Fuck Me, Richard
2023 · 13m · Australia / USA
Directed by Lucy McKendrick, Charlie Polinger
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, tender
A romance-obsessed woman with a broken leg, isolated at home, forms an intense connection with a man named Richard she meets on a dating app — but when he fails to appear in person and asks for money, the film holds the ambiguity: is she being scammed, or is she a knowing participant in her own seduction?
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A scam romance where the victim might be a co-conspirator, with 50s melodramas flickering in the background — that's a sharper take on transactional loneliness than the title promises. Ottessa Moshfegh is doing some pretty heavy comp-work but I'm in.
McKendrick and Polinger's refusal to clarify whether their protagonist is scammed or willing collaborator — with Richard heard only as voice, mediated through 1950s melodrama — is the Ottessa Moshfegh tonality the comparison promises. SXSW premiere, sharp gambit, exactly the kind of ambiguity short film should risk.
Keeping Richard as a disembodied voice against 1950s Hollywood melodramas on the TV is the specific aesthetic choice that converts a romance-scam premise into something Moshfegh-adjacent — old-Hollywood fantasy as the cipher for transactional loneliness. SXSW + 49.8K views, the ambiguity is doing real work.
Reviews
McKendrick and Polinger strike a gorgeous visual harmony in a film that is a lot more uplifting than you'd expect on premise alone — a powerful meditation on our romantic vulnerabilities.
Sharply entertaining instead of melodramatic, the film takes a psychological approach to its subject and says a great deal about romance culture without saying too much.
Festivals
- SXSW 2023