Sweethart
2023 · 10m · USA
Directed by Charlie Stuip
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A twentysomething couple stalls out in bed — he can't deliver, she wants air. They reconnect by retreating into childhood memory and a game from before either of them knew what desire was.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Most sex-in-your-twenties movies are either smug or apologetic; this one lets the failure breathe and then plays a kids' game. That's the right amount of grown-up.
Treating a sexual misfire not as crisis but as an invitation to regress together, on purpose, is a tender and specific move — Stuip is interested in the actual texture of intimacy after the script of intimacy fails. Joanna Hogg via Sean Baker.
Sexual misfire as invitation to regress into a childhood game together is a gentler reading of bedroom-disconnect than most shorts attempt — that pivot to memory-as-reconnection takes nerve and tenderness. Stuip trusts the quiet.
Reviews
A thoughtful piece on emerging into young adulthood and its entanglements with sex.