Based on a True Story
2022 · 10m · USA
Directed by Jens Josephs
Tones: darkly comic, humorous, theatrical
Two aspiring writers meet in their LA apartment laundry room and spend the night secretly writing novels about each other. Rapid-fire banter, mutual contempt, suspicious chemistry.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Two writers secretly writing about each other from across a laundry room — finally a movie willing to admit that flirting in 2022 is mostly content acquisition. The editing keeps pace with the spite.
Jens Josephs lets two writers secretly novelize each other through a wash cycle — dueling unreliable narrators, Worst Person in the World's bite at one-tenth the runtime. Wordy in the right way.
Dueling unreliable narrators sharing a wash cycle is a clean structural conceit, and Jens Josephs writing two egotistical dreamers mutually repulsed by each other has a sharp comic engine.
Reviews
Sharp comedy exploring the personalities and inner monologues of a couple of egotistical dreamers, mutually repulsed by each other yet somehow still drawn in.