One Note
2024 · 14m · USA
Directed by Jamie Ting
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age, drama
Tones: darkly comic, tense
A neurotic 17-year-old Chinese-American violinist discovers a last-minute mistake in her Harvard application and embarks on a midnight rampage through her high school, blackmailing a teenage hacker to deliver the perfect audition before the deadline.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Tiger-mom Harvard-application midnight rampage with blackmail — Booksmart comp suggests this stays cute when it should get vicious. Premise has potential the framing seems too sweet to deliver.
Ting's Harvard-admissions-thriller darkly-comic escalation, rooted in a real Washington Post story, sits in the productive ambit of Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade meets Booksmart's caper energy. The premise is genuinely sharp.
Real Washington Post story about a student faking Ivy League letters as inspiration — that grounding gives the comedic college-admissions thriller a real spine to escalate from. 13K SOTW views and only a preview visible, so I'm reading the premise more than the cut, but it's a sharper hook than most teen comedies.
Reviews
Ting is an experienced comedy writer, but with this film he proves that he blends perfectly comedy with darker themes, without turning his narrative into a farce.
A sharp, darkly comic coming-of-age film that's not only enthralling but also effective at making us take a look at the psychological toll of the college admissions experience.
Festivals
- Asian American International Film Festival 2024
- Austin Asian American Film Festival 2024
- Buffalo International Film Festival 2024
- Beloit International Film Festival