Shorts: ‘The Masterpiece’ Dissects Privilege and Class with Mounting Tension

“My home is smaller than this,” Salif says as he stands in a wealthy couple’s garage ready to haul out the boxes that they no longer want. “Smaller than this garage?” asks Diana, her eyes directly honed in on the guest visiting her home. In Àlex Lora’s tense short The Masterpiece, that garage and a driveway become a battleground to rip apart the ideas of privilege and wealth as tensions mount between two families.

Diana and her husband Leo are in line to drop off broken items at a recyling center when they spy Salif and his son, Yousef, in the parking lot offering to take more items back to be recycled. As the father and son follow the couple back to their mansion, Yousef wonders if the couple is driving a Tesla, a status symbol for so many people. Standing in the driveway, Leo and Diana keep offering up different items to be taken from their home: a broken dryer then a fridge and why not also take those boxes of books? When Salif asks about an older looking bike, Leo tells him that it has too much sentimental value and his son plans on using it when he grows up a little more.

Lora mounts his film with an unsettling tension as these two pairs of people constantly size each other up. Leo and Diana don’t want these men inside their home nor do they wish to part with real valuables. Is it simply racism against two immigrant men or do they want to hold themselves higher up in an unconscious power grab? As Salif tries to organize their car to fit all of the donations, Diana spies something that she wants for herself, and the tension climbs even higher as negotiations begin

The constant drumming between two notes in the score sometimes feels like these characters are trying to keep their heads above water, and the costume design is impeccable. Salif and Yousef wear layers and hats (the back of Salif’s jacket is streaked with paint) while Diana and Leo (and their son who watches from a distance) don striped sweaters freshly purchased and pressed, no doubt. Lora’s film has tinges of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite in how it wages war between the classes but is also reminiscent of Speak No Evil‘s examination of how pleasantries can be used to take advantage of others.

The Masterpiece examines how money persuades us that we think we can run the world or push each other around. If you are not a good enough negotiator, you might end up with nothing.