Seeing Read
2024 · 7m · UK
Directed by Beth and Natasha Perkin
Zoey, a chaotic twenty-something, texts her crush Miles asking him out and is promptly left 'on read.' While she spirals through every distraction she can find, an oblivious Miles is busy laughing and playing video games with his mates.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a premise that could've been saccharine—girl texts boy, boy ignores her—but the split-screen conceit refuses to pick a villain, which is genuinely subversive in a genre that usually needs someone to blame.
The Perkins demonstrate real formal control: the cross-cutting recalls a lineage from Soviet montage through Gondry, but the restraint is theirs—they let the silence between the screens do the work.
That decision to make Miles genuinely, innocently unaware rather than deliberately cruel—and to sustain it visually without cutting to prove his obliviousness—is the single choice that makes this transcend greeting-card sentiment.
Reviews
She Sent Him A Text... and Instantly Regretted It
very, very funny
Festivals
- BFI Future Film Festival 2024
- Norwich Film Festival 2024