Agualique by Joseph Cahill and Teresa Aguilera - Short - A Doctor must face his painful past so that he can move on with the present. 31 pages - doc, format

Hey Joseph,

Just finished 'Agualique' and I must admit I had to force myself to finish it. To me, it felt overly long, or maybe not long enough. Confused? Yeah, so am I. Maybe it was the many time shifts that threw me off and, in my book, made the script feel disjointed. Also there where certain sub-plots that you only briefly touched upon, even though - looking back - they seem to play important roles in both understanding the character's motivation but also to tie the whole story together.

!!!SPOILERS!!!

Let's get the easy fixes out of the way (and this part actually bothered me a lot). You call Damian "Old Doctor", "Young Doctor", "Young Damian" and "Child Damian". Instead of doing this, I would have just called him "Damian" and then indicated whenever a FLASHBACK occurred. That way you can use the action lines to tell us how old he is and at the same time you maintain continuity. In fact, why are Blanca and Damian (to a certain extend) the only named characters? This was a huge mistake in my book. Pretty much everyone else are named by their title/function. That alone made me want to put the script down because it relays a certain amount of indifference from the writer toward the characters. On a related note, I think you have way to many characters (granted, most of them are minor characters) for a 30 pager.

The not so easy fixes concern the characters. Let's start with Blanca. A very weak character even though she's is one of the main leads, and even though she - apparently - carries a huge load of emotional baggage. I didn't know why she had problems, why she had those hissy fits. The "Nobody ever loved me" line simply doesn't cut it. You have to show the reader why she is at the emotional state she is. What did her father do to her or what didn't he do to her. Those are some of the questions I fell need to be answered for her character to work as I'm sure you intended her to work. I also feel it would be nice to what actually happened to her father. The same questions goes for her mother.

Like Blanca, Damian I think is poorly developed. Again you hint at certain things, this time in Damian's past concerning his father, and again it comes across as under-developed and it actually left me with more questions than answers. If that was what you were aiming then you certainly succeeded. Also, his relationship with Blanca develops in an extremely rushed fashion. I of course got the feeling that he, if not loved her, then he at least cared deeply for her and was genuinely concerned for her well being. But where does it go to full blossom love, and making a child, to more or less insanity after her death? The whole thing with the watch was a nice gimmick but again that leads to question about his father that was never explained.

Your writing though was, as usual, really good. You're very visual and a personally like that, but be careful of writing things that doesn't make it onto film. Example: "The only thing left from his father". While that sounds really good on paper, it's really difficult to convert to film without some additional scenes.

I liked the twist in the end, and the part with Julian, but as a whole I did not care much for this story for reasons stated above..

Anyway, my two cents.


Cheers
Rob