La Piscina
2023 · 10m · USA
Directed by Ian Faria
Genres: comedy
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic
Three siblings host an Argentine visitor at their pool house for a day of drinking and games, and the hosts deliberately weaponize awkwardness against him. The social temperature only gets weirder as the booze flows.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Hospitality as a slow-motion prank — exactly the kind of premise that makes me sit up. Most pool-party shorts want you to envy the hosts; this one wants you to flinch at them.
A bawdy farce where the hosts are intentionally weird to their guest is a fun inversion, but Simple-Town material on the page reads more bit-driven than essential.
A bawdy farce where the hosts are the ones intentionally weird to their guest — the Simple Town comedy group inverting the discomfort vector is the right move. Suntan-lotion slathering and suggestive dancing as harassment of the visitor is novel.