Medical Drama
2022 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Sophie Jarvis
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, surreal
An aspiring performer finds an unconscious stranger in her laundry room and improvises a rescue, with predictable derailments. A character study about trying to give a damn in a world that mostly won't.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Hama-Brown carries the whole thing on a face that can't decide whether to laugh or panic. The tonal tightrope is the entire show — and Jarvis doesn't fall.
Jarvis stages accidental Samaritanism as both punchline and existential test, with Andrea Arnold tenderness and a Canadian deadpan. Meredith Hama-Brown's the right actor for that tonal balance.
A struggling-actor character study where she's literally hired to act out symptoms for medical exams — that's a beautifully specific recursive joke. The laundry-room unconscious-stranger derailment is the right way to test whether trying to give a damn even registers.
Reviews
A film about trying to care in a seemingly uncaring world, Jarvis' film nails a delicate tonal balance, aided by a terrific lead performance from Meredith Hama-Brown.