“The Strange Ones’’ is as ominously simple as “Eagleman’’ is baroque. Written and directed by Christopher Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein, it follows a boy (Tobias Campbell) and a young man (David Call) as they crash a motel swimming pool after their car breaks down. Are they brothers? Kidnapper and victim? Something worse? Using a minimum of technique, the film oozes maximum uneasiness.
Ruben Östlund’s “Incident by a Bank’’ is a one-joke movie, but it’s a pretty good joke: a static long shot of a Swedish bank as it’s beset by a pair of hapless robbers while passersby comment blandly on the mayhem, not believing what’s happening until they’ve captured it on their cellphones. “Worst Enemy,’’ by contrast, is the program’s one clinker, a forced farce about an LA social misfit (Michaela Watkins) trapped in a girdle. Written and directed by actress Lake Bell, the short’s just as irritatingly self-conscious as the characters she plays in movies like “No Strings Attached.’’
“The High Level Bridge,’’ from Canada’s Trevor Anderson, is a five-minute documentary about the go-to site for suicide jumpers in Edmonton, Alberta; a mournful civic history with a shaggy-dog finale, it might have been better longer. As if to prove the point, the following short, Zachary Treitz’s “We’re Leaving,’’ is a delightfully discursive modern folk tale with a social sting, about a trailer park resident (Rusty Blanton), his wife (Veronica Blanton), and their pet alligator, Chopper.
The most conventional narrative in “2011 Sundance Shorts’’ is also one of the best (not to mention the only film here to have actually won an award at last year’s festival). “Deeper Than Yesterday,’’ from Australia’s Ariel Kleiman, is a harrowing moral fable set in a Russian submarine as months of enclosure turns the crew savage except for one semi-honorable seaman (Albert Goikhman). The recovery of the body of a beautiful drowned woman brings matters to a head, and the tension is increased by Kleiman’s casting choices and expert use of claustrophobic space. If shorts programs too often play like cinematic tapas bars, “Deeper Than Yesterday’’ feels like a welcome entrée after a course of satisfying appetizers.
