Mouthful
2011 · 11m
Directed by Robert G. Putka
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic
Bobby and Bliss are a happy couple — until they begin telling the truth, and a single question sends them down a highway to relationship hell.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A couple implodes over honesty — sounds like therapy-speak pablum, but Putka commits to the bit so fully that the absurdity becomes almost unbearable, which is exactly when it stops being safe.
The film's architecture rests on a deceptively simple escalation, each beat calibrated to flip the register from intimate to grotesque; it's the kind of restraint that requires complete formal control.
The masterstroke is treating the dissolution as a linguistic problem — not what they're saying, but the weight of saying it — and building the entire 11 minutes around that pressure point until language itself becomes weaponized.
Reviews
Driven by powerful performances by leads Eilis Cahill and Portugal Village's own Conor Casey. Plus, director Robert G. Putka is something of a young John Cassavetes, eliciting humorous yet resonating nuances from his improv-happy actors.