Love Taps
1996 · 22m · Canada
Directed by Annie O'Donoghue
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: dark, provocative, tense
High school couples Mark and Terese, and Kelly and Benson, become caught in possessive, verbally and physically abusive dating relationships.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
O'Donoghue refuses the easy catharsis—this isn't an after-school special about abuse, it's a formal study of how violence normalizes itself in parallel relationships, which should feel preachy but somehow doesn't.
A measured excavation of teen intimacy's shadow side, situated precisely in the lineage of '90s issue-driven cinema yet distinguished by its structural restraint and refusal to sentimentalize the damage it documents.
The real sting is in the editing rhythm—O'Donoghue cuts between the two couples with glacial precision, each sync point between their private moments a small act of recognition that transforms what could've been an after-school special into something genuinely unsettling.