I Will Despise You
2020 · 8m · UK
Directed by Max Tobin
Genres: comedy, drama, romance
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, tender
A young couple on a first date decide to be brutally honest about their flaws, and discover that radical candor is no shortcut to real intimacy.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A first-date honesty pact that promises rom-com beats then yanks the ground out—this is the kind of premise that makes you actually curious where a filmmaker's going, and Tobin doesn't blink when it gets weird and uncomfortable instead of cute.
Tobin works within the romantic comedy tradition while carefully dismantling it; the film's command of tonal architecture—that shift from Elaine May snappiness to Nichols ambiguity—shows a director thinking about form as argument.
The crucial choice here is the edit at the pivot: that almost imperceptible moment where the banter stops landing and starts hurting, carried entirely by the actors' eyes and a single held frame that refuses to cut away.
Reviews
Witty, self-aware and deftly directed... the story eventually shades the eternal dance of romance in a slightly darker register, with fascinating results.
It also has a wry, knowing sense that love and relationships demand more than the initial adrenaline and dopamine rush... there is no bypass to genuine intimacy.
Festivals
- Royal Television Society Awards 2021, Winner — Inaugural Young Filmmaker Award