'Wallet' - A Synopsis

An uncanny chase around the city.

by Romano Ghirardello of ghirardellomedia.com

'Wallet' is a silent short-film from 155chaos x 155works, which is about a young male who is tormented by a wallet following him around his city, wherever he goes.

We are not told the name of the main character, nor do we know anything about their occupation or how they came to be in the situation regarding the wallet in the first place. It is assumed, that the character lives and works in a large city in Japan, due to the film being from a Japanese production company and taking place in the streets of the country. The time period is considered to be in the present day, which would correlate to whenever the short-film was made. The story involves our protagonist, the young male going about his day, as well as the antagonist, the wallet, however one could also consider the antagonist to be an evil entity which takes on the appearance of our antagonist and could potentially be the one behind the tormenting of the protagonist, with regards to the wallet following him everywhere he goes.

The film begins with a relatively simple landscape shot of a metropolitan city in the nation of Japan, with boats sailing down rivers as the ambience of chirping birds and a breeze blowing through trees can be heard.

We see a confused-looking person standing on the pavement, fixated on a wallet on the floor, completely motionless and in itself, not at all a threat. However, the person is drawn to the wallet, looking almost bothered by its existence. The audience is left to contemplate what the protagonist is thinking, perhaps dealing with the moral dilemma of being faced with the prospect of an opportunity to steal money from a wallet with no witnesses, or do the right thing and leave it be or better yet, hand it into the authorities.

The man is weak and gives in to temptation, deciding to steal a good sum of money from the wallet, running off with his new riches and leaving the wallet where he found it. However, as he further ventures into the city, throughout his day he is met again and again by the exact same wallet that he stole the money from, on street pavements, in a vending machine and even in a car-park, he is never free from the wallet of which he stole the money from. As this progresses, our protagonist evidently becomes more and more anxious, frightened and irritable.

As the film concludes, the man sees the wallet one last time in a car-park, however this time, whether by hallucination or paranormal events, he sees himself, however this version of our protagonist is twisted and almost feral in their mannerisms. They mock the man, they certainly have ill-intent, yet are mischievous and jovial in their antagonistic approach. Perhaps, the reflection of our protagonist is there to teach us, the audience, a lesson about greed and doing the right thing. The man, heavily distressed, screaming and shrieking on his knees eventually tries to pry open the wallet, most likely to return what he stole to make the nightmare end. Once he does, there is a fiery explosion, (visual effects) and the film ends.