Hernia
2016 · 10m · USA
Directed by Jay Giampietro
Tones: darkly comic, humorous, melancholic
Rudy, helping a friend with chores, develops mysterious groin pain and proceeds to leverage it into a small festival of self-pity, hypochondria, and emotional martyrdom.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A film about a guy weaponizing a possible hernia into emotional leverage — this is the kind of mean-spirited little study of male fragility that I will always show up for. Plus Sean Price Williams shooting it.
Sean Price Williams shooting a film whose entire crisis is a maybe-hernia — Giampietro working in the Bujalski/Defa/Alex Ross Perry register where micro-stakes get major DP treatment. Stephen Gurewitz's putty-colored martyrdom is the engine.
Sean Price Williams shooting a film whose entire crisis is a maybe-hernia and a friend's crumb-strewn shag carpet — that's exactly the kind of austerity/glamour mismatch that makes a Giampietro short land. Rudy the Mennonite-center-part hypochondriac sounds like a beautifully-drawn role.
Reviews
HERNIA spins a little broadside on the emotional, and the very physical, frailty of men.