Full Service
2023 · 10m · USA
Directed by Soma Helmi
When an Indonesian woman is invited to her cousin's engagement party, she decides to hire an escort to keep her aunties — and their persistent questions about her dating life — off her back.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The fake-date premise is shopworn, but Helmi twists it into something genuinely subversive—a diasporic comedy that weaponizes the trope against the very family structures that usually enforce it, which is exactly the kind of inversion that makes consensus taste nervous.
A formally assured romcom that understands its debt to both indie comedy and diaspora cinema, executing the ensemble family dynamics with the kind of precise comedic timing and tonal control that positions it within a specific lineage of culturally-grounded American shorts.
What elevates this beyond its premise is the decision to let the awkwardness breathe—the specific rhythm of how each auntie's interrogation lands, and the moment the escort's performance cracks into genuine complicity, doing more emotional work than the setup promises.
Reviews
A fun little short — really well made and funny.
The pair of them are so good together and the quality of the production is good enough for you to overlook the familiarity of it all.
Festivals
- Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge (CAPE / Janet Yang Productions) 2023, Winner ($15,000 grand prize)