not on character and performance but on mood and look and design… in a way that is still narrative and hard to label experimental.” I would agree with this assessment, but would add that his unashamedly open and real approach to storytelling is what makes The Armoire particularly refreshing.

Alicia Wrobel