Fixxxed
2019 · 10m · United States
Directed by Kerry L.M. Russell
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, sensual, tender
Adapted from a 10-minute play developed during Kerry L.M. Russell's Master's program in Creative Writing at City University London, Fixxxed is a quiet two-hander confined to a single location. A middle-aged woman who has just lost her virginity to a male escort lingers afterward, pressing him to give the encounter the emotional weight she had hoped it would carry.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects this to be transgressive or provocative, but Russell's actually doing something stranger — she's making a sincere emotional drama out of escort-client intimacy without irony or sensationalism, which somehow feels more subversive than the obvious provocation.
The lineage here is clear: bedroom naturalism descended from Chekhov through contemporary theatre, now translated to screen with the compositional restraint of chamber cinema — a two-hander that trusts silence and proximity the way the best literary adaptations do.
That single choice to keep the camera static and let the actors' faces do the negotiating — rather than cutting away or staging a seduction — is what transforms a high-concept premise into something genuinely human and unsettling.
Festivals
- Indie Memphis Film Festival 2019