Please note: This review is based on a pre-release press screener,
before the film's final edit, colour grading and sound mix.
On first glimpse, Marta (Katie Alexander Thom) and Jake (Malcolm
Jeffries) seem the perfect couple ... but behind closed doors, things are
slightly different - oh not that they're holding up much of a facade,
they're still into each other and everything - but at the same time,
things have turned a tad stale, they're too used to one another, are
hardly talking as they know what the other will say, and even their sex
life has come to a point where Marta has more fun alone in the bath tub
and Jake pretends not to notice ... Then a neighbour (Jolie Stanford)
leaves a suitcase with them as she has the handimen in her apartment and
doesn't trust them with her most personal stuff. But left with that exact
suitcase, both Marta and Jake can't help but take a peek - and what they
find is quite a bit of a turn-on ... The first (written) lines
of this film already say it best: "While love and intimacy require
closeness, passion and desire thrive on distance. And therein lies the
rub." True words indeed, but the film really makes them palpable, in
the course of a mere 20 minutes letting the audience feel eroticism and
intimacy as well as estrangement, using next to no words but the power of
images and the power of the movie's performers, all within a very powerful
narrative frame. And the result is really touching as well!
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