Project Detail

Day Release

Synopsis

When the stress of running a large business in an increasingly competitive world became too much to bear, Jeff Baker's wife and associates conspire to have him sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983. Now, six months later, he is entitled to an informal Mental Health Review Tribunal to determine his fitness to return to society.

Initially, the panel recommend a conditional discharge that amounts to little more than granting him 'Day Release', under the foolish assumption that nothing could go wrong in one day.

But the intervening months have wreaked havoc on both his private and business life, and in his attempt to rebuild them, he is told that his parents are dead, his kids have flown the nest to join obscure cults, his wife has run off with his business partner whose embezzling tendencies have resulted in the total collapse of their company which is now being controlled by their former accountant, under his deceptive guise as The Official Receiver.

As Jeff accumulates the evidence that is to prove that both he and his wife have been misled, manipulated, cheated and lied to, he acquires a string of witnesses who all, without exception, suffer from one form of phobia or another. In effect, he comes to realise what the medical profession has known all along, that everyone in the world is neurotic, it's just that some of these neuroses, such as an obsession with money, have become generally approved of by society.

Details

Year: 1998
Type of project: Features
Running time: 92 mins
Format: Digi Beta
Director: Charlie Gauvain
Producer: Martin Darvill, Sir Nicholas Bonsor
Director of Photography: Andy Murray
Principal cast: Simon Green, Manouk van der Meulen, Elaine Hallam, Sarah Withe, Fiona Christie and Garth Bardsley
Executive Screen Writer: Tim Purcell

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

Bolt-On Media Ltd Liscombe Park Soulbury Leighton Buzzard Bedfordshire LU7 0JL Tel: 01296 689080 Fax: 01296 682445

Sales Company

Bolt-On Media Ltd (as Production Company) (UK & Rest of the World) Gully Multi-Media (Australia, New Zealand and Asia) Unit 2 92 Julia Flynn Avenue Isaacs, ACT 2607 Australia Tel: 61 6 286 1957 Fax: 61 6 286 8139 E Mail: gully@spirit.net.au

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Suggest amendments

Kevin and Cassandra are a married couple who have lost their only daughter Hannah in a freak car accident. They both raised her differently. Kevin had been a traditional parent, Cassandra a permissive one. While Hannah had decided to exhibit her body and mind online, she cut adrift from her father and gravitates towards her mother. Her death drove a wedge between them. Their lounge becomes a battlefield where incendiary words and spiteful things are said. Their marriage is one where opposites no longer attract. Kevin is filled with loathing for his in-laws, his daughter’s boyfriend, himself. Cassandra wears her daughter’s favorite colours with pride and exhibits her painting on the walls. Kevin finds he is powerless in his home and Cassandra mocks the fact that it was her father who bought it. And when he finally leaves it, he leaves Cassandra forever.

Black Drama