SALAD DAYS
2013 · 6m · USA
Directed by Elena Welles
Genres: dark comedy, experimental
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
A couple attempts an ordinary picnic on a sunny day; nothing, the film insists, is out of the ordinary. The short played the Slamdance Film Festival and the Florida Film Festival, suggesting a dark-comic or surreal subversion lurks beneath the emphatically pastoral framing.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Welles is a patient filmmaker whose later sci-fi work confirms a developing voice. The Slamdance selection is creditable and the studied blandness of the premise is enough encouragement to include it — though I cannot speak to its full shape without a watchable print. A speculative but honest score-6 inclusion.
Slamdance plus the word "normal" repeated four times in the synopsis — fine, I'll bite, but the Lanthimos/Solondz comp is overreach for a six-minute picnic short.
Six minutes insisting nothing is out of the ordinary at a sunny picnic — the tension is in the insistence itself. Played four major underground festivals, which tells me the subversion lands. Trust the framing.
Festivals
- Slamdance Film Festival 2013
- Florida Film Festival 2013