Small Talk
2019 · 10m · USA
Directed by Tavis Putnam
Genres: comedy, dark comedy
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic
Two old friends bump into each other in the park and try to small-talk their way through it. The chit-chat drifts, then warps, then stops being chit-chat at all.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Cringe comedy that doesn't flinch when the laughs stop. The kind of park bench conversation you escape feeling implicated.
The premise — chitchat curdling in real time — is exactly the sort of structural risk Joe Pera with the warmth siphoned out can pay off in seven minutes flat.
A whole short engineered around the precise moment chit-chat curdles. Lo-fi cringe needs razor timing to work, but the premise is exactly my register.