Fever Narrative Analysis - Inspiration

Fever Analysis

Fever is a short film which shows a day in the lives of four teenagers. This day in their lives is shown to be a normal day until a sudden ‘fever’ takes over causing them to act spontaneously. The ‘fever’ acts differently on each of the teens, some act in confidence others act in nervousness and this allows the audience to empathise and sympathise with the characters.

Fever begins by showing the characters getting ready for the day/night ahead, this introduction is one that the audience can relate to as everybody has to get ready. This makes the characters in the film more organic and relatable. Throughout this beginning the film cuts between shots of the teens at a fast pace, these cuts show that the narrative is not focusing on any one specific character. The characters all have equal screen time which paints them as all equal even though they are different in many ways such as race, religion, social status and social class. Each character is from a different country and in the film they speak their native language, this also adds to the authenticity of their characters, making them feel more real.

Due to the constant cutting between each character, Fever has an anachronic narrative as there is no clear dominance between any narrative threads but the film could be episodic because each story is somewhat connected by the presence of the ‘fever’. The directors could have made each story fully episodic and have each story play out fully in an order but they didn’t because it would detract from the equality message that the film is trying to portray. This unorthodox narrative could only work for these stories.

In Fever there is a restricted narrative because the audience isn’t told exactly what’s happening in the beginning. The film uses a lot of hermeneutic code as the audience has to ask a lot of questions before getting an answer. This enforces the idea that these characters are real people and that the audience have no idea of who they are and what their personalities are. For most of the stories, the seven character types that Propp identified don’t appear and this tells the audience that real life is unpredictable and doesn’t follow conventions.

The characters in Fever are very unique, interesting and layered. The first character we see in the film is Kuro. The audience are given clues to where he is from such as the posters of japanese films. Kuro’s story begins at night, this is a stark contrast to every other story and could mean that his story is darker and displays more serious themes. Kuro is presented as a quiet introvert, he is always shown alone in his room or at work on his phone. His job as a delivery driver fits his personality as he drives around the city alone. This is Kuro’s equilibrium as there is no visible disturbances in his life at this point. The audience are given proairetic code when they are told that Kuro likes a girl and has to deliver food to her house. The narrative now starts to pick up pace and this sudden change from slow to fast could reflect Kuro’s heart rate and racing mind.

When Kuro arrives at the girl’s apartment tension beings to rise as the ambient music begins to swell in a darker tone, this creates confusion for the audience because the story has become unpredictable. The audience can’t predict what is going to happen now, this links back to how this film mimics reality and just like life it is naturally unpredictable. Kuro strips naked in the girl’s house which completely defies expectations, naturally this disgusts and shocks the girl and she proceeds to remove him from her house. If this narrative was more traditional the girl would have reacted differently but because of the realistic nature of this film, the girl acts naturally in this situation. At this point the audience are shown the disruption, recognition, repair and reinstatement stages of the narrative conventions identified by Todorov. All of these stages are shown at almost the same which could show how in life, our problems aren’t significant in the grand scheme of things.

The rest of the characters have very similar narrative structures but with very different stories. There is a constant theme of marginalised teens. These teens are the most focused on and this is ironically they are getting the most attention even though they naturally don't want or need it. The teens are consistently shown by themselves but in the narrative they are together experiencing similar events with the 'fever’ they are subjected to.

In conclusion a lot of narrative theory and codes can be applied to Fever, with it's unorthodox narrative some narrative code is absent but it helps give the film a greater unique identity.