Romance Package for Two
2023 · 14m · USA
Directed by Carlen May-Mann
Genres: drama, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, sensual, tender
A queer couple running a kitschy, crumbling love motel see their relationship thrown into disarray when one of them falls for a visiting dominatrix. The film explores how boredom and jealousy coexist with love and joy in a long-term relationship.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Queer couple running a kitschy love motel, jealousy enters via dominatrix guest. 16mm, heart-shaped mirrors as ironic backdrop, silences instead of monologues — this is the unusual one with the actual feel for restraint.
Heart-shaped mirrors and hot tubs ironizing a quietly dying queer relationship, shot on 16mm — May-Mann is working the Andrew Haigh register where the kitsch of romance turns elegiac. Fourteen minutes of well-staged emotional distance.
Shooting on 16mm in a kitschy heart-shaped-mirrors love motel, conveying decline through silences rather than dialogue, is the formal inversion of what the setting wants you to do — the kitsch becomes the irony, not the joke. 14 minutes, Palm Springs and NewFest selection.
Reviews
A bewitching tale of longing that captures the tension and silences of a relationship in excruciating detail, with Jackie Abbott giving a stirring turn as Cleo, working out what she really wants for her future.
The film explores how boredom and jealousy coexist with love and joy in a relationship, asking what love, romance, and sex can look and feel like under these conditions.
Festivals
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2023
- NewFest 2023
- Florida Film Festival 2024