Does romance mean something different to everyone? Do you like your stories of the heart to be strictly comedic (Kate Hudson, Jennifer Garner, Meg Ryan, Sandy Bullock all thank you for your devotion), or do you prefer tales of longing with a teensy bit of angst? This year’s Indy Shorts featured programming fitting of all the elation, tension, and heartbreak that comes with matters of the heart.
Love & Dating was one of the first programs that I attended at this year’s festival, and we were lucky to have a few filmmakers, producers, and performers speak about their experiences after the block screened. This talkback was moderated by Indy Shorts Film Programmer, Julie Landrum.
I wanted to come to this block for a few reasons, but I knew that Blake Winston Rice’s DISC opened this collection, and we reviewed the film at the beginning of June. Rice has a knack for confronting unlikely awkwardness, and his last short, Tea, centered on Michael Gandolfini’s shy guy about to ask out the girl of his dreams before he gets stung in the eye by a bee.
Rice’s latest takes place in the bleary morning hours after a one night stand when Victoria Ratermanis’ Alex realizes that her menstrual disc is lodged inside her, and she employs the help of Jim Cummings’ Carey to remove it. Rice plays with the darkest of comedy and elements of body horror, and I knew I needed to see this short film with a crowd. It was one of the films that people kept bringing up throughout the festival, and the reaction in my screening was hilarious and wild. I knew the audience at Indy Shorts wouldn’t be disappointed.
Rebecca Eskreis’ Governors Island begins with a break-up in a New York City cafe even though Simone and Andrew are in an early phase of their relationship. A harried work schedule and a demanding boss has kept Simone out of the country and Andrew wonders if they should cut their losses before their frustrations escalate even further. The day takes them to Governors Island where they meet a couple, played by Catherine Curtin and Peter Friedman, who are visiting the city for their anniversary.
There is a casual feel to how Eskreis brings together two couples who have almost nothing in common with each other. One pair is just starting out, the other is committed and have experience with navigating those little fights or those serious breaks. What can we learn from each other–not just as a coupled unit but as individuals in those relationships? There’s something so comforting in this film that reminded me so much of when I need something comforting to watch. I feel like I know these people, and I want to spend more time with them.
“I wrote this script a long time ago, and it was loosely based on a personal experiences,” Eskreis says. “Like many things that happen with filmmakers, we move on from all different kinds of projects, and I thought I was done making shorts. I then met Will and Charlie [Pigott], who’s a producer on this film, and they asked me if I had any scripts that I wanted to make.”
Friedman, who has starred in everything from Succession, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and I Shot Andy Warhol, gives a near-silent performance. The audience at our screening asked the filmmaker what it was like to incorporate that element into the story.
“Peter is such an incredible actor, but what he brings is that he says so much without saying anything,” Eskreis explains. “He and I talked a lot about that, and his character does have lines, but we just don’t hear him. We also spoke about it with Cathy since she plays his wife, and we ultimately leaned into it a little for comedic effect. There is also a foil to these two younger people who just can’t shut up for each other–it’s what makes them clash and also what works for them.”
Maggie Brown and Tyler Brown’s One Night drops us directly into one of those fresh, exciting conversations that you have when you are beginning to like someone. At the beginning, talking is all you have sometimes. Maybe you’re in a corner booth of a restaurant like Rain Spencer’s Margaret and Jackson Kelly’s Will are as they debate the best animated films of all time. Finally…a film dares to propose that 2007’s Surf’s Up hasn’t yet gotten its due.
“I just graduated this May from Columbia, which is an essential thought, I guess, in the story,” Maggie Brown says, in the post-show Q&A. “It’s based on a true experience, and I thought, ‘who hasn’t had a night like that, right?’ I hope no one else has, especially when you find out what happens. It’s really about connection and how it feels so special when you find someone who you think gets you and gets what you’re all about. And then the other shoe drops.”
One Night captures a buzz when you feel high off of a connection. Maybe your mind is trying to stay grounded as you debate movies, opinions, and who can pick up the check. When you’re in college, how do you know when you can take things to the next level? To be vulnerable? When Margaret and Will continue to let the conversation roll on over and over again, I was surprised by how the screenplay gave room to both of these actors to be spontaneous, playful, and natural while the skillful direction swirls a grounded melancholy around them. It’s a unique dynamic that lures the audience in in exciting ways. This is truly a film that we can all relate to.
There are many indelible images throughout Jasmine Rao’s Amish Ammayi, and they begin in the opening montage where we meet Esha, a young Indian woman as she happily does daily chores and twirls in the nearest clearing. Move over, Maria. That kind of unadulterated joy comes to a halt when her parents arrive and we are invited to a clashing of cultures as they meet the parents of her beau, played by Sully Christian.
“I was thinking a lot about how I got to where I am and the concept of how if you don’t fully try, you don’t fully fail,” Rao says. “But then what are you left with is at the heart of it? On the Amish front, I was always curious about their world, because I admired how they are doing their own thing despite what everyone else around them is doing. A few years ago, I wondered if there were any non-white Amish people, which was hard to verify, I admit.”
From the opening moments of Rao’s film, you can tell that there is a lot of love between Esha and her mother, Padmini, even if, in familiar familial fashion, it doesn’t always feel like they see eye-to-eye. From the moment that her mother steps out of the family BMW with her husband, Bhanu (the always-welcome Rizwan Manji), Padmini bemoans the lack of cell service before prodding Esha about why she has chosen this drastically different life for a boy. Mother knows best, right?
As Esha, Sadithi de Zilva is magnetic and charismatic in her determination–we relate to her instantly. No matter what culture we are apart of, a lot of us buck against our parents’ idea of what we should and should not do in order to make our own way. Rao’s film is about the tenacity of standing in your own convictions as much as it is about falling head over heels for a cute Amish boy named Jonas. When Padmini prods Esha about whether she will come back to choose a more stable career, she questions why Esha gave up on her dreams on becoming an animator. Maybe seeing her mother in person and hearing that exchange plants a seed for Esha to reconsider herself?
“They don’t understand each other,” Rao says. “They love each other, but they don’t know how to show it. Padmini wants her daughter to be happy, and her idea of happiness is very different from her daughter’s. Esha’s mother realizes, though, that this time she could actually lose her daughter, and she knows that she has to show support–even if she can’t say it directly.”
Frances Chewning’s The Pic might serve as a nightmare and then a happily ever after for many of us who have been horrified at the thought of sending the wrong kind of picture by accident.
When Chewning’s Jen starts receiving suggestive pictures from Dan Lippert’s Steve, she doesn’t why. Is he being a creeper? Was it a mistake? Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for men, no matter the orientation, to send unsolicited pics instead of, you know, flirting with their words. While some people will block another when that happens…what do you do when that person is a friend? Or someone that you see on a regular basis?
Chewning knows how to lean into the charm and the humor of the situation, and the ending realization had my audience at Indy Shorts laughing at the misunderstandings and coincidences life can play on us. There is something surprisingly gentle and sweet that I didn’t expect to come out of this initial texting.
Speaking of romantic elements involving your phone, pesky political text messages launch an unlikely pursuit of love in Asher Grodman and Samantha Massell’s Stop to Stop. Frequent pleas from Nancy Pelosi, the DNC, and Kamala Harris to donate money before the midterms isn’t a usual kind of launching pad when you think about the beginning of a relationship, but this comedy wants us to think about how we communicate with one another. We are so used to shouting into the void, but what happens when a genuine voice from that void offers a calming communication back?
Massell plays Carolyn, a beleaguered office worker who finds out that there is a real-life person behind all those texts just trying to make a difference in the world. At first, she rages back at him through her phone, but when she secretly discovers that he works right around the corner (and, you know, he’s really cute), she has some fun with their newly playful banter together.
We reviewed Stop to Stop last week, but I was so taken by the immediacy to Massell’s writing. We are so on edge these days, so to take something back feels entirely attainable and within our reach with Massell and Grodman’s guidance. Maybe taking charge in a strange romantic scenario will be the most satisfying?
Of the films that played in this block, the one that didn’t look like the others is Franie-Éléonore Bernier’s Three Words, an animated film about what the phrase, ‘I love you’ can physically do to a person when it surprises you with delight and shock.
When Todd’s girlfriend tells him that she loves him, his feet cannot stay on the ground as he bursts through their apartment’s walls and flies into the sky. Glitter bombs erupt all around the city as he ascends higher and higher into a pink sky that warmly envelops him. In just two minutes, Bernier’s film captures that scary feeling of confronting love and realizing that you deserve to let it flood over you.
What is the opposite of spontaneity if not control? When it comes to engineering the perfect relationship, we think that we can create a perfect version of it or we assume that we need to check every box in order to get the result that we want. Tamara Shogaolu’s Something Real brings two people together, played by an irresistible Tommy Dewey and Sasheer Zamata, who realize that they have more in common than they think when it comes to hang-ups with love.
When Dax and Beau meet for a date at a fancy restaurant, Beau grows suspicious when Dax doesn’t want to order food since she’s on a new fasting diet. Maybe she can have some wine, though, right? When Beau tips Dax’s glass back, the red wine makes her sputter and short circuit, and Beau realizes that his girlfriend hired a futuristic android to break up with him. That’s not the only turn in Shogaolu’s film, though, but she keeps the action grounded in the emotional plight of two people who put on so much in order to hide their insecurities and feelings.
We might be years away from lifelike bots who can trick us like this (at least I hope…), and Zamata and Dewey have a great, healing chemistry with one another.
Do any of these films sounds like they would make your heart go aflutter? What kind of love story do you like to tune into?
