So You've Grown Attached
2014 · 15m · USA
Directed by Kate Tsang
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age, fantasy
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
Ex, an imaginary friend, is forced to consider retirement when his creator and best friend Izzy starts to grow up. A bittersweet, off-beat comedy about the inevitability of leaving childhood behind.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The imaginary-friend-as-displaced-worker angle is clever enough, but it leans a little too hard on whimsy when it could've gone genuinely weird—there's untapped subversion in treating childhood as an extractive industry that just… ends.
Tsang executes the tonal balance with formal precision, marrying the melancholic tradition of growing-up narratives with a playful genre conceit that recalls Kaufman and Being John Malkovich's treatment of interiority.
The whole thing clicks because of a single structural choice: filtering a coming-of-age story through Ex's perspective flips the emotional weight from Izzy's liberation onto the friend left behind—that one decision is what makes the bittersweet land.
Reviews
In this charming and wise short film, writer/director Kate Tsang tells a story of the first steps into growing up with captivating wit and charm.
Festivals
- Student Academy Awards 2014, National Finalist
- San Francisco International Film Festival 2014, Best Narrative Short
- National Board of Review 2014, NBR Student Grant Winner