A Good Dinner Party
2019 · 10m · USA
Directed by Zane Rubin
Genres: comedy, dark comedy
Tones: darkly comic, humorous, tense
A group of LA friends gather for dinner when a couple just back from Joshua Tree drops a provocative proposal on the table, and Zoe is by far the least amused. Anxiety dream cadence played dead-straight for laughs.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Dinner party comedies are usually toothless and this one bares some — Rubin keeps writing about sex like it's still allowed to be weird. Refreshing.
Sexual-restraint comedy paced like a horror short — Rubin lets the joke and the wince live in the same beat, High Maintenance rewritten by a worse-mood Mike White. Tight and squirmy.
Sexual-restraint comedy played with the rhythm of a horror short — the joke and the wince in the same beat. That tonal welding is the craft and Rubin trusts the cringe.