Partners
2015 · 7m · United States
Directed by Joey Ally
A lesbian couple navigates their newest rocky patch in a seven-minute snapshot of recognizable bickering about their sex life and long-standing differences, where the fight is heated but neither partner wants to break the thing apart.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's competent relationship drama that lands exactly where you'd expect it to—two people fighting about sex and commitment, neither one leaving. The LGBTQ+ framing doesn't subvert the form; it just swaps the pronouns on a very traditional reconciliation arc.
Ally demonstrates formal control in the rhythms of domestic argument—the editing honors the push-pull of accusation and defense—and there's real lineage here to the relationship-as-battleground tradition, though the execution doesn't quite justify the constraint of seven minutes.
The film hinges on a single sustained two-shot where neither character looks directly at each other until the final moment, and that spatial discipline—the way Ally refuses cutting-back-and-forth coverage in favor of letting discomfort breathe in the frame—makes the tenderness at the end actually land instead of feeling obligatory.