Rebound
2019 · 10m · USA
Directed by Doron Max Hagay
Tones: darkly comic, humorous, tender
A freshly separated mom rents her guest house to a hulking stranger and immediately starts orbiting him, while her young son processes the loss of his father in real time. A comedy about the gravity of 'manly men' staged as throwback genre piss-take.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Hagay's a NoBudge lifer and the setup — 'horny mom, mysterious bro, broken kid' — is a deliciously dumb premise rescued by performance. The kind of small comedy that knows exactly which retrograde button it's pushing.
Cassavetes domestic chamber piece rewritten by a sitcom room with taste is a generous read of throwback gender-comedy material; the kid in the middle is the variable that pushes it past piss-take. Hagay earns the benefit of doubt.
A burly stranger arriving with a trash bag at a freshly-separated mom's guest house, written by Wes Haney with the kid processing his father's loss in real time — Hagay's chamber-piece sensibility plus that arch retro-gender register sounds like a real comedy short.
Reviews
Pure comedy gold, built with priceless performances.