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Flashback is used in the opening scene. It shows the two characters in a dance.

There is a dream-like quality to the scene which suggests it’s a flashback. This includes the choice of music which is gentle and atmospheric, the lighting is muted and soft and the characters are dressed in dated outfits. The scene is played with no dialogue as if it’s playing out from memory.

The scenes incorporate flashback throughout and flip from past to present. This is a fragmented way of telling the story and is a non-linear structure.

The dramatic tension builds throughout the sequence. The audience is on edge from when the boy unexpectedly leaves his girlfriend alone in the dance. The camera lingers on her as she leaves to go outside giving a feeling of foreboding that something bad is going to happen. By showing the two characters in the present confronting their past with lines like, Are you up for this? we know the flashback scenes are showing a significant event in both their lives. Lines of dialogue also add to the tension like, So I decided to walk home, and That truck came out of nowhere. The cutting from past to present speeds up as the scenes progress so the pace also contributes to the tension. When the discovery is made that both characters were in the truck when what we presume was an assault took place, the tension reaches its climax.

Dramatic tension is an effective storytelling device as it builds up anticipation or excitement for the audience about the outcome of events taking place in a play. Building the tension keeps the audience wanting to know what happens next and is an important part of a good story.

The scenes would have been played in chronological order if they’d been written using a linear structure. There wouldn’t be any cutting from past to present and back again. The events that took place in the past would have been played out in a continuous sequence of scenes without use of the voiceovers or intercutting of scenes from the present.