Misnomer
2022 · 12m · UK
Directed by Aella Jordan-Edge
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
During a dinner with friends, Lily accidentally deadnames her transgender partner Jacob. The incident forces the couple to confront accumulated tension and examine whether their relationship can survive as their identities have diverged since they first got together.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A dinner-table deadname triggers the relationship reckoning. Drawn from the director's own life, which usually means it earns its handheld melancholy — and it doesn't pretend to be about anything other than two specific people.
Jordan-Edge mining her own past relationship for a deadnaming incident that becomes the rupture point — the framing of shared identity as eventual grief is the mature insight too few queer shorts reach. Nearly wordless and handheld is the correct register for it.
Nearly wordless handheld cinematography around a deadname slip is the structural inverse of what most queer relationship films do with dialogue — the silence is where the accumulated tension lives. Drawn from director's own relationship, 12 minutes; the specificity should buy it the universal it's after.
Reviews
A sensitive and subtle depiction of a couple having to face that they are not who they were when they got together, and how to redefine your identity when you also share one with your partner. A quiet, atmospheric film that is nonetheless very emotionally effective and poignant.
We found MISNOMER to be incredibly moving, beautifully performed, directorially unique, and just an altogether brilliant piece of filmmaking.
Festivals
- PRISM Film Festival 2022
- Oslo/Fusion International Film Festival 2022
- Little Wing Film Festival 2022
- QFest St. Louis 2022
- Bolton International Film Festival 2022
- Norwich Film Festival 2022
- London Film Week 2022
- Manchester Film Festival 2023