Bad Candy
2019 · 10m · USA
Directed by Pepi Ginsberg
Tones: dark, melancholic
Candice, a veteran grifter, skates along the edge of ruin through a string of near hits and near misses. She'll compromise everything except the code she swindles by.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A grift portrait with Constance Shulman doing the lead lift. That voice plus a moral code held together with chewing gum — sold.
Constance Shulman anchoring a professional female grift portrait — Ginsberg's late-Cassavetes-with-a-rap-sheet gesture is exactly the kind of casting-as-thesis move I want from a short. Quietly serious.
Constance Shulman (the OITNB voice) anchoring a portrait of professional female grift — that casting is its own thesis. Page summary is just a logline, but the lead performance is the reason to lean in.