Pursuit of a Jigsaw
2022 · 13m
Directed by Sam Mizrahi-Powell
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
In a retro suburban America, a corporate laborer begins to lose his sense of self after entering an undesired marriage.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise reads like midcentury anxiety theater, but Mizrahi-Powell plays it so straight that the satire nearly disappears—which is either cowardly or brilliant, and I'm genuinely unsure which, so maybe that's worth something.
A formally composed descent into suburban dissolution that knows exactly how to position itself within the lineage of Cheever and mid-century malaise cinema; the restraint of the editing mirrors the protagonist's fracturing consciousness with real sophistication.
The specific choice here is tonal register—holding the melancholy and satire in perfect tension without letting either collapse into the other, which means every performance beat and cut has to land with surgical precision on a modest canvas.