Simon (Lukas Hassel) seems to live a happy enough life, he's happily married to Anne (Jeanine Bartel) and they appear to be reasonably well off - but there's one thing he just hates, and that's dinner parties at Anne's best friend Maggie's (Jennifer Plotzke), as she's neither a good hostess nor a good cook, the other regulars at these parties (Anne Bobby, Dan Domingues) are positively obnoxious, and Anne tends to get roaringly drunk at these. Tonight was one such party, and after carrying his wife to bed, Simon comes to the decision it's up to him to put a stop to dinners at Maggie's once and for all - only what he has in mind is rather drastic ...

Now the concept of this short is a rather novel one, as the camera stays on lead Lukas Hassel's face, mostly full frontal, at all times, often in close-up, and hardly shows any of the other actors even in background, and certainly not their faces. This is more than just a lofty idea though, as the film's really about Hassel's character's reactions on situation and dialogue rather than the mostly rather mundane things happening - and frankly, Hassel reacting to very bland dialogue and unfunny anecdotes is pretty hilarious in itself, even if its mostly buried in subtle facial expressions. And of course, this limited point of view of the audience makes the twist ending all the more effective, making this a really cool macabre comedy.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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