Cashback
Tags: prank, flashback

Plot synopsis:
Aspiring artist Ben Willis develops insomnia after a painful breakup with his girlfriend, Suzy. To take his mind off Suzy and to occupy the extra waking hours he has recently gained, Ben begins working at a local Sainsbury's supermarket, where he meets colourful co-workers. Among them is his colleague Sharon, with whom he soon develops a mutual crush. As his personal means to escape the boredom inherent in the night shift, Ben lets his imagination run wild. In particular, he imagines that he can stop time so that he can walk around in a world that is "frozen" like the pause of a film. He imagines female patrons of the supermarket stopped in time, allowing him to undress and draw them. Finally the ability to stop time becomes real.
A series of flashbacks occur with each progression of the plot, accompanied by Ben's narration and an examination of the effect the situation had had upon him. He explains how he always has been impressed by the beauty of the female body: how he, as a young boy, witnessed a Swedish boarder walk naked from the shower to her room. In another flashback, the young Ben and his best friend Sean share Sean's discovery of his parents' adult magazines, and Sean pays a neighbourhood girl fifty pence to show him, and all the neighbourhood boys, her vulva.
Ben's boss, Alan Jenkins, recruits the staff for a weekend football game and, after an embarrassing defeat, 26-Nil, Ben freezes time again. This time he discovers that he is not alone when he sees a mysterious stranger who is able to move inside the frozen world as he can. When Jenkins throws a party to honour his own birthday and as a consolation for their defeat, Sharon asks Ben to be her date, to which he eagerly but nervously agrees. While there, Ben encounters his ex-girlfriend Suzy, who implores him to try their relationship again. Ben refuses her advance but she kisses him, just as Sharon witnesses from afar. Sharon angrily leaves the party. Ben realizes Sharon has seen the kiss, and freezes time. After spending several days "frozen", Ben concludes that although he can stop time, he cannot reverse it to correct the mistake. He eventually seeks to explain himself to Sharon at her apartment, and a confrontation similar to the film-opening breakup occurs. Sharon henceforth does not show up to work at the supermarket.
As a practical joke, colleagues Barry and Matt phone Ben; Matt poses as an art gallery owner who is interested in displaying Ben's drawings, and schedules an appointment for Ben to present more to him. When Ben arrives as agreed, the reaction of the owner quickly reveals that he has been pranked. However, the gallery owner is nonetheless interested in Ben's work and decides to exhibit Ben's drawings. Sharon receives an invitation to the exhibition (on November 31st !) and visits. She is moved as most of the pieces depict her and she happily greets Ben, congratulating him on his success. The finale occurs as Ben shares his ability to stop time with her and the two step outside into a time-frozen snowfall.

Review: When I first watched this movie I couldn't get past the nudity enough to see the art.
I watched it again and started to see that the nudes were so perfect they were more like mannequins than anything else.
How can a movie about night-fill at a supermarket possibly be any good?
Add Sean Biggerstaff , humour, and an outstanding writer/director such as Sean Ellis, and you get the perfect mix.
Sean Ellis, in his first attempt at movie making, takes you on a journey that perfectly mixes art ( nudity, lighting, Ben's drawings), with humour.
One can easily see that Sean Ellis has a great career ahead of him.
The amount of detail put into such a short amount of time certainly makes the film worthy of all the awards it has received at various festivals.
I'm looking forward to seeing the full length film now!.
Cashback, a short film, long on imagination and wit..
Cashback is a gem of a short film.
Sean Ellis gets beautiful performances from his actors, played out beneath the life sapping neon of this enclosed world, brilliantly creating the boredom of the lives of the nightshift workers in a 24 hour supermarket.
It makes you laugh and makes you think.You'll never look at a store worker the same way again.
It's a short film, long on wit and imagination..
A completely refreshing short movie that is able to combine many different emotions in 20 minutes!Working on the night shift in Sainsbury's, the movie shows how all the staff manage to pass the time to cope with the boredom of an 8 hour work shift.Each with a completely different view on doing this which range from a meat counter, dairy products, plasters,shampoos and a unique imagination that will have you in rumination one minute, flustered the next and then laughing the other.A brilliant performance from all actors/actresses.I can't help but smile when I go shopping at Sainsbury's late at night....
A clever short with a unique atmosphere.
However, from the very first moment, the movie grabs your attention and puts you in the shoes of Ben.The shots are done with style and panache and particularly effective is the use of the bleak, artificial supermarket lighting which throws this whole surreal, sleepless world into perspective.
Also effective is the portrayal of the nude women who are almost alien in their stillness and with their flawless features.
Sean Biggerstaff is a real asset to the film as his flawless acting and his narration especially complement the film to a great extent.
The comedy elements coupled with the creation of a unique atmosphere make this film what it is.
However, the imagination and the simple fact that so many ideas are crammed into the fifteen or so minutes of this short really make this film incredible..
watch the full length movie :).
alright - i first watched the full length movie, and this prompted me to look up the original short movie.
i was astonished to see the exact scenes from the full movie comprise this short length.
initially i thought somehow these scenes were later integrated into the full length, but my thought is that the full length was probably already in post-production when someone decided to 'promote' the film by giving out this short version first (which is nothing bad).it actually works as a short movie, but having seen the full one i cant really comment on it because it is like a trailer to the full movie - it has the essence of the main plot, but nothing more than a hint of the beautiful ideas and artwork of the full length movie.i loved the full movie, watch it and probably you will like it too10/10, which is how i vote for the full length movie :)peace.
Atmospheric short film.
For such a short film (15 minutes), 'Cashback' offered quite a lot.It is about staff who work the night shift at a supermarket and the stuff they get up to.
Then we see what Ben's imagination is to pass time.There are a few laughs and all the cast do a very good job.
The short film is extremely well made and does have a message.
The atmosphere builds up as it goes on so it really draws you in.At 15 minutes, you don't have much to lose, just give it a try.
I enjoyed it but I don't think I saw enough to make me want to watch the full length version which was released two years later.Don't watch if full frontal nudity will offend you.7/10..
Lots of nudity and angst--but is it art?.
CASHBACK was nominated for the 2006 Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film, losing to SIX SHOOTER.
While the film had an interesting style and was filled with angst, I wonder if it was so artistic or interesting to merit the nomination.
While I have not seen all the other films it competed against, I felt that perhaps it was an odd choice because on one level it might be seen as an artistic film but on the other it really just looked like a young film student trying to make a pornographic and offensive film that could be considered mainstream.
The film is crammed with full-frontal nudity of some very beautiful women, though the scenes are not necessarily of a sexual nature (i.e., they are not engaging in sex acts).
However, there are more up close crotch shots than I would have expected for this category and the crude sexual references (such as the sausage and shampoo scenes) just made the film seem rather gross in spots.
Keeping the nudity and dropping the shampoo/sausage scenes would have greatly improved the film and given the project a greater sense of artistry--not smut.Perhaps I am just a prude, but I was left feeling quite mixed about the film.
It was interesting but seemed very gratuitous as well--like a film made by a few teens whose parents were away for the weekend.By the way, if they DID want to make a mainstream film, having the movie star a guy named "Biggerstaff" didn't help their cause..
A good film, apart from the lack of gratitude towards Nicholson Baker.
An OK film, it raises funnily and cleverly the questions of sex, beauty and the private moments of life.
Nevertheless, I have just discovered this film a couple of weeks ago during a visit at the video store and you know what my first thought was after reading the summary of the film on the DVD cover ?
And not a single mention of it !" I read the ""Fermata in 2004 and the book upon the shelves of my library offered the possibility to share views with the help of pieces of paper between the pages, I believe it is what you call book crossing.
This book, although I don't read that much, provided a great sensation because in my adolescence, I vividly wanted that kind of freezing power to undress women.
Nicholson Baker has had the art of translating a common human (male especially) fantasy, I believe.
Even if many of us had that kind of fantasy, I doubt Sean Ellis was unaware of the Fermata in the process of writing Cashback, therefore, he should have added an ounce of gratitude to Baker.
It's all about effective time management.
I literally just got back from my trip to NYC to see this film at the Tribeca Film Festival.I went in knowing it would be interesting, but I had no idea how amazed I would be.
And it is a beautiful artistic world.Sean Ellis and Sean Biggerstaff were both on hand for the Q&A session following the showing.
Sean Ellis revealed the plans for the full length feature, saying that the short itself will be placed in the film intact and the rest of the movie will happen before and after it.
He joked that he was lucky that he already has a 20-minute trailer for the film.The film was amazing and I can't wait to see it as a full length feature..
A well executed film.
The film provides a few minutes of amusement and is very well crafted.
It's impossible to comment on such a short film without giving away spoilers but give the film a go.
The mise en scene is constructed well and the musical score finishes the whole thing off in an upbeat fashion.I consider that the film has an impact that could last long beyond the viewing.
This was the "weakest" of the five nominees for the Live-Action Short category bestowed by AMPAS, which means it was only very good in a field of excellent shorts.
Because I want to discuss the short in a little detail, there will be spoilers: The basic premise is that people who work on the clock at a supermarket during the late shift all have different ways to make the time seem to go by more quickly, ranging from just not looking at the clock through simply goofing off to the most extreme, which is pretending that you've cause time and all movement but your own to come to a full stop.
Along the way, we meet a female checkout clerk, the overbearing and absolutely tedious supervisor who keeps trying to impress her (in vain), two arrested development cases, who are 22 going on 12 and the narrator, who is the one who makes time pass by acting like he's stopped it cold.
Oh yeah-he also likes to sketch the female shoppers (at least the prettier ones) in the nude.His narration is generally entertaining and often funny.
It's an entertaining short which may actually make a better feature, as it feels a tad constrained by its brevity.
All in all, a good short and well worth watching.This short is available on a compilation DVD containing eight of ten nominees for the two Academy Awards Shorts categories (two of the Animated Short nominees aren't included) and it's a very good DVD indeed.
I saw Cashback at the 2005 Seattle International Film Festival, in a showing with four other shorts.
The treatment of women in this film is deplorable.
There is a long sequence in which the main character "stops time" in a grocery store, then undresses all of the women and sketches them.
Or, I should say, sketches their breasts, asses, and hairless groins: their faces, and anything about them other than their bodies between their knees and their shoulders is apparently irrelevant.
To make this worse, the sketcher blathers about his love of the "beauty of the female form", when it would be more honest for him to say that he's obsessed with tits and shaved pussies.
I can't think of a more repulsive objectification of women on film (though, to be fair, I tend to avoid films that might offer competition in this area)..
To begin with this short movie looked promising.
The best shot is of a bag of frozen peas spilled on the floor which is actually the most artistic bit in the film.
He then talks about his love of the female form while looking up several young females skirts.
The next shot is of his childhood and of his life changing after seeing a naked Swedish exchange student walking up the stairs.
The rest of the film is made up of 'artistic' shots of attractive slim under 30s women.
Actually no, of attractive thin under 30s breasts, behind and shaven crotch.
Agreed there is artistic beauty in a attractive slim womans body, but what about her face, hair, eyes?
He mentions the uniqueness of their beauty, but all I was seeing was the same body type over and over.
If you are a straight guy or a lesbian this is your wet dream but for me being a straight women i found it degrading and pathetic except for the few moments of actual thoughtful art.
Art at the supermarket.
"Cashback" is an 18-minute short film from over 10 years ago.
It was nominated for an Academy Award in the live action short category, but lost to the brilliant "Six Shooter".
At least this time, the Academy got it right.
Still, writer and director Sean Ellis managed to build a fairly successful filmmaking career on the basis of that achievement.
The first half is basically about a young man's professional life at a supermarket, his grubby boss, his likable female colleague and two other colleagues who like joking around and playing pranks and also get in trouble with their boss occasionally.
The second half then is about the young man's childhood when he saw a Swedish foreign exchange student fully naked at his house and how this inspired him also to see the customers at the supermarket naked now.
Or does he really have the ability to stop time and see right through all their clothes.
It always had a touch of softcore to me and I saw almost no artistry in there despite Ellis' try-hard attempts in making this look like something significant.
You can include full-frontal nudity, but you have to spin a convincing story around it and succeed in depicting and explaining why you do so.
This movie came short in that regard.
They are far more liberal these days, so they had no problem with the nudity and they love to prove people wrong who say they are too uptight for films like this one.
Literally, this is the only reason I can think of why this got an Academy Award nomination.
It sure can't be because of the mediocre quality of this short movie.
The only thing I kinda liked here was the music, but that was also only because Ellis took famous pieces by other artists and included them here.
Amusing little short that doesn't have the content to deliver on the artistic offerings in second half (SPOILERS).
Ben is an art student who works in his local Sainsbury's to pay his bills.
As with all his colleagues the mind-numbing work makes time go even slower than it normally would and each of them deals with it different ways.
His knack is to freeze time dead in its tracks and embrace the freedom this gives him  a freedom that his creative side and appreciation of the female form takes full advantage of.Someone recommended the film Cashback to me and, when I discovered it was originally a short film I decided to watch it first.
The film is a game of two halves and I'm not entirely sure how it all fits together.
The first half is a perfectly amusing bit about the realities of a menial job, one where you do the same thing over and over again and cannot escape the reality that it doesn't matter what they do.
This reminded me a little of Employee of the Month in the way that those in the supermarket find to pass the time, playing games or other little knacks.
In this regard the film is amusing but not hilarious and I was assuming that the film would mine this vein harder for its punch line.That it didn't do this is not a problem but what it did do didn't fit with the tone of the first half.
What the film becomes is Ben freezing time to mostly undress women and appreciate their bodies.
It is presented as an artistic pursuit but it felt a bit odd to me to see the character of Ben undressing women without their consent and it made me wonder what the point was.
Instead it falls back into a punch line related to the first half of the film but not one that ties to this sudden venture into female nudity.The end result is still amusing but I'm not seeing what about this got it Oscar nominated.
The comedy stuff isn't done with enough humour and imagination, while the artistic stuff isn't fully realised, leaving it feeling a bit weird with what it is saying/doing with the bodies of unaware young women.
Distracting stuff though and I will be looking at the full film to see what Ellis does with more time and resources to expand upon this..
Film short that eventually was made into a full length movie..
This 18-minute film short won a number of awards, and in 2004 was nominated for the Oscar for best short.
It is included in the DVD extras section of the 2006 movie of the same name.Anyone offended by frank and explicit female nudity, from several different angles, should avoid this movie, even though it is a romantic comedy.Set in England with British actors, the title has two references in the movie, which takes place largely in a supermarket and among its employees.
When customers pay with some type of debit card, they are asked if they want any "cash back." Also, character Ben Willis, in art college, can't sleep after his girlfriend dumps him, so he gets a night shift job at the supermarket, making use of that otherwise useless 8 hours, and for his efforts gets "cash back." Sean Biggerstaff is Ben Willis, art student who gets dumped.
The cashier at the supermarket is Emilia Fox as Sharon Pintey, and they take a liking to each other.The movie has a very unique premise, Ben can seemingly stop time, where everything around him freezes until he puts his hands together and "cracks" his fingers.
Having been curious since a small boy about the female figure, he stops time in the supermarket and partially undresses the pretty ladies and draws them, and of course putting all their garments back in order before he resumes time.It is not totally clear whether he is really stopping time, which would be a fantasy element, but it appears that he is, otherwise he wouldn't have had time to draw all the nice, complex drawings he made.Very interesting and entertaining movie, if seeing female nudity doesn't bother you.