Everything Happens to Me
2021 · 10m · USA
Directed by Nick Beardslee
Genres: comedy, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: humorous, tender, tense
A young man recounts a strange first date to his roommate through parallel timelines. The film follows the date as it unfolds and through the roommate's retelling, building tension around an unexpected turn of events during an otherwise romantic evening.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
An 'amiable rom-com' where 'intimate connection suddenly goes off the rails' — translation: the twist is the only thing keeping me awake. The parallel-timeline gimmick is a slightly clever sticker on a date movie I've seen forty times.
The parallel-timeline conceit recalls early Tom McCarthy in its low-key bicoastal indie register, and the NoBudge framing suggests an amiable, well-built rom-com rather than a formal breakthrough. The 'amiable' descriptor on the page worries me slightly; pleasantness is not always curatorial currency.
The parallel-timeline structure — seeing the date unfold while hearing it retold to a roommate — is the kind of editorial scaffolding that lives or dies on cut timing. NoBudge describes it as 'well-conceived and performed,' which sounds like the structural conceit lands more than dazzles.
Reviews
Well-conceived and performed, built with vivid personality and lighthearted tension.