Princess Rita
10m · USA
Directed by Blair Waters
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tender
A Florida insurance adjuster carries on an online romance with a woman who claims she's actual royalty, fitting love letters between damage estimates and gas station dinners. Everyone around him sees the scam; he sees a princess.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Most filmmakers would mock the mark; Waters stays glued to him until the pity curdles into something stranger. Florida light doing heavy lifting all the way through.
A romance scam played as devotional rather than cautionary is the formally adult, ethically harder choice — Sean Baker's Florida palette around a Catfish episode. That's the version worth making.
A romance scam played as devotional rather than cautionary, with damage estimates between love letters and snack-cake lunches to save money to send Rita — that gentleness toward the mark is the rare move. Sean Baker palette in 9:53.
Reviews
Achieves an interesting effect holding tight to Alan's perspective — both endearing and unsettling.